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Originally Posted by highthief
While kids do cry for attention - they're ability to communicate is less than that of adults, who many times cry for attention as well, although often in a more subtle manner - you are making a bit of a leap to say you know that is what this kid is doing when you don't seem to have any real knowledge of the family. Maybe the child cries for no reason, maybe the kid has some real issues of an emotional or health nature - you should try to find out a little more before getting upset about it.
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True, a valid point. Thing is, I understand Icelandic, and whenever this family goes up and down the stairs (very loudly), I can hear pretty much everything they're saying... and I understand it, and what the kid is demanding, and their response. I also watch them when they're playing on the playground directly in front of my kitchen window, when I'm washing the dishes, and the kid appears to be fairly normal to me.
So yes, I may not know exactly what is going on, that's true... but I do watch this family and listen to almost everything that goes on in the hall and upstairs (seriously, they are LOUD--we had another family up there before them, with a kid the same age, and we thought the floor was soundproof because we never heard a peep from them!)... and lacking any further information, I still think the kid is a spoiled, attention-seeking brat.
And Nikki, as I said in my OP:
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Originally Posted by abaya
(not toddler or baby--I understand that they cry because they have no other way to communicate)
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... I understand that kids under a certain age and vocabulary level are incapable of expressing a lot of complex things, and that's okay. I would rather have my kid do this fake crying thing once, then have me stop and correct him/her, and provide him/her with a simple sentence to better express what they want or what they're feeling, before coming down hard on them to harden the fuck up and stop that fake crying shit because I can see right through them, and they're not going to get what they want no matter how much they turn the world upside down.
However, after a certain number of times (as MM gave an example of), there has to be a consequence, in my mind. Consequences for everything, because yes, every parental reaction is a form of conditioning for that kid. From what I can tell, it's very much like classroom management (and we had to regurgitate all of that Skinnerian business as well)... except with more influence, because as a teacher, you're still managing other people's kids.