As has been said - never lay down an ultimatum you can't stick to. It's better to not try to discipline for something, than to try and fail. YOU MUST NEVER LOSE FACE. If that means ignoring name-calling, then so be it. We have done well with difficult child 3 and TEC, but there are some things that are just about impossible to fix. Tonight, for example - I was trying to print a colour document and couldn't find the power switch for the colour printer, the one I was trying didn't seem to be responding. So I asked husband to look at it. difficult child 3, also very computer-savvy, said he could have fixed it if I'd asked, so I said, "then go help your father."
He came storming back a minute or two later saying, "I'm not going to help him any more, I got a clout over the ear!"
husband yelled out, "I did not hit you!"
difficult child 3 called back, "I was speaking metaphorically!"
When I asked husband about it, he said that difficult child 3 had been very patronising, had been treating him like an idiot as if he knew nothing, and he (husband) wasn't standing for it.
Meanwhile I was talking to difficult child 3. "You must show respect to your elders," I told him.
"What if they're not respecting me?" he objected.
"It doesn't matter - you have to put up with it, it is not your place to be disrespectful to an adult under any circumstances."
He is 14, and we're only just beginning to work on this one, because a facet of his autism means that he treats everybody on the same level, and ESPECIALLY he treats everybody as he perceives they treat him.
And difficult child 3 perceives that husband treats him more rudely, more brusquely, than I do. And he could be right - but it hasn't been easy for husband to make the changes you need, to adapt to TEC methods. When stressed or trying to concentrate on something, having 'help' coming from a condescending 14 year old is not tolerable.
Fault on both sides, plus me for trying to direct difficult child 3 to help where it turned out it wasn't needed.
These things will happen. Apart from using it to tell difficult child 3 that disrespect is not acceptable, I did nothing. If I'd tried to do more, I would have pushed difficult child 3's resentment to a level where nothing was achieved other than a meltdown. Instead, there is a chance that he has now learned to back off even when he feels he is in the right - and that's a HUGE lesson for a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kid.
Sending him to his room would not have worked at all, it would have set things off for an evening of screaming matches and meltdown, which would have led into a bad day tomorrow.
Time-out - we stopped doing that years ago. It used to work on the other kids, but never has with difficult child 3.
difficult child 1 would sometimes get violent - I would send him out for a walk, if I could. Being outside would give him space around him which he benefited from more. He might climb a tree, or go sit on a rock in the garden. If he was really angry he might pick up a stick and smash it - we are constantly getting windfall timber, he can break it up as much as he wants.
But getting him outside - it got him away from whoever was upsetting him, it broke the anger cycle and he would come back inside when he had regained some level of control.
As a result, he has learned to take himself away from a situation where he is getting angry. This is a good thing.
You adapt TEC to your situation, you decide what is in the baskets and you control how and when you handle things. Basket A stuff - keep it limited to only a couple of urgent things only. Even today, we don't have very much Basket A stuff. Basket B is actually getting quite full, it's like we have a sub-A, then a B, with sub-A being the behaviours we have had in basket B which have graduated out, due to success. We still won't push him to meltdown stage if he slips on these behaviours, but we generally don't have to worry about them. Stealing, for example - with difficult child 3, it's not in any basket because he doesn't steal. Same with lying. Drug-taking. But rudeness, and frustration, and shouting at people - definitely Basket B. Although a lot of rudeness we ease back into C at times, especially if it's coming from frustration, anxiety or an inability to treat people differently to how he is treated himself.
There have been times recently when easy child 2/difficult child 2 was raging and although she wasn't violent, I didn't want to be in the same room so I walked out. I have told her that when she is like this, I want to walk right away, go right outside, walk down the road and get right away from her noise. I'm not the only one.
Sometimes a raging kid needs to be deprived of an audience.
And any mess they make, they have to clean up or repair. difficult child 3 was raging one day at mother in law's place and he slammed a door. The force of the slam broke a glass panel right next to the door and part of difficult child 3's punishment over the next few weeks, was having to help husband repair the hole. In that way, he learned how the consequences of your actions can take some time and inconvenience to deal with, and SOMEONE has to do it. He could see that husband was working on it too, even though husband hadn't caused the problem.
In this way, consequences aren't always punishment, but they can be just as effective a deterrent and a teaching tool and surely this is what we are trying to get from punishment? isn't it supposed to be a deterrent and teaching tool? So if we can get as good a result (or even better) without having to punish (which to some kids just seems like retribution or revenge) then we win. A punishment might make US feel better, avenged in some way, but if it's not teaching anything we are wasting our time.
I could have grounded difficult child 3 for the broken window, but I don't think it would have helped him learn anything more than the vast amount he learned from having to help repair the damage (and look his grandmother in the eye as he did so). Grounding him would have been too easy on him. And while punishing him might have made me feel big and strong ("I can do this to you because I'm the adult, you're just the child") it would have made more work for me as well and really would have been a hassle.
We need to change our mindset towards punishment, when we are trying to find TEC ways to 'sort' our kids.
We've been watching a series of Brat Camp on Aussie TV - I have o idea if this series has been screened in your area, or when. But one of the camp counsellors is a Buddhist guy who says that the methods he uses are very zen. And watching him, listening to him - it's also very Ross Greene.
So next time I'm at church, or with family, or wherever, and someone wants to get critical of how we're dealing with discipline issues, I can say, "Our methods are very zen, but they are the same ones used successfully when all else fails."
It's nice to have another label to use on back seat parents.
Marg