How do you discipline your children?

[Marguerite]

Oh, and forget about the neighbours. Or maybe warn them that you have a difficult child who is bound to make some noise, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. You will have to top worrying about what other people think, and concentrate on what your child can learn.

And about taking privileges away - I don't so it. Not directly. But if difficult child is having trouble concentrating on a task, or if work isn't done, I will ask him how I can help remove distractions so he can get the work done more effectively.

Or when difficult child 3 broke Grandma's window in a rage, we asked him what punishment he thought was appropriate. When he suggested that perhaps one of his (difficult child 3's) toys should be smashed to make things even, or perhaps he should be put in prison, we said that such a punishment wouldn't make things right and would only make grandma sad. It would be better to try to undo the damage. So difficult child 3's punishment became to pay for the replacement glass, and help make the repairs (working with husband). difficult child 3 had to measure the window, had to help husband order the replacement glass, had to work with husband to put it in. And it was made clear to difficult child 3 that husband was doing the job too even though he hadn't done anything wrong. Sometimes jobs just need to be done.

Sending to room - it's time out for personal space, never punishment. As a result, our kids put themselves in their rooms to de-stress when they are upset. This then leads into them learning to walk away from a potentially nasty and unproductive confrontation.

It's a change in mind-set. It's baffling for others, grandparents especially can give you a hard time over it but for us, this has worked BIG time. Anyone trying to make difficult child 3 go back to more traditional methods finds with a shock that it is not going to work.

Marg

 

[Star*]

Personally I found that a whip......no no no.....


A lot of times we're so quick to say "My child will NOT listen" that we neglect to step out of the picture and see if what we are saying IS something that they will listen to. Mostly if you think about it - our children do a lot of things that other people we know outside of our homes do - like at work. I have people that I ask to sign things, bring me things, do things and they forget - over and over and I can't say "Well now you're without a desk" and call maintenance to rid their office of the desk as punishment. So why do we treat our kids worse? I seemed to be unable to realize that outside my house I was A TON more tolerant of people because of their shortcomings - but with my son I wanted it done NOW. And if NOW didn't come - I started in on punishments.

I think one of the keys to understanding and helping our kids is to help ourselves or teach or educate ourselves on HOW and WHAT we are saying to our kids. It's called effective communication. One thing it taught me was to STOP saying things like "I need you to behave please." The please to our ears means - Won't you stop? To a child it comes off like a choice. As in "I'm begging you not telling you as a parent." It irks me to no end when I hear parents in a store say to kids who are jumping in and out of a cart and could get hurt - "Sit down please." Please nothing - SIT DOWN BEFORE YOU FALL OUT AND CRACK YOUR HEAD! Thank you is optional after the child does what he/she is told. But I stopped using please after what I was asking and it stuck a little more.

I am reading a great book that has exercises week by week in effective communication and it breaks the book down into weeks BECAUSE you have to practice what they are teaching you - and it sounds easy when you read the first chapter but it really takes some hard work on my part as a parent to see where I have been making mistakes in HOW to get my son to listen. I wish I had this book before my son was born.

How to get your kids to listen and how to listen so you hear your kids.

I have tried technique for week 1 out on my 17 year old son recently and it was amazing to see the look on his face - it was as if he could have said "My gosh - she heard me - FINALLY!"

The other thing I can tell you in hindsight - is to say what you mean and mean what you say. If you say "YOU ARE GROUNDED for a week" then you had better be able to stick to that even on the brightest, sunny day when you would LOVE to have everyone out of the house but difficult child is in the house and you want to be alone - so you cut him some slack - and BLLLLLAMO - you are set up for the next 1 week grounding - because your son knows the minute you want time to yourself - all he has to do is be a little needy and you will let him go.

And finally the most important thing I learned was that any grounding more than 3 days long with these kids for minor infractions is worthless. What works is shorter consequence times....repeatedly. In a childs mind - three days is time enough to see the end of the tunnel and not self-sabotage themselves. A week when you are 10 is a LIFETIME - and while it may work with other children - it does NOT work with difficult child's. Short and repetitive like a parrot or record player.

Hugs
Sta