Hey, everyone out their, its Matt from Play the Dad? Be the Dad! and I have a question for ya. One of the things my wife and I have noticed my older child attempting to get out of her “Just Punishments” resulting from her disobedience. Now, I consider this direct defiance of her parents and worthy of harsher punishments than the origional offense entails. Here is the problem, if you punish a child more (i.e. more time in timeout) when they are refusing to serve their punishment, whats the point?
Is not the ultimate point not to control them but to motivate them to choose what is right? This is a question that was posed to me by my dear wife. I know that the balance between control and freedom to choose changes as the child ages but its hard to figure out where it is at times. Also, how do you add punishment for say, an eight year old, when they are refusing to undergo their punishment?
To me it would seem to be similar to what a bank does when you overdraft, they take away more of the money you don’t have. So when a child refuses to go to timeout (really, a problem for my wife and not for me) do you just keep adding time to the punishment they refuse to do? Just curious is anyone has any practicial ideas or even better suggestions from your wife as that is where the problem is in our house. My wife and I are looking for suggestions to help us along. Just trying to keep ahead of the curve and wanting to make sure our kids aren’t abnormal in their want to avoid punishment. Of course I do remember when I was a kid and may have done that very thing myself.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
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Kids are pretty smart so at some point they will experiment to see where things go if they disobey, especially if they think the punishment isn't that harsh. Adding more of the same usually has a "so what" effect. So you have to up the ante. We usually present it as a choice. "You can either do as I say or you can lose your TV time, (or game, or trip to Dairy Queen, etc.). It's your choice". Usually this works but as they get older the ante keeps going up and you have to stand firm. Sometimes it ends up that you have to take away something that you were looking forward to doing together.
It seems to be one of the toughest duties of a parent. Especially with several children who all react differently. I have found that being un-predictable in my discipline can help with the harder cases. Not flying off the wall, but keeping them guessing. Discipline should make them regret their bad choice. And it often seems they set their will that the normal punishment isn't going to get them. So I take a detour and hand out a different punishment. There are so many tasks they can't stand, scooping doggie bombs and such. It catches them off guard and brings the intended result.Another method I have used for my two sassy kids is incremental fines. We have a ticket/reward system. But for sassing I may fine them tickets. And when defiance sets in, I keep fining them until they lose the attitude. My 7 year old has incurred some heavy fines before he got the message.
Timeout doesn't work with every child. You didn't say what age the child you're talking about is. That makes a difference too. We almost never use timeout with our children. We DO take away privileges, which might be playing with a friend, watching TV, using the computer, giving up a favorite toy for a certain time period–different children lose different privileges. They don't get to "refuse" this punishment because it's easy for us to police it. We found pretty early on (our oldest is 15) that timeout is something that the parent must enforce THE WHOLE TIME. Who is getting punished here? Child misbehaves and then gets to play a fun tug-of-war game with Mom!
I agree with the time out take shared by Barb,sfo but I am a "GO TO YOUR ROOM!" Dad at times. This is done more to isoloate the child than punish the child (the kids rooms are very fun places in our home). This is a form of de-escalation, followed by a counciling visit from Mom or Dad, and the child can then choose to stay there if they want continued alone time. Luckily, we haven't had a lot of definance/rebellion against punishments yet. But, I'm a student of Dr. Ray Garendi (sp?) when it comes to these matters.
Good post and a good topic. I've been thinking a lot about it recently myself. I posted on the topic of proactive parenting today in fact, but I think your point is a HUGE issue for parents. How do we break the cycle of punishment when we can see that disaproval is only going to make the root of the problem worse? Especially since we don't want to reward the bad behaviour.We have tried stuff like, "Ok, you are old enough now for us to consider giving you privilage X. But Mom and I need you to show us you are grown up enough to handle such a grown up thing. How do you think you'll go if we work on showing Mom how grown up you are this week?"As I said in my post, however, once you get to punishment it's hard to break the cycle. Better to short circuit it all by identifying a praising good behaviour.
Here are some of my thoughts on how we parent.1. It depends on the age of my kids. A toddler is way different from my 8 year old or 10 year old.2. There needs to be a variety of different options – go to your room, early bed, loss of a treat, extra chores. If it is bad, I ask them to come up with what they think their punishment should be – it is often worse. And for some things, a swat on the butt is the right thing (especially for toddlers doing something dangerous).4. When a child is past the toddler years, it is as important for them to understand why they are getting in trouble. This helps them to see the error of their ways. You have to be careful here, though. Kids are not adults, and there reasoning is not adult reasoning. You must be age appropriate.4. Parenting is about rewarding the right behavior as much as punishing the wrong behavior. It is important to look for those opportunities, especially when the child is trying to overcome a habit or learn a new positive habit.There will always be conflict with your child. That is part of growing up. They will find and test boundaries – that is what they do. AND the battles will happen where you draw the lines. Will they be in close and safe, or out on the dangerous edge.
Sometimes I make a direct appeal to their conscience, since that is what we are wanting to see developed. E.g. I sometimes say things like, "It's a bad thing to disobey your mother."I do also try to make sure I'm not actually being unfair in the particular circumstance and being willing to listen is good too – trying to get to the bottom of the whole thing (if necessary).Sometimes I have successes. Often I don't!
Incidentally, time out has only ever worked with my fourth child. The others treated it as a joke!