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by koliber
2780 days ago
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One thing that spanking does not require while the types of consequences you talk about do is parents' time and engagement. Proper discipline takes time! I did not realize how much of my time and effort it will take to put in place proper punishments. It's easy to yell at or hit a kid. It takes no time at all. I don't know how effective it is. I want my kids to understand why they are getting a punishment, and have the punishment be constructive in some way, even if it is standing in a corner and thinking about what you did, or sitting in the "time out" chair and letting their emotions cool down a bit. Afterwards, we always talk about why they got punished, what they did wrong, and how they can avoid it in the future. Yelling is interesting. I find that emotional reactive yelling is not good. Tempered and controlled yelling like the parent poster describes is much better. Getting the tone right to the situation takes practice. |
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I've come up with a few catch phrases that have served me well. I'm personally somewhat noise sensitive and honestly don't like the cacophony that comes with children much. But the reality is that there's nothing wrong with kids making noise: they're just being kids. My dad's catch phrase was "children are to be seen and not heard" but I don't think that's really ideal for teaching kids to be reasonably expressive, so I've leaned on "That's enough." There's no moral judgment implied, but I've reached the end of my tolerance for that particular noise, and the kid(s) needs to stop doing it.
Kids are really quite dumb. They just don't know much about the world. They don't intuitively understand why certain rules exist, and that's ok, because they're young and don't have decades of life experience to lean on. When I ask them to do something, or ask them to stop doing something, their first response is frequently "Why?" I've been there too, kid. My parents would respond "Because I said so!" which I never really understood as a kid. As an adult I realize it's because they were trying to teach me a measure of respect for and obedience to authority, and I as an adult I also realize how important it is for kids to understand that, but I think we can do better. So my response is "Does it matter?" "Clean your room." "Why?" "Does it matter?" The kid is forced to admit that "why" doesn't really matter: they've been told to do something and they must do it. Once they admit that, I happily explain to them the reasoning behind the request. I'm simultaneously teaching them intuition about the rule and that authority matters. Best of both worlds.
I had to have a recent conversation with my 9yo boy about his response to me yelling. He gets really frazzled and basically crumbles if I yell too much or too loudly or too pointedly about something. Obviously as a parent I don't like this, in much the same way that my parents would say "This hurts me more than it hurts you" when they'd spank me. (I still don't believe them, btw, but I understand where they were coming from.) So I had to explain to him that there exist people in this world who will try to use their emotions to control him. They'll use their anger to make him do things he doesn't want to do, or make him stop doing things he ought to do. He needs to be able to respond appropriately and rationally in those situations. He needs to recognize their emotions for what they are, understand the underlying reasons for those emotions, and decide what to do in response. He needs to grow into a person who doesn't let other people's emotions decide his behavior. Yelling can signal disatisfaction, but it can also provide an opportunity for kids to learn how to deal with others' emotions effectively.