Suitable punishments for a 6 year old. Ideas please!! Anything considered!

Hiya

Have skimmed through this thread, and I am in the same boat. DS2 is 7 and he has been very trying in recents days / weeks / months. Whenever he is having a tantrum I think to myself about the saying that goes something on the lines of you form the man in the first 7 years of his life, and it looks like gonna fail and bring up a disaster of a son ????

Anyhow you were asking for an instant shocking thing to make your DD wake up and be nice .... think the only thing that really 'shocks' children is smacking and frankly I think that just confuses children (its okay for me to hit you, but not for you to hit me / brother ) ???

Positive parenting is a new thing for me ... I have to keep working on it, but it is getting better. DH doesn't quite get it, but perhaps with more practice he will in time. I found this, which I have stuck up (hidden from children) to remind us how to praise the children.

Whatever you decide to go with, be consistent. I have to admit that I have tried numerous things in my time (for behavioural as well as other issues) and they all seem to fizzle out and then you are back to square 1. It is hard being a parent, and nobody really teaches you, and no-one tells the children to read the textbook either, so they don't act as predicted.

I quite liked the idea of removing ALL the toys .... :rotfl:

And I think asking the children to help you draw up house rules would be beneficial too. Just remember to turn them into positives (ie NOT no hitting, but treat people with respect and NOT no shouting but talk calmly). It isn't necessary for this to all be done in one day either (cos that might cause a flare up)

Anyhow chin up and just go with whatever works for you.

Hi again bluemonkey.

I hope the support group will be helpful to you. I've been lucky enough to have had access to one since DD was diagnosed, and it is helpful to swop ideas with other parents in the same boat (though as with non ASD children there isn't a one size its all answer). I know that you have said there isn't an Early Bird course accessible to you, but if you ever get a chance, I would recommend this. In fact, in your shoes I would contact my local Childrens Services team and ask them to commission this programme in your area. The course has been developed by NAS but it isn't run by them, it is run by local providers who are usually funded by the local authorty.

To answer your specific question about control issues, my DD is much more autistic than your children sound! She is 7 and almost completely non verbal with a receptive language age of about 2 1/2. So what we do with her would need to be modified to fit the maturity of your children. However, we have done a social story for her setting out what things she is allowed to have control over, and what things she isn't. Obviously what you put in the story depends on what are flashpoints for your family, but ours goes along the lines of: "Some things I get a choice over, and some things are mummy's choice. I can choose what dvd to watch on television. I can choose what toys to play with. I can choose my own sweets in the shop. Some things are not my choice. Mummy chooses what I eat for tea. Mummy chooses when it is bath time" We made the story with pictures of her and me and of the activities which were referred to, and read it to her over and over. Surprisingly it worked quite well. We also have a few specific ones for set situations. eg when she started getting funny about taking a bath, we had one which said she must have a bath when she was dirty, but that she only needed to stay in the bath until the one minute timer went, and that we would tell her when we were going to wash her hair before she went into the bath. Often once she was in she would stay in for longer, but because she had the option of getting out after one minute, she felt more in control.

With not wanting to play nicely, we don't have this with DD as she hasn't got a long enough attention span to play a game, but have had similar issues with DS who will try to cheat when he is losing. What we do is to stop the game immediately if he tries to do this, pack it up and walk away and leave him on his own, explaining as we do so that it is no fun to play with a cheat. He's much better now about playing by the rules. With your DD perhaps you could give her a headstart in games so she isn't so likely to lose against an adult, and lessen the headstart gradually as she gets better at them. Again lots of praise for playing nicely, and also maybe consider stopping the game yourself (but in a nice way) if she is losing but not making a fuss? Again you could start like this but phase it out as she gets better.

With the perfection thing, depending on what it is, I think sometimes you just have to accept that what they have made isn't perfect, and praise up the good bits without even mentioning the defects. Then the next time she wants to do a similar project, before she starts you can demonstrate to her how to do it differently, then leave her to it. If she would rather throw something away than live with it not being perfect, I think it is important that you don't reinforce this habit, as we learn from our mistakes, and there is a risk that she will stop trying completely rather than risk failure. I am sure she recognises for herself when something isn't quite right, so if she is still showing it to you that's quite a big thing, and to have you point out the mistake, even in a really nice way, is probably really hard for her to take. Also, maybe consider rather than working on the same art project together, working side by side with her on different projects, where you can still chat and show each other what you are doing, and admire each others work, while still keeping ownership of your own project. In that way, when you can see she may be going wrong, you could show her how you are doing yours, whilst still leaving it up to her how she does her own? These are just random thoughts as I haven't had this issue yet with either of mine, but I guess its what I would try first.

Hope some of this will help. I can see that you got a bit exasperated earlier in the thread with some posts, which I can well understand, but I don't think anyone was meaning to cause offence. I often feel quite bristly when people tell me how to parent my children (even IRL and more so on the net!) but when I'm able to step back I can (sometimes!) see that what is being offered are only suggestions which I'm free to ignore if I know they won't work, rather than take to heart...

clairehi wrote: »

Re the naughty step idea I would love for Supernanny to have tried the naughty step with my DS.

how do you get a child to sit on a step when they will not do anything else you want them to?

ok, so put them in a room instead, how do you stop them coming out? Lock the door/hold the door shut and listen to a 6 year old trying his best to kick the door in for 5 minutes continually?

needless to say it did not work for us.

Secondly, ignoring - did not work - he would just hit someone to get attention if ignored. then see above re naughty step!

Haha, ditto with DD, she'd make mincemeat of supernanny!

BM, your daughter really sounds like she is on the spectrum. Perfectionism, competitiveness, and over independence are all classic symptoms of high-functioning autism, as I'm sure you are well aware. I don't have experience of this myself but you are very accurately describing the 8 year old daughter of a very good friend, who has recently been diagnosed. She too is highly intelligent and has a reading level way above her year group.

Nicki wrote: »

With the perfection thing, depending on what it is, I think sometimes you just have to accept that what they have made isn't perfect, and praise up the good bits without even mentioning the defects. Then the next time she wants to do a similar project, before she starts you can demonstrate to her how to do it differently, then leave her to it. If she would rather throw something away than live with it not being perfect, I think it is important that you don't reinforce this habit, as we learn from our mistakes, and there is a risk that she will stop trying completely rather than risk failure. I am sure she recognises for herself when something isn't quite right, so if she is still showing it to you that's quite a big thing, and to have you point out the mistake, even in a really nice way, is probably really hard for her to take.

I can fully see the point of that, but it's hard to hang onto something when it's being derided as 'rubbish' at every opportunity, just because it isn't how he 'saw' it in his mind's eye!

Nicki wrote: »

Oh, I think you've misunderstood me! What I meant was that if she does show you something she has made (rather than just throw it away immediately) that maybe you should just overlook any defects and praise it to high heavens, because the slightest hint of criticism will mean it hits the bin, and there will be other opportunities to put right any bits which have gone wrong on the project, without ever pointing them out in relation to that piece of work.

If the child has decided to bin it, I personally wouldn't fish it out and have it on display, as the child would probably just see it as a constant reminder of his failure rather than being in any way flattered by the attention!

He would show me things, but never believed me when I said how lovely it was / how good it was etc. Actually this is something all of them were a bit prone to do! But DS1 was always the worst. It spilled over into all his school work: we would come back from parents evenings and say "Mrs X is really pleased with your maths, and Mrs Y thinks your English is so good" - but they were apparently lying! It was NOT true! They were making it up, or we were making it up! :rotfl:

The BEST day was when we got a letter from the school doctor with his tentative diagnosis. I said "Oh look, there's a letter from the doctor we saw the other day, shall I read it?" He said yes, so ...

"DS1 is an able child" DS1 interrupts to say "No I'm not!" but I carried on smoothly "who sometimes has difficulty accepting this." DS1 starts to say "No I ..." but then realises there is NOTHING he can say in response to this! :rotfl:

I think he does finally recognise that there are some things he is quite good at. Either that, or he is able to feel superior because he is better at some things than I am! I called him last night to look at something I needed to order for DS2 and said "I don't understand all this computer stuff" and he said "You should be used to that by now." :rotfl: