Is the naughty step enough? What did your parents do?

Wickedkitten

Seems like more that a couple of us have sociopaths for mums

Corelli

Thanks for this thread. The post about Alfie Kohn's work reminded me of how our family used to work and how far we have strayed from that path. I am trying to find me a copy to read and take to our next meeting with vrious professionals from CAMHS. It is out of print so I am having to go online.

My son now has a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome ... plus other undiagnosed difficulties. When young he used to get wild rages and somthing we used with him could have looked a bit like a 'naughty step' from putside but it worked very differently.

I got this idea from the positive discipline people. When he was raging I would suggest he went somewhere to calm down. I would take him away from the other children and give him a book or drawing stuff so he could get over the rage. In retrospect that was just what a younsgster with that condition needed and it certainly helped him. I did something similar with his older sister but what really worked for her when she was in a rage was to ket her draw in her 'angry book' She would scribble so hard in it she would go through the page sometimes and that helped her calm down again.

shellsuit

My youngest is 3 and if he is playing up, I say "Come on then, let's go and I'll cut your toenails" ~ which stops him in his tracks. He hates having his toenails cut so I do them when he's asleep. It might be mean, but it works for now. Much better than having him screaming and kicking off, while I'm wearing myself out putting him on and off something (step/corner/chair etc) he just doesn't want to be on. Both of us being stressed is not good at all.

With the older 2, they would drive me mad when they both kicked off together, so I'd tell them that they would go to Penant House if they didn't behave. Penant House was a big building (real building by the way!) where naughty kids lived and they weren't allowed to play with toys. We'd pass it when they were younger and they'd say "Is that where the naughty kids go Mummy?"

It worked for a few years and I'd forgotten all about it till we walked past Penant House one day and my son said "Mummmmmm, it's not where kids go, it's the housing offices!"

Yep, it was.




I like that idea Skinty, I shall have to try that because I don't think the toenails thing will work forever




ETA, I was a very well behaved child until hormones got the better of me! Seriously, I don't remember getting smacked as a young child at all, and everyone who knew me when I was little (old friends of family and family etc) said I was alays good as gold. I was an only child though, I don't know if that makes a difference?

funnythings

Smacking a child is totally unacceptable.

How would any adult like it if they did something wrong and they got a smack for it. it's the same for a child, adults who smacks there children in my opinion are abusing them.

Any adult that got smacked as a child who says it done me no harm but really it has, you may have forgotten the pain it caused you and accepted that is how it was for you as a child but you still have those negative memories with you for life.

sorry i have very strong views on smacking

JC9297

skintchick wrote: »

I don't use the naughty step or reward charts. I don't like them.

I read some research recently that said children do not think about what they have done wrong when they are on a naughty step or similar, they just think about how unfair their parent is being and seethe quietly! That really resonated with me.

I use a technique I call the no-choice choice. Basically I follow a script that goes:

(child's name), you need to do/stop doing X now.

wait for response, if (when) it is no say:

I can see you're having trouble doing/stopping X right now. I am going to count down from 5, and if you are still having trouble then I will help you to do/stop doing X.

Nine times out of ten DD will do what I have asked by the time I get to '1'. The other times, I simply then help her do or stop doing whatever it is, so put her shoes on her, or take her hand and move her away from something, or whatever.

When I first heard about it I thought it was ridiculously wishy wahsy and wouldn't work. But it really does.

And the best thing about it is that it doesn't pitch you and your child against each other. You acknowledge they are having a hard time doing what you've requested, so you acknowledge their feelings, you give them a chance to do it themselves in the knowledge that if they don't then you will help them do it, and then if they don't do it themselves, you work with them to achieve it.

As long as you don't lose your temper then this works really well, and the person I learned it off has older children than me and uses it with all of them.

I find I lose my temper much less using this method because there is no opportunity for repeated refusals - they get one chance and then you do it together.

If my DD does it herself then I thank her for doing what I asked her to, so her behaviour is rewarded.

I much prefer this to the methods the Op has mentioned because I don't want an adversarial relationship with my child, which those techniques create. They might work, but they work because of the adult having more power than the child, and I would rather my child did not feel powerless, but felt empowered and helped by me to do things.

And I will just add, I know I only have one child but I know people who use this with more than one, and I would LOVE to have more than one child but it's just not happening right now, so if people could refrain from making comments along those lines I'd be grateful, because I'm rather raw after my fifth miscarriage just this week.

This conversation might have worked with my son when younger as he has never been 'naughty', but getting a 15 year old off a laptop/playstation is a different ball game.

thatgirlsam

My 12 year old was being obtuse this morning. I told her to go and do what she was supposed to do before I popped a cap in her a$$, said in an American accent. It worked! But she also called me a dork. (whilst laughing)

DVardysShadow

JC9297 wrote: »

This conversation might have worked with my son when younger as he has never been 'naughty', but getting a 15 year old off a laptop/playstation is a different ball game.

Used from an early age I can see a more grown up version working. But if you try it on a 15 year old who has been brought up on punishment/reward and compliance, it will probably take more than a few goes to get right

seven-day-weekend

The naughty step never worked with my son. He quite liked sitting quietly on his own. When he was little, tbh it was difficult to find a suitable form of discipline. Taking his lego away was probably the best thing. Sometimes just sending him to his room until he'd calmed down helped. He liked being in his room and therefore calmed down more quickly. Then we could get on with what we had been doing.

When he was older (in his teens) we grounded him once . He just said 'that's OK, I never go out anyway'. A good punishment for him when he was older would have been to give him £50, send him to a nightclub and tell him not to come back until he'd spent the fifty quid on beer and cigarettes and drunk/smoked them all

We found out later that he had Aspergers Syndrome, but only knew this once he'd grown up (not recognised as a condition when he was younger). He is a very logical person who sees the pros and cons of arguments, and did when he was little; a reasoned discussion would probably have been the best form of discipline for him, even at a young age, but we didn't realise this until he had grown up. Luckily he was not a particularly naughty child!

seven-day-weekend

I have read of someone, a mother of six, who, when asked by a young parent with one toddler what to do when her child had a tantrum that took the form of holding his breath until he fainted, said' Just take the opportunity while he's unconscious to do whatever it was that upset him so much in the first place.'

May work for some !

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

JC9297

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Used from an early age I can see a more grown up version working. But if you try it on a 15 year old who has been brought up on punishment/reward and compliance, it will probably take more than a few goes to get right

I probably should have used an emoticon, my reply was slightly tongue in cheek.


I was imagining the scene of a parent going to the teenagers room, asking them to turn it off, counting down to 5 and then 'helping' them because they are having trouble doing it.


Obviously any reasonable parent would give advance warning that they needed to save/turn it off at the end of that game/be off by a certain time.