Public tantrums are challenging. I refuse to hit my kids because I’m afraid I might lose my cool one day. It takes a lot of creativity and patience, but I think it’s worth it. My dad hit us, but it did little good: growing up, I was a total jerk.
I have an older son who grew up with his mother and is now living near by. His mother and step father hit him to discipline him. I have two kids who are eight. My oldest boy remarked how “different” it was at my house. I was feeling all high and mighty about not hitting the kids until I took them all out to eat one day. The little ones were hungry and acting like pills. My oldest boy shakes his head in disgust. He asks, “When you gonna start hitting these kids?” Hearing that knocked me down a peg or two.
I liked what someone said earlier about each kid being different. And I think hitting your kid when you’re angry should be avoided at all costs.
For public tantrums, I’m with Matt–mess around when we’re eating out, and you’re in the car heading home.
I’ve only ever had to do it once.
I’d imagine that the hard thing would be if you’re out somewhere that the kid doesn’t actually want to be–then, acting up might become a way of getting what they want. But I’ve never had that problem.
Which is the way my folks would have handled it,however, I would have gotten my butt kicked in the car also, but I’m amazed at the vast number of parents who just let them scream without regard to others…
Yep, it’s one of the things my Dad did I agree with and so I use it. I’ve only had to do it a couple of times overall three of them, but it leaves an impression.
There are some… uh… hair-raising stories in this topic. 😲 If you posted in it earlier, may want to scroll up. You can tap on your avatar in the “table of contents” (or anywhere an avatar appears in the topic, really) to filter this topic to any particular user’s posts, like so:
You can fast forward reading at about posts 50 - 90 when it degenerates into “my culture’s protections for children can beat up your culture’s protections for children”, but I really enjoyed the sharing of actual experiences in this topic, the political theorizing and arguments… not so much. Death to politics and religion! Shut the hell up with talking points and tell me what happened to you, personally! I want your personal story, that only you can tell!
Also DUBYA TEE EFF Tim
Holy Jesus?
To defend @rimbo here, I think if anything he’s understating it. And age two (based on the date of his original posts) is barely the beginning of those changes! Having kids is, without a doubt, the hardest job I’ve ever had. There is no question that it changes you, the same way a rock changes when it is immersed in a raging river. I had a friend once describe it as “people without kids have no idea what kind of vacation they are on” and it’s so damn true.
Yeah, I’ve never considered physical punishment with my kids for this reason. Kids echo back exactly what you show them (and the tricky part is they see things you may be doing that you, yourself, can no longer see from inside). If you show them hitting people as a way to resolve a problem… guess what they will start doing? They do what you do. Cue anti-drug PSA punchline, I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD!
↑ ↑ what he said. Do note the use of the word prime, however.
Now I’ll provide a counter example. One night I was driving to taco bell (don’t judge me, man) and as I was driving by the BART station at around 25mph, a little kid pretty much darted directly into the road, close enough that I had a bit of a panic / adrenaline reaction and hit the brakes hard.
His mom was there to grab him, and I could see she was PISSED. I think some very light physical intervention there might be warranted just because that kid could have literally been killed. And JFC if I ever killed a kid, I don’t think I would mentally recover as a person, ever. Anyway my point is, sometimes there are truly bad life-ending things that may requre direct physical intervention of some kind.
We generally use guilt, lectures, timeouts. If it gets worse, we revoke privileges, though I sometimes strain to see the difference between a punishment and removal of privileges? I know punishments don’t work, whereas withdrawal of privileges does… but where is the line between the two?
I definitely agree that whatever consequences you dole out, they have to happen very rapidly after the incident, otherwise the kid (young kids, anyway) can’t associate the consequences with what they did to cause the problem.
The redirect part is significant here. Give them something else to focus on. Which is difficult, it’s like goddamn comedy improv, which is hard! Come up with an idea right now on the spot, in front of this live expectant audience — and it better be funny!
It’s honestly embarrassing to read my thoughts from so long ago, because – as wumpus describes – I have learned and changed so much in the intervening 11 years, and continue to do so. In fact, I’ve changed my mind on this particular topic at a few times in that time, including just within the past few weeks.
When a kid is going crazy in a restaurant, I ask the waiter to get the manager to handle the problem. This works 100% of the time-- the situation is resolved 5 minutes later.
I only once spanked my son. He was very young and kept trying to pull plugs out sockets and this was potentially dangerous. He didn’t talk, yet, but I kept shouting “No!” every time with a stern look. He giggled. He didn’t understand anger, either. He did it again, I realized to evoke the same “funny” response. I shouted “No!” once again, and he giggled. I took him away from there, figuring I needed to think of a new approach. However, he went toward another plug in the room, looking back at me with hopes for a repeat performance. I realized that I needed to scare him, so I gave him a fairly light swat to the backside. The look of betrayal-turned-to-tears has stuck with me to this day, but he’s since all grown up and never electrocuted himself so I’ll take the trade-off.
I never applied physical force of any variety before or since. He never caused a scene at a restaurant. He never had to be dragged through the aisles of a store or left to scream his head off. He never caused issues on flights. Mind, he wasn’t an angel as nobody is, but he was pretty well behaved growing up. I can’t say this was because I never used corporal punishment aside from that one moment. That said, there’s a part of me which strongly suspects I would’ve had more issues if I did use it.
However, efficacy in discipline is secondary to me. I just didn’t feel morally right in either threatening or causing harm as a corrective measure. Once he had a grasp of language, if I couldn’t explain why something was wrong then I couldn’t rationally expect a kid to understand it. That’s not to say I was a genius parent, but we’d talk things through long enough to eventually find a way for it to click.
Of course, kids are kids; heaven knows I kept things from my parents. So there’s a little part of me still waiting for him to cause an international crisis overseas or for multiple kids to come knocking on the door looking for their father, but thankfully that hasn’t happened yet.
In Norway hitting your kids is illegal, har plenty of immigrant parents who found out that the hard way. Personally I don’t think hitting solves anything, I rarely have trouble with mine in public, I find that overly strict parents have to use much harder methods to get trough, I don’t, I just sit down and have a short talk.
Short version, hit kids in public here and you will be talking to the childcare agency next
It is not a well-written book; it would benefit from the way that Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people is written, where the practical advice is given chapter-by-chapter, adding up to a sound whole when you get to the end, instead spooning out the psychological theory first and giving you practical applications later. That said, I wish I’d read it (and believed it) before my first child was born.
Understanding that a time-out is not meant to be a punishment or replacement for punishment is huge.
As is the clear evidence from the book AND our parenting experience that corporal punishment is not worth it. Spanking is effective… in the short term. Standard “I was spanked as a child and came out just fine” disclaimer aside, I wish I’d never done it, and plan not to ever do it again. In the long term, it makes problems worse.
It’s worth adding: It may very well be that if you ask this question of me five years (or even five months) from now, you may get an entirely different response. It’s certainly a different one than I would have given you just over a month ago. I am still learning this gig, and hope to continue to learn to try to get better at it. Even if I were the Best Parent Ever, there’d still be ways I could get better at it.
I’ve scanned the summary of that book and I’m not super impressed. On the other hand, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk changed my life – not just in how I interact with kids, but also in how I interact with adults.
Can’t recommend it enough. If you have kids this is, in my opinion, the only book you absolutely must read.
Also @stusser most kids are much easier to like then adults. They bring way less shit and preconceptions and opinions to the table.
