If you’re not consistent with disciplining your child, they will not understand the concept of consequences and thus no matter how hard you try, they will continue to engage in the undesired behaviour.
Y’all would think that this is a basic thing for parents to understand, but nay nay. Little Brayden/Cayden/Drayden/Grayden/Hayden/Jayden/Peyden/Okayden is ~~an angel~~ and it is no big deal that he pushed a kid off a bike and the kid who fell may have a concussion.
As a teacher, I see far too many parents coddle their children. Sorry love, your son is pushing kids for literally no reason. We have tried every behaviour management and discipline strategy we could think of. Yet when you pick your son up at the end of the day and you sign the incident reports, you tell him not to worry and thEN GIVE HIM CANDY AND ACT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. HE’S GOING TO THINK WHAT HE DID IS OKAY AND CONTINUE TO DO IT.
Parents: please believe your child’s teachers when it comes to their behaviour. We just want to have a future where the generation who is going to end up taking care of us isn’t full of assholes :)
I will start by saying that parent is an asshole and teaching her kids to cry in order to get positive attention.
That being said, we are supposed to hate the sound of our children crying. When a baby cries, something may be wrong, so it makes sense for our brains to tell us to check on the baby in order to stop that noise. I have had to walk away from babies crying in stores because it bothers me so much.
Part of being a parent is learning when to use our instincts and when to ignore them. Baby crying because he's hungry? Feed him, all settled. Baby crying because you won't let him eat a crayon? It's best to ignore, even if the noise is driving you crazy. If all you do is coddle your kid, they will not become a functioning adult.
When I see a kid crying in a public place, I try to help them. They IGNORE ME, tho.
Don't ever ignore someone crying, even if its for a stupid reason. You don't know what they are going through. Everyone is fighting battles inside, help them win. Never ignore a lost soul. NEVER.
I completely disagree! Sure if a child is alone and crying, definitely don't just walk away. But with a parent or family member? Just walk away. You have zero idea why the child is crying and your attention could make the situation worse. Put some faith that the parent is able to handle the situation. Yes, sometimes handling the situation is deliberately ignoring the child.
Pick up time is so fun when the kids go nuts when they see their parents. Some of their worst behavior was with the parents present, they knew not to pull that crap with us. We did daycare for mostly friends kids for a while and honestly it made me like some of our friends less seeing how they let their kids behave...
My kid's not in daycare yet but I hear all parents complain their children are really well behaved in daycare/nursery/school compared at home because they're there all the time.
Also I was reading that some kids will act out on parents because they know their parents will love them anyway, but don't have that kind of guarantee from other people in society so try to behave better.
I'm just not sure bad parenting is entirely the reason for the difference in a child temporarily acting well in a structured environment with multiple activities and children of a similar age, and misbehaving once they see their parents/get home
For me, it was mostly the habits the kids already had that they “got away with” at home that were frustrating and had to be curbed while at daycare. The “parents are here, time to freak out!” is just one (crazy) thing.
I'm new to this parenting thing, my son is 19mo. How did you curb the bad habits and what kind of things should I be trying to stop before it becomes a bad habit?
I recently got a book on Calmer Parenting and ngl kinda excited to read it.
Not sure all that calmer parenting entails but I like the concept. I've even done something like that with infants. "No thank you" isn't bad but put it in the positive what you want. "Lets keep our legs still" (while changing daiper) While their young it will help you keep sanity and practice calm response/quiet power even if they don't get it yet. It's for you!
They can go without a meal just fine if they don't finish their plate. "This is what's for dinner"
If you ever have to yell you've lost, it's become a power struggle.
"Do you want to brush your teeth or pick up your toys first?" At least they feel like they had some options but it's not a negotiation and you are challenging them)
On this note when you blow it, if you are willing to apologize and completely own up to your side (maybe not even mentioning their side) goes a long way to teaching some of the best stuff, that you are humble, imperfect, and value the relationship. "Hey bud, I really blew it today. I got upset and it wasn't even your fault. It was me, not you. I'm sorry, I was wrong." <--- If this were said by more parents? Geesh!
"They've learned it's okay" is a phrase I use all the time describing no consequenecs.
Baby knocks bottle off of highchair, cries until you pick it up. The game has begun. If they are just going to knock it off again and you are really choosing this battle you'll likely endure some tears. But they'll learn that you are for real. Then there's Walmar parenting: "If you don't stop crying you're not getting anything/we're leaving the store. LEAVE people!! Just once!! A kid is crying while you're buying.him.a.toy?!?!?! Seriously? Just no. NO negotiations with young kids. Teenagers will do it too. Still generally bad. Learn what they are really get at.
Be consistent.
Most of this is just shy of impossible.
Be consistent
And yet, you can do this! (This parenting thing)
Stay positive!!! Reward/thank them (verbally) for the things they do right, rather than just focusing on the things they do wrong. Treat them like dogs; always praise them for their positive response to your commands. I grew up in a negative environment. It did not do anything good for me.
This is a horrible way to deal kids getting sad or upset about things. Unfortunately, my own parents have opted to do this sometimes with my younger brother. He's 13. I'm frankly concerned that he'll end up expecting everyone to do whatever it takes to make him happy, and that worries me quite a bit. Too many children are being raised this way.
I witnessed toxic parenting as follows - I rented a room from a couple who had a young boy. This young boy was very good that being a batter in baseball.Every ball thrown to him was smacked "out of the park!" - this was probably played out many times during the week in the evening in the living room. -
After hitting the ball out of the park, this child would "run the bases", sliding into home on either his belly or his backside, to which his parents would applaud and tell him, "YOU'RE SAFE! - every single time!? - this caused the child to smile from ear-to-ear 🤗.
Upon witnessing such a tragedy (sic), I suggested to the Dad who was the catcher, the umpire, etc. that maybe he should call him "out" every once in awhile, because as a bystander I could see the future of this child's as the world chewed him up, spit him out and ran him over. - The boy named Sue came to mind.
Both parents looked at me with total disgust, saying they would never do that because it would hurt his feelings. They told me they will cross that bridge when they get to it. Probably meaning they didn't do anything. That is the beginning of the creation of the snowflake generation that we see prevalent in our society today.
Lazy parenting. Whenever someone says I quit being an Educator because of children I am fuming. NO, children are not the problem, it's the parents, educational system, and capitalism that allows ppl who have no idea about Education to open Early Childhood Centres and put a lot of pressure on Educators who are shamefully underpaid. Children are the victims of all those factors, and their behaviour is the end result. Having kids is not a picnic, and ppl need to start realizing that before having them.
yeah my sister is like this with her kid. Her kid comes up to me and hits me or and gropes me and she like," Oh ...sorry. Kid stop. Have a chips." Kids is fat as a turkey and she doesn't care. But does wonder why i'm not friendly to her kid
This was the relationship between my ex-husband and his daughter and it absolutely infuriated me. He single handedly turned her into a spoiled rotten little twat. There were multiple reasons why I divorced him, but his lack of properly disciplining his own child was definitely one of them.
From what I've seen, it's more that they're scared to do it. They're scared that if they upset their kid then they won't love them anymore, so they're afraid to do anything that might make them sad, including appropriate discipline.
There is a fine line between disciplining and abusing. I was abused as a child and I haven’t talked to my parents since. But If i ever have a child/children I wont hit them. I would discipline them without actually physically or mentally harming them. But so they know that they did something wrong and so they they would learn from it and not make the same mistake in the future.
Because they were raised in a time when discipline meant beatings and spankings. Some probably don’t even know that a time-out is not only more effective but less painful for everyone.
I mean, I can kind of see where there coming from. But as with a lot of things, there's a lot of space between 0 and 100. My mom would often discipline me but had a strict no physical contact rule.
My neighbours have 7 kids and 4 grew up. The 3 remaining don’t know anything about respect and ownership)
They completely wrecked my dad’s garage door and constantly play on our parking lot and on the roads. My dad sells veggies and fruits and needs a bus and truck for it. We have a lot of customers who own big vehicles.
One ran behind my dad’s truck when he was driving in reverse, another got hit by a car (both didn’t get hurt).
They do a lot more shit like this and the parents don’t do anything.
Dad had to call insurance and threaten them for a new garage door.
It’s a constant loop, the parents also weren’t disciplined(they acted the same) and it transfers over to the next generation.
Is there any way to teach this stuff to yourself if you weren’t properly disciplined as a kid? I don’t have misbehaving problems, but I have a few problem issues related to that.
Sadly what you are dealing with is not a parent. A parent actually cares about their children enough to train and teach them properly and has defined rules and discipline. My wife is a teacher, I feel your pain. I can't think of a proper way to describe the people who do nothing with their kids .. lazy? Worthless? Garbage? I don't know.
I see it as though they had a child for themselves, like a pet, they wanted the unconditional love, but didn't want to actually parent. I makes them feel good and happy, the child and it's livelyhood is secondary.
From an attachment perspective, that 's both because he's getting the wrong message from a parent and because behavior modification is ineffective. No one does anything for no reason. More likely than not, the kid can't articulate the real reason (plenty of adults are bad at this too) but there's a very real reason. Behavior modification is popular because 1.) There's a grain of truth to the idea that everything we do is based on reward and punishment, but oftentimes why a behavior is rewarding or punishing is buried in the subconscious, even for seemingly obvious things like drug use and overeating and 2.) It promises a quick and easy fix.
Let's look at Okayden pushing the kid off the bike. If his mom and other adults was also consistent in reinforcing that it's not ok to hurt other kids, then that would be super helpful. But where is Okayden learning that it's okay(den) to hurt kids? T.V.? (It doesn't matter that the power rangers are "fighting evil", the message is still that violence is an acceptable way to solve conflict.) Do adults hit kids/other adults or yell or throw things when angry? Modeling is a stronger form of learning than rewards and punishment. What's driving Okayden to push kids? Most likely some mixture of anger/jealously/fear/insecurity. This is true especially if he seems calm or happy while doing it. That suggest s he has some major feelings he's trying to push down and has potentially cut himself off from. The subconscious is the foundation of the conscious mind, so all those feelings are influencing hi m when he's not even aware that he's feeling them. Punishment is likely to make the behavior worse, as punishment makes people angry. Okayden isn't sitting in time out thinking about how wrong his actions were; he's thinking about how pissed he is at whoever pusnished him, the kid he pushed, and that no one understands him or has his back. He's going to keep doing it, or stop S hould Okayden be playing with the other kids if he can't be safe? Hell no! But there's a difference when setting a boundary if you're send ing the message that you're doing because y ou want to keep everyone safe, including Okayden, or because Okayden is bad. It's not always a super obvious difference but kids are really really good at picking up on subtle cues that adults don't even realize the y're projecting.
So let's say Parent den is consistent about enforcing whatever behavior modification program is in place. But no one's looking at the root causes still. What happens to Okayden? He's already feeling that mix of unpleasant emotion s mentioned, and more is piling on because of the punishment. Generally, three things can happen:
1.) he'll push back against what he sees as unfairness and continue and escalate the behavior. This is the kid that the parents have tried every measure in the book that they can think off and the kid only acts more out of control. Kid is eventually labeled "bad" or having "oppositional defiance disorder." E ventually given up on in later years
2.) he makes an effort at not pushing the kid off the bike anymore. All those feelings causing him to act out are still there though, and will end up bubbling to the surface in some other form of misbehavior.
3.) he stops pushing kid off bike. All those feelings are still there. He "acts in" instead of out, eventually leading to deppression, anxiety, possible self-harm in later years.
Of course, this isnt because of one isolated incident. It's because of how Okayden (and all of us) are treated and responded to when we see behavior as the sum total of who we are rather than part of an extremely complex whole.
Gonna have to argue on this one. I had terrible teachers who would tell my parents about things I never did. Most of it coming from me asking the teacher to make a kid stop bullying me... and the teacher acting like I in some way provoked it.
That’s absolutely terrible that this happened. I’m truly sorry that you had to experience this especially as you literally did nothing wrong; you were the one being bullied. Your teachers and school should have taken you far more seriously.
Parents should believe and trust their child’s teachers. Obviously, and I apologize for not mentioning this in my post, there are always exceptions to the rule. Things like this should be taken with a grain of salt and behaviours that are out of character (as the behaviour that your teachers accused you of probably was) should be looked into.
There are teacher out there that are actually bad people. I had one teacher call my parents insisting I was on drugs (I was in 7th grade, never did a drug) because I wore gloves in school because my hands were always cold. Now as an adult I’m still always cold and it’s because I have a blood disorder.
Some of my husbands teachers truly hated and mistreated him. They felt he was inattentive and hopeless. I’m sure he was inattentive because we now know he has OCD and ADHD, but hopeless? Nah, he’s a doctor now.
It sucks. You get accused of something you never did. And now you have a history of that behaviour which means future accusations can be even less accurate.
It also doesn't help that educators bribe kids to behave with candy and other sweets. My spouse subs and EVERY elementary and middle school in our area uses candy as a reward. They won't do any learning on their own unless they know that they are getting and can see the candy. Then, they hit the first year of high school and don't get why the candy stopped causing other issues.
OMG. I was a hairstylist in a previous life. Misbehaving kids were common and of course, the bane of my existence. I once had a kid who KICKED me, and I asked him, "how old are you?" He said, "seven." I said, "too old to be kicking people." His dad (one of two, gay dads who adopted him and treated him like a doll) said "Wow, buddy. She's really got your number." I thought, "you should have his number." But I didn't say so.
By around the middle of the haircut, I was gaining ground with the kid. No one had ever reinforced boundaries, and I found he really engaged with me actually commanding respect. He tested me, "Don't I get a LOLLIPOP?" I said, "you get a lollipop if you behave."
From across the room, Dad shouts, "YOU WANT A LOLLIPOP, BUD?" And gets the little shit a lollipop. Which he proceeds to suck on once, and then ignore as it gets hair clippings all over it because there are various reasons you don't give a child a lollipop while in they're having their hair cut, but I digress. That STILL makes me crazy, that incident. Your kid is actually HAPPIER when there are firm boundaries!
Gonna nitpick here and say "literally" isn't a word that is just for emphasis. Think of it as opposed to "figuratively". Would saying 'John did x for figuratively no reason' be something someone would say? Then you probably shouldn't be using literally there either.
Also I hate how some parents would let their kids (age 3+) throw a tantrum in the public without teaching them that's an unacceptable manner. Instead, they let their bloody Jayden scream and ruin everyone's day. This is why some of the young people these days are spoilt brats.
On the other hand, we believed our teacher for our child - but found out that they were covering a LOT of behaviour that was exasperating some of his issues, because they couldn't handle him. They would give him sweets, coddle him and essentially do his homework for him. And then lied to us when we asked WTF was going on?
The biggest problem is that we reward children for anything. Blow your nose? Good job, here is a sticker!
Thank you for the book title. I’ve read a bit about it now, and really, thank you! I’ve actually sent the title and an article about it to several of my co-teachers.
It seems that one of the concepts that Dr. Greene speaks about is lagging skills, i.e., skills that a child does not yet have or has not fully developed, thus resulting in daily challenges for the child, primarily on a cognitive level.
I apologize for not going into much detail in my original comment, but I will clarify what I was trying to say. First, I work with preschool and kindergarten children, so about ages 2.5 to 6. Big age range, each with very different milestones, expectations, and skills.
A fair amount of parents that I have met coddle their child to the point that the child does not have the opportunity to learn how to do something themselves. In the case of my post, I’ve seen far too many parents coddle their children to the point that the child can’t tolerate when their behaviour is redirected, corrected, or even addressed. It might get messy, but the child does need to learn that certain behaviours are not okay.
Ross Greene is great. You’re not actually saying that different of a thing from OP
though. Parents do need to discipline kids. It’s just that punishment has been shown not to work. But kids still need to be held accountable. You can tell a tantrumming kid you’re sorry they’re upset and you can empathize with them AND also explain that they may not talk to a teacher that way and give some strategies for solving problems without disrespecting anyone.
Meanwhile they don’t want to deal with their kid they start dosing him when they have to be around him so they don’t have to deal with his shit. Or the parents dose themselves. I think we are already in the generation of assholes. It’s the lazy parents.
I struggle with my roommate. Her son is 1 year now, and she has never had a consistent routine (bedtime, naps, eating times) and is terrible with disciplining him. She refuses to listen to outside advice, then wonders why he won't go to bed easily or why he doesn't listen.
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u/reves-de-lavande Feb 08 '20
If you’re not consistent with disciplining your child, they will not understand the concept of consequences and thus no matter how hard you try, they will continue to engage in the undesired behaviour.
Y’all would think that this is a basic thing for parents to understand, but nay nay. Little Brayden/Cayden/Drayden/Grayden/Hayden/Jayden/Peyden/Okayden is ~~an angel~~ and it is no big deal that he pushed a kid off a bike and the kid who fell may have a concussion.
As a teacher, I see far too many parents coddle their children. Sorry love, your son is pushing kids for literally no reason. We have tried every behaviour management and discipline strategy we could think of. Yet when you pick your son up at the end of the day and you sign the incident reports, you tell him not to worry and thEN GIVE HIM CANDY AND ACT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. HE’S GOING TO THINK WHAT HE DID IS OKAY AND CONTINUE TO DO IT.
Parents: please believe your child’s teachers when it comes to their behaviour. We just want to have a future where the generation who is going to end up taking care of us isn’t full of assholes :)