Child Discipline

When dealing with misbehaving children look at these suggestions:
The Child Must Know Who Is Boss:
Be Honest With Your Children
A Parent Must Be Willing To Punish A Child For Doing Something Wrong:
Keep the punishments constant
Don’t complain often.
Treat your children with love and respect.
No Abuse is necessary.
Try to warn a child once, or twice…
Talk to the child.
Your attitude is very important.
The Punishment Seat:
An Alternative Punishment or shall we call it Education:
Your Can Change Your Promises If…:
Destroying Another Persons Things:
Common Sense:
Dealing With Away From Home Problems After The Family Gets Back Home:

Something a parent must always remember is that a child will not starve or die if he or she has to wait until all the chores are done before he or she gets his or her breakfast, lunch or dinner (as long as the child gets regular meals 95% of the time). The child must wait with all the rest of the children of the house. This of course does not include small children, the children that I am speaking of here are children who are old enough to do chores around the home.

A child is not a fool and all children can understand unfairness. If your child misbehaves, is badly dressed, seems dull, mostly acts sleepy he or she is not a fool and will know if he or she is being treated in a manner that puts him or her down.

If you try to discipline the child in a manner that is not fair that child “will” react somehow to this treatment. A child will be willing to accept the odd occasion when the parent makes the odd mistake.

When dealing with misbehaving children look at these suggestions:

Look back in very recent times in the child’s life to see if some recent history is affecting the child negatively in some way.
Look for reasons of stress int he child’s life. Such as late nights on games or watching television.
Look for a human negative influence.
Look carefully at yourself to see if you may be tired or overreacting to the situation.

The Child Must Know Who Is Boss:
You child must know that you are the boss. If the child does not know this then you will have a very hard time convincing that child to do as he or she is told. If you have doubts about whether your child knows who is boss then you must do something to let the child know. This must be done carefully and with patience.

When you are dealing with a child or even an adult, the situation can get very confusing or had to understand because of many different “values” changing as the conversation continues.

Sometimes when an adult (or even an older child) tries to talk to a child about what he or she has done wrong the situation can get confusing. An example is that an adult can be “right” about an issue. She has caught her daughter doing something wrong and now she intends on letting that child know that she has stepped out of the acceptable boundaries of the family. This child must know what she has done wrong, and why what she has done wrong is not acceptable.

This woman “knows” that she is right. The child will know that she is wrong (either immediately or after she has been informed of her mistake of bad choice). And yet the mother feels that the situation is not becoming what it should. She is neither getting “through” to the child or feeling that she is going in the right direction.

What is wrong in this situation is that the mother is failing to get through for two reasons. One is that she is not presenting her case as she should and two she is probably using the wrong body language. You see, sometimes even if you are right in a discussion you can still appear wrong if you don’t pre4sent your thoughts as they should be presented.

A person may feel like a failure as a parent due to that persons past teachings. A person (We will call him Bill) is the collection of his teachings, whether those teachings be right or wrong. Some teachings will be discarded for reasons chosen by Bill. If Bill as a child, was never told how to get his feelings out, then he will have problems dealing with people as an adult. And he will have trouble dealing with his children, especially when they are being talked to for doing something wrong.

So if you are an adult who is wondering why your children are not learning or listening to you when they are being disciplined it may be because you have a personal problem with getting your opinions and views across to other people. Try to think back carefully through your life and see if you remember people commenting on this in any way. Please don’t let these thoughts make you feel miserable. This is an educational exercise to find out if there is a problem with the way that you present yourself verbally, emotionally and physically.

As your life changes you will find that you will present yourself in a way which most people will be able to react to in a positive manner. But change is the word we need to think about, and how and what it is that you should change about yourself.

The young child above 2 can be disciplined by talking to the child and guiding the child. This is a very important time for any child. Many exciting events will come about and many new mistakes will be part of the child’s life. Children are very adventurous at this stage of life because of all those wonderful new things to discover that the child has never seen, heard or touched before. The child will also try to get away with a few things at this stage in life and it is important that the child learns that the parents will not accept any naughty behaviour. For this to work as it was intended by God the parents (or guardians etc) must be there for the child. To put a young child under five in many peoples care and rules is very confusing for a little child who has so much on that little mind trying to deal with his or her new life, let alone the strange habits and quirks of many different adults.

The child over 3 can be dealt with differently. It is important that the child is in a home that cares for the child. Love is a important ingredient in the child’s life, and so all children should have this ingredient. The child needs to be guided with love and a healthy dose of common sense.

The reason behind punishing a child is to teach the child that wrong has been done by the child. Of course to teach a child about right and wrong the parents need a set of definite rules. Without definite rules the child will often be confused by changing rules or why he or she has been punished. The child needs to learn what has been done wrong and why it is wrong to do as the child did.

You must show respect for your child when he or she is young and to do this you must be there for your children. You must be close by to share those hard to learn moments that you child will go through. You are the one who is to explain why this and that happened, how it happened and what the result of the event was if it is not obvious to the child. You need to be there to pick that child up when he or she falls down. Be there to be cuddled, and to do the cuddling.

You will also greatly benefit being with your children when you are down and they are there for you.

Your children will help you if they are shown and told why you need their help. An unfair parent will not get the same respect as a fair and just parent from the children.

Always try to be honest with your children. But spare them the trials of your life to some degree. There is no need to tell a child of the harsh ordeals that you may be going through while the child is very young, your child has his own problems to deal with (dealing with growing up for instance). But by all means be honest with your children. Let them know that you love them. Tell them, when it feels right, that you love them. Speak of those good times that you have had together and the good times that you expect to come. And when the hard times have arrived stand together with your husband or wife at the side of your children.

A Parent Must Be Willing To Punish A Child For Doing Something Wrong:
All parents and guardians must be willing to punish a child who has done something that he or she should be punished for in order to correct that child’s behaviour. You may or may not realise it but there are some parents out there who are actually not willing to punish their children. They have their reasons for being like this, but they are doing a lot of harm to their children by not correcting that child. A child that can do mostly what it wants is a child that will bring unhappiness to all those that know that child.

As parents and guardians we owe it to all people who know our children now and those who will know our children in the future to discipline our children in a careful, loving and constant manner.

Keep the punishments constant. Always tell your children what it is that is expected of them and why it is that you want them to behave in this particular manner or to do a certain thing. If you are constant in punishing the children when they misbehave, then they will come to know what is right and what is wrong in time. Finally you will hardly need to punish your children at all, because they know what is right or wrong and how you expect them to behave and why you expect them to behave in this manner. Keep your explanations logical, with a bit of wisdom, love, and common sense. Explain things to your children in a manner that they can easily understand. Once a child has had it explained to him that he is not to do something he knows (as long as you are constant with your punishments) that he now has two choices. One is to do as he was asked and not be punished, or two to not do what he was asked and be punished for it. You see, he “must” know that he “will” be punished “if” he does what he was told not to do.

Don’t complain often. Griping, grizzling and complaining will only show the children that you are not in control of the situation, or not in control of yourself. You must show to your children that you are in control. Some parents these days seem to think that being in control means being hard on their children. Please always remember that you must show love and understanding to your children at all times.

Treat your children with love and respect. Children must be treated with the same feelings that you would put upon yourself. A child is a human and this human would like to be treated with love and respect. There should be no feelings of resentment or a belief from the child of ill treatment while in the care of his or her parents or guardians. You, the adult, must try to take into consideration how you would liked to have been treated as a child, and then use this information to ensure that your very own children of your human likeness are treated better.

No Abuse is necessary. Ill treatment of any kind (this includes the world-wide trouble of mental ill treatment of children) on a child will fuel certain destructive feelings towards other people from that child as that child grows physically and mentally, or the opposite will occur and the child will become weak willed, unhappy with life, while living with a feeling that life has shown him or her the rough treatment. Bad treatment on an innocent will only cause a negative affect upon that child who knows deep in his or her heart that he did not deserve this treatment, and the most heart-breaking of all feelings is the inner, deep, knowledge that this suffering came from one who is claimed to be a person who loves that mere innocent child. The child may shrink inside himself mentally creating a world of his own.

When you became (or become) a parent you will have the chance to take up this natural cause and mold this new human being to the human he or she will be. You don’t have all the power of “molding” your child as history has shown that many children who are molded or trained by their parents don’t always become the person that he or she is expected to be. Still, we parents do have a lot to do with the final product and we must try our best.

Try to warn a child once, and then on special occasions you should give the child a second warning, but really you should give no further warnings. After two warnings a child should fully understand that he or she has been told (or asked) something, after this the child should be treated in such a manner as is done in normal situations and get the required punishment for the crime. It is important that a person does not offer to many warnings to children as this shows weakness in the punishment system, and maybe a weakness in the adults attitude. One reason to give the child two chances is that the child may not have heard what you said the first time, it does happen but not very often. If you ask a child to do something and the child doesn’t hear you and then after 5 minutes you come bounding into the room unhappy because the child did not do as he or she was previously “asked” and then you lose control (a bit?) and growl the child, not allowing the child to speak in his or her defense until you have had your total say (after all you are the parent or guardian). Finally the child (most likely with tears in his or her eyes, and with teenagers, most likely a look of “How dare You?” or a sulk) tells you that “I didn’t hear you say that” or something similar to that. You think about and realise there was a chance that the child did not hear you (maybe a vacuum was being used nearby or something like that was creating some noise to make the situation difficult) and the hurt look on the child’s eyes gives you the distinct impression that you probably made a mistake. Also the child may be concentrating hard on what he or she is doing and then not hear you. I, as an adult, have often been in trouble for this. Two chances is often a good idea.

Talk to the child. Some people say that ‘talk is cheap’, but that is not so when you are dealing with your family. Talk is our very special way of communication. A method that we used to get something across to the other people around us. There are other methods of communications such as physical communication like giving a friendly rub of the back or shoulders to somebody that you love, kissing a person, giving hugs etc.

We need to talk to our children from the day that the child is born and for the rest of the child’s life. Talking to the child is very, very important. Explaining what you want to a child is very important. Explaining the rules of the home gives the child a good idea about what it is that has been accepted by the family and what is not accepted. Talk is also a wonderful was to express your love to the child and tell the child how much you love the child. You can congratulate the child on things well done, or you can tell the child what he or she has done wrong.

Talk is not cheap, talk is a blessing when dealing with your child.

From a young age I have always talked to my children on a level basis, or at least I have tried to as often as possible to talk to them as friends or as a person that I want to communicate to on a friendly level.

Attitude is very important.
When I say attitude I mean your attitude and also your children’s attitudes.

The Punishment Seat:
When my young children misbehave I used tell them to sit in “the corner”. The corner is really one of many places inside of our house. When my son Jimmy misbehaves I speak to him and then once I am sure that he understands why he is being punished then he is told to sit in the area I specify. Should he not want to sit in the corner then I would remove some luxury that he is used to having such as missing a trip to town or a movie or a television program that he wanted to see.

Another simple punishment is to tell him to do 5 or 10 laps of our back section. I know a man who takes his teenage sons and daughter to the town pools when they misbehave and tells them to do an amount of laps of the pool. If these forms of punishment are organized correctly the child will have no negative feelings toward running or swimming, in other words the child will associate the punishment with the crime and not the way that he or she is punished.

After some time we renamed The Corner to Punishment Seat.
The amount of time that the child sits alone in the Punishment Seat depends on how naughty the child was. This is so that the punishment fits the bad behaviour. To the child this should feel as a “just” punishment. And if the child feels that the punishment is “just” (justice) then you will still be seen as a capable and respectable and just parent. To do this you must make a good effort to show that you love and respect your child while also showing that you have no favourites among your children. Always explain the punishment, if you cannot do this because you are in a hurry but your child knows that you are a good parent then he or she will wait for your explanation (if there needs to be one) at a latter time in the day. If it is obvious why the child has to go to the Punishment Seat then no explanation is needed by the parent but the child should explain why he or she was punished after coming from the Punishment Seat after the punishment is over.

The child if he or she has done wrong can be punished fairly by the adult using the Punishment Seat. The Punishment Seat is a place that the child should sit to give the child some time to think about what he did wrong. If Joe kicked a door in anger then he must learn what was wrong with his behaviour (even if he already knows he should be told again) and after he has sat in the Punishment Seat for the required time he needs to tell the parent what he did wrong, and he should also give some sort of reason about why he did it wrong.

Parents need to be aware that sometimes children misbehave because they are feeling neglected. A lot of trouble will be avoided if the parents are aware of this and can rectify this as best as they can and as soon as possible.

The Punishment Seat can be an area of ground that the child must sit on when he (Joe in this case) does something wrong. The parent uses her own judgement to set the time that Joe must stay on the Punishment Seat. The parent must be fair and not over punish the child or else bad feelings will become apparent. We want the child to learn to be good and respect his parents.

An Alternative Punishment or shall we call it education:
There was a teenage boy who was playing bat-down (like baseball) with his sisters (he had no brothers). He was standing with his back to the family house and was ready to bat. The ball was pitched to him and he swung the bat. The ball kind of sliced off the bat backwards and hit the small window directly behind the teenage boy. Smash!
The boys mother came out of the house and told him that he would get physical punishment from his father when his father got home from work. The boy tried to explain to his mother that the window breaking had been a freak accident. He said that it wasn’t deliberate and that he was sorry. But his mother dug her heels into her view of the argument and refused to give in to any degree.

The boy had the full support of his sisters. He found talking to his mother frustrating. But most of all he knew it was an accident and fully believed that the event was not deserving of harsh physical punishment from his father. They all learnt a good lesson about playing ball in the back yard as well. Finally in frustration the boy said that he would rather run away from home than have to be punished for what he thought was an unfair decision of his mother.

The boy ran away from home for an entire week. The police were called but they could not find him. Finally the boy was caught in the life size playhouse on the section talking to his sisters (who by the way had been giving the boy meals every night at dinnertime). The boys mother was the one who had found him with his sisters and she said that he was forgiven and things like that. The boys mother then asked him to come home (she seemed close to begging), it was clear that her opinion had changed. The boys asked if he would receive the physical punishment for the accident, the mother said “No”. So the boy once again lived with his family.

If a child does something wrong as an accident then he or she can be punished, do you support this attitude? Lets look at an example. A child of seven accidentally breaks a window. The parent/s now have the option of dealing with the child in many ways. Which one is best is up to the parents or guardians involved and their own personal education.

One school of thought would state that the child must be physically smacked for this crime (accident). It does make a difference how the parent “sees” the event. If it was an accident then it should be seen as an accident and not a crime.

Another school of thought would be to talk to the child and not smack the child at all.

Another school of thought would be to talk to the child first and then smack the child.

But this is what I suggest to you in these situations. This is especially helpful if the window will cost a lot of money to replace and the parent/s have a limited budget to deal with. Low budget families hurt more when unplanned expenses come up and they often struggle to deal with the new expense. I suggest that after the glass is cleaned up (normally with accidents if the child can safely help with the cleaning up then he or she should do so. Putting the child in a corner and then cleaning the mess up yourself takes away the child learning about responsibility etc.), then the child should be taken to a room and the parent and child sit down and the parent educates the child on the family budget (simplified for the younger children) and explain to the child what he will most likely lose because this accident has taken place. An example is that once a week you may buy the child some toy from town or some treat, this may have to stop to help pay for the window to be repaired). This is not to punish the child, but it is to show the child the real-life situation that you will now have to deal with since the accident happened.

The child could then also be shown where other members in the family will probably have to go without something because of this unplanned new expense. The child could also be told about windows and how they are helpful and need to be filled with glass to keep the cold, rain, wind and snow out. The point is to show the child all the events and other affects that will follow after the window was broken. The parent or guardian should ask the child to be much more careful in the future, and the child should also say that he or she will do his or her best to avoid such a situation as best as the child can.

There is a good chance that if a child was to learn the full affects of his or her actions that went astray then those children would be more responsible and would behave in a more mature manner when it came to life as well. We must of course be careful not to layer row and row of guilt on the child because that would have deep negative effects and probably you would make the child so nervous or scared of making the same mistake then the child will probably either do the same thing wrong or do something else wrong.

You Can Change Your Promises That You Make If…
When a child has been promised or told that he or she could do or have something it is a good thing for you to keep your word. It greatly improves the respect that you get from your children. They want to be treated as other “people” in the family home. You must also be aware that you are able to change your promise or what you said to some degree, or even completely “if” the situation around the promise changes, and that change has important bearing on the promise that you made. You must also not feel guilt over the issue if it must be done, regret that it had to be done and some sympathy for your child’s disappointment but not guilt because the situation changed.

Imagine that I said to my son Jimmy, “Jimmy you can only watch 1 or 2 television programs a night.“. He agrees. He watches one program on a DVD of The Walton’s, then he goes off to play. Jimmy intends on watching a short movie later on in the evening. Lets say a movie about Bears in the wild. That evening his older sisters decide that they too want to watch an episode of The Walton’s, and Jimmy decides to watch it with them even though he has seen the episode previously a few days before, but they have not seen it. Later on (after seeing the second episode of The Walton’s) he comes up to me and asks me to put a movie on for him to see and then he reminds me that I said that he could watch 2 things during one day. I tell him that he has already watched all that he should for the night, and that he now cannot watched the bears in the wild movie now. And even after telling him the logic behind the promise he still to some degree may feel that he has been cheated or that the situation is unfair. He figured that the second viewing of The Walton’s episode should not be classified as one of the things that he watched that night. Children’s logic sometimes works this way.

Clearly this parent (me in this case) does not want his son to spent to much time in front of the television set. So clear limits have been set and they must be abided by. Sometimes situations change and when they do we need to have the courage as parents to tell our children that we regret the change but it must be so, and then be firm on ensuring that the change is adhered to.

While your child may not be overjoyed with the change in plans he or she must agree with a clear-cut change of decision, at least we hope so. But if your children respect you and know that you have their best interest in heart they will see the good in the situation.

A Child Destroys Another Persons Things:
Example: A boy is on his bike and his sister has a small toy. She leaves her toy on the grass where she was playing and goes to help her mother take in the clothes washing off the clothesline. The boy rides his bike over to her toy and then rides over it because it is small. The girl sees the boy do this and she asks him in a aloud enough voice to please not ride over her toy because he may break it. He ignores her and continues to ride over the toy.

Finally the mother tells the boy to leave the toy alone. They walk over to the toy and find out that it is broken. The boy could be put into the Punishment Seat to teach him not to destroy his sisters toys. But he already knows at this age that he was doing something wrong. A more fair system would be if he gave the girl one of his toys as a replacement for the broken toy. If he has a toy that is exactly the same as the girls toy then he must give her that with an apology.

If he refuses to give her a toy or apologise then he must go back into the Punishment Seat for his crime.

You can use this example and some thought of situations that are similar in your home.

Common Sense:
Life is an interesting experience and we are aways learning from one another and from nature and animals. When we have children we can learn from them as well as teach them how to deal with life.

Many of your rules and regulations are based on simple straightforward common sense and this is a good idea. Often many punishments or discussions about wrongdoing or explanations to your children need to be done “on the fly”. This means that you mostly done choose the occasion for discussions or punishment, the children do.

So we parents need to have an instant calm thinking mind when we deal with our children. Of course it can be hard to keep a calm mind when one of your children deals to another of your children or a friends child by booting him on the backside. But you must do your best and try to be as calm as you can be.

Please try to always use common sense to guide you as you deal with your children, even during the most embarrising or hottest moments. We all get a chance to deal with these situations. You are not alone in dealing with a child who is on the rampage and who refuses to listen to you (for now anyway). All parents need to know how to deal with their children “on the go”.

Dealing With Away From Home Problems After The Family Gets Back Home:
If a child is mature enough a parent could possibly have an agreement with the child about behaviour away from home. The parent and child could agree that when an issue comes up between them or even between that child and another child (possibly another family member) that she (the child) will wait until they are home before the problem is dealt with properly. The child should know that the parent will not deliberately do anything to harm the child or do the child wrong, so the child should be able to wait and go with the ruling of the parent until they get home. Once they are at home the subject can be dealt with in a private and mature manner.

Before I had heard about Time Out I created a system for teaching my children to behavior or a form of punishment.

If my child was naughty I would put him or her in what we called The Corner”. Over years The Corner became anywhere that as convenient for the child to sit. The Corner could be up against a wall or against a fence. The child would face the wall.

The idea behind this was to keep the child away from the events happening with his or her brothers and sisters at that time. He (assuming it was a he at this time) was not allowed to interact with any of the current family goings on. He was considered in a sense “in prison”. I know that many people would regard this as cruel and setting him up for prison, but do hear me out here.

He asked why it was that he couldn’t talk to anyone while he was in the corner. I said that it was because he had done something wrong and he needed to think about what it was that he had done wrong.

–  ‎James Martin Sandbrook.
Friday, ‎1 ‎June ‎2007, ‏‎12:52:30 PM.