Naughty step versus walking away/ignoring bad behaviour - opinions please!!!

[tigersmummy]

I hope you can all help/give opinion on this.

We have used naughty step to deal with naughty behaviour in the past - sometimes it has used, sometimes not. Now DS is 2.10 yrs and bottom stair gate is off, he rarely stays put and often gets off, sometimes racing upstairs as if its all a game.

For last 12 months on and off he has been hitting due to frustration/boredom. He is not as developed speech wise (although we have seen SALT and they are happy with his development and he is increasing his language everyday) and I'm positive its all down to lack of communication - he is unable to let us know exactly how he feels or what he wants so lashes out in frustration.

we're changing tack as of tomorrow - limiting TV, no Mickey Mouse at all as it seems to send him dolally, and being more consistent with discipline. Do we continue with naughty step (know it goes against Supernanny but I'm inclined to put him straight on without warning when he hits, he's old enough to know what he's doing is wrong) or walk away from him straight away and ignore him.

What has worked for other people?

[Brewster]

We do naughty chair - always with a warning though
sometimes we do a .... if you dont pick that up by the time i count to 5 you will go on the naugty chair.... etc
usually the treat of it is enough

for a while when he was younger we would tell him he was being ignored till he apologised and it took him about 10 seconds to apologise and give a cuddle.

naughty chair works best though as it is a direct consequence of bad behaviour/not doing as told etc..they need to learn their actions have consequences and if they are ignored they may not understand what they did wrong whereas if you use the chair correctly you explain the mistake and get a sorry at the end.

[HeathcliffMoorland]

I do both.

I naughty step for actively bad/defiant behaviour, like not doing as they're told (and hitting in the past).

I ignore tantrums. I also ignore requests if pleases/thank yous are not used. Ignoring hitting, for me, would equate to allowing it even if I gave no attention.

If neither fits - such as if the naughty step is too extreme and ignoring is likely to be ineffectual, I do a bit of 'natural consequencing' too. Such as, child gets angry at toy, child cannot be trusted to play nicely with toy, toy put away immediately.

HTH.

[wannabeglam]

Might he be too young for naughty step/chair. Does he understand?

[Tgger]

Naughty step was never very effective for us. I didn't like it either.

Once DS was about 3 I started doing a warning then sending him to his room. This works better for us.

I do tend to ignore quite a lot of the trivial stuff but have zero tolerance on hitting etc- well one warning with very stern "no hitting", then straight to room.

Who does he hit? You, siblings?

[hefferlump]

Deffo ignore sometimes, walk away as much as you can and warn before taking any action such as naughty step or removing toys etc.

BUT more important than any of this is to praise praise and praise some more for all the lovely little stuff, ordinary stuff, good stuff they do...... this works the best in the end - promise x

[chaleyannscott]

I think the 'naughty' step and ignoring loud emotions is really disrespectful. Sorry I know that won't make me very popular but I think that you are better off looking behind the behaviour to try and see why he is doing it. Children hit and yell because they are trying to tell you something - if you ignore them or put them on a step you aren't getting the opportunity to find out what's wrong.

[Karoleann]

Children hit and yell because they're 2! If you don't ignore them they do it more as they find they then get more attention.
DS2 is 2.5 and I do a combo of naughty step and ignoring and praising the good stuff.