To think we shouldn't use the word "naughty" with a 2 year old?

I feel like using words like ‘mummy is disappointed’ or ‘that is unkind’ for bad behaviour eg biting, ripping books etc is too gentle. I’ve seen my peers do it and it was a disaster.

I have grown up friends who have more emotional trauma from being told their parents "disappointed" than being punished/smacked etc. It's followed them through life.

At the end of the day, some kids are naughty. It's part of their communication and learning boundaries. Whether we dress that up as it being them or their "behaviour", it still amounts to the same. Stop pussyfooting around it, it's fine to address it and help set those boundaries.

I do wonder about is there any real evidence. If I'm constantly told that what I'm doing is naughty then I will start to identify with that. You are what you do to a certain degree! I've no issue with saying to a child that something is naughty; they need to understand expectations and that some things are not allowed. But I'd be worried about constantly saying it and looking to see if I can offer more positive reinforcement over time.

How is you are being naughty now when you have given me a mischievous grin and deliberately touched the tv screen when you know not to wrong?

'That's wrong/naughty' is fine. It's 'You're naughty' or 'You're a naughty boy/girl' that's not advisable.

I think it's not so much the word Naughty that's the problem as telling a child repeatedly that they 'are' naughty. Or anything else actually. 'Oh, Sam's the naughty one. Laura's the kind one. Jane's the clever one. Jeff's the lazy one.' They can start identifying as that and acting up to their designation.

There is a world of difference to me between “that was being naughty” targeted against a behaviour and “dd is naughty “ targeted on the child - one would be ok the other not

@Jade520

I haven't said telling a child they are naughty is why there is more knife crime. I am saying that something clearly isn't working. Whether that is the way children are spoken to , interacted with or disciplined or mix of all of them I don't know. And it is something that needs to be looked at and addressed.

How is "that is wrong" any different from "that is naughty?"

What a good idea. Like an emergency stop in a driving test. It might save a life one day.

Yee, if a child is being naughty (i.e. doing something naughty), then they are being naughty (at that moment). That's not the same as telling them they are a naughty child full stop. Do you want a 2 year-old to think 'I'm a bad person' or to learn that they did something bad and not do it again, because they're not a bad person?

It's not about pretending kids can't be naughty. I'm a secondary school teacher and have taught some absolute monsters, frankly (I don't mean monsters lightheartedly in a 'you little monster' sense). Dh taught two who later committed murder as quite young adults. I wonder at what age they maybe resigned themselves to being bad people. I'm all for stricter punishment of genuinely bad behaviour. I'm not keen on giving kids the impression that they are stuck on the path of being naughty. I want them to feel like they are a person who can make the right choices, and who others expect to make the right choices.

No. Go and speak to a teacher of secondary school students and they might think that they know which ones were never called naughty, but they would be making a lot of assumptions and they would almost certainly be wrong.

Maybe if you’d paid a bit more attention to teachers you would have a basic grasp of grammar.

ThejoyofNC · Today 11:56

If a child is being naughty then they are being naughty. All this kind hands bullshit is exactly why this generation is turning out to be completely out of control and unteachable at school

You know nothing of the development of young brains.

Lol at the idea that if only more kids were told they were naughty then we wouldn't be seeing the knife crime that we do today.

The OP's DH constantly telling their child that they are naughty is not good parenting, and anyone who thinks it is is just plain wrong. What does it even mean? How is the child supposed to even know what exactly it is they're doing that they shouldn't be - and why - if all they know is that they're naughty. They'll soon stop caring about being called naughty and just assume it's who they are.

What we need to be doing is spending a lot of time teaching kids what they should be doing. The more time you spend with your child, they more they will want to spend time with you and the more they will listen to you and want to please you. Obviously all kids have their moments but they need loads of time and attention - and teaching. If kids have to play up to get your attention, if ripping books is what gets your attention, if throwing things is what gets your attention then they will do it - and they learn fast.

Children aren't naughty, they just haven't been taught all the rules yet. Unfortunately a lot of parents are more interested in sitting on the sofa scrolling on their phones than getting down on the floor and playing with their kids. Kids learn so much through play, but it takes a bit of effort.

If a child is being naughty then they are being naughty. All this kind hands bullshit is exactly why this generation is turning out to be completely out of control and unteachable at school.

So you don't think there's such a thing as children who are largely good and well-behaved, but who very occasionally do something naughty? Would you say that such a child is inherently a naughty child? If not, why call them one?

One and two year olds are not naughty. They’re instinctive.

I'm a teacher too, and although the 'Don't label the child, label the behaviour' idea is maybe part and parcel of a wider more indulgent attitude to how we deal with kids' behaviour, I really don't think there's anything wrong with this particular rule. Surely we can be strict about and punish bad behaviour without encouraging a child to cast themselves potentially permanently in the role of 'naughty child'?

Children are not by default naughty, they are learning, growing and developing and some are more boisterous and challenging than others. In any event I never said the word should never be used. I certainly did use it but to describe behaviour not the child.

You don’t call the child naughty, but the t’s fine to call out the untoward behaviour as naughty. Bit like not saying ‘I don’t like you’, but okay to say ‘I don’t like it when you do x.’.

Nit calling out naughty behaviour and giving it the label it should have contributed to all the ‘spirited’ children you get now. Never naughty. Just spirited. 🫤

In the case of mine, one was an academic high flyer and the other was doing GCSEs at home in online school. The schools they were able to attend at secondary level were more influential in this than whether they were called naughty at home. It also doesn't mean that they had no boundaries or discipline at home, it just means we didn't call them names and were kind and fair. And they were never "naughty" or disruptive at school. Unfortunately most state secondary schools now are not kind and fair. The best way parents could prepare them for the experience is to send their child to a young offenders instuition for a year. Obviously we were not prepared to do that.

That's a very catholic attitude; hate the sin, love the sinner.
Children are naughty.
It isn't a label, it's a descriptor of attitude and bahaviour.

I teach infants, labelling the behaviour not the child is important. No child is inherently naughty but they may exhbit naught behaviours, and it's best to state that a particular behaviour is unacceptable. ' We don't....'

But why do you say it's important? Because you've been told or because you've noticed a definite difference in how children react to the different words?

I very much doubt I would notice if I was in the middle of a complaint from a manager them saying "you are wrong" v "you did this wrong". I'd probably notice if they said "you are always wrong" though.

I don't think children analyse the words as closely as this gives the impression.

I remember being at school aged 5. I was in the toilets with a friend. We went into each cubicle and locked the door then crawled out under the door so it was locked from the inside but no one could get in. We found it hilarious. We got shouted at by the teacher and it sticks in my mind because I was rarely in trouble and I got very upset that I was. But, it certainly stopped me doing it again!! I’m not sure just being told “next time choose not to do it” would have had the same effect!

Another toilet incident was with the paper towels once. They were all wedged in so tight you couldn’t get one out. So my friend started ripping the paper trying to pull it. I found it funny so started copying her. We were both laughing ripping these tiny pieces of paper towels and they were dropping all over the floor creating a mess. This one especially wasn’t done with malice. But we created a mess and were told off. I remember being told off by the teacher because I got a bit upset as I knew I hadn’t meant to be bad. But at the same time it wasn’t a good thing to do and I’m not sure if the teacher had just gently said “we only use the hand towels nicely” would have had the same effect! Do I think I deserved a huge telling off when I didn’t actually mean to be bad? No. But honestly I’m not sure just being told “choose better next time” would have stopped me doing it again. Because it was funny (to a 5 year old at the time). And there was no unpleasant consequences to it.

People seem to think that if a child remembers a telling off they are traumatised by it. I’m certainly not traumatised by being shouted at! But it certainly made me never do it again! Because I didn’t want to be told off again like that!

I used "naughty" to describe something DS did rather than him. So tearing pages out of books was "a naughty thing to do".

But I used "not nice" more often. I felt like I was overall trying to encourage him to be "nice" so "not nice" was more appropriate.