to have thrown DS's truck away?

[CheerfulYank]

Ok, I get the feeling I'm in for it on this one but here goes.

DS (3) has been a lot more disrespectful and, well, naughty as of late. (I realize it's a tough age :)) We have been using time-outs and so far it's not working all that well. This morning after quite a bit of defiance I told him he would start losing fun things like TV time and his toys if he did not start making better choices.

I was trying to get him to get dressed a little later on and he refused. I put him in the bathroom with his underwear and jeans and said "come out when you have them on." (I'd just cleaned up the bathroom) After a few minutes I heard a weird noise so I went in. He'd poured lotion and water all over his underwear and was throwing them against the door, making quite a mess. I told him (in not the nicest tone, I admit) to go up to his room "right now" and give me a minute to collect myself. (My parents were shouters and smackers and I really don't want to do that, so sometimes I really, really need a few minutes to breathe.) He ran upstairs, turned around, and yelled, "Stupid mommy!" (Stupid is a forbidden word to use in reference to other people in our house.) He hollered again, "You're stupid! Stupid mom!"

I said, "right, that's very disrespectful and you are going to lose a toy." And I took his truck and chucked it in the garbage bin outdoors.

So. He was quite upset but I reminded him that I had told him he was going to start losing things if he wasn't nice. For the rest of the day, whenever he started to have "naughty" behavior I reminded him to "stop and make a better choice" and he actually listened, because he was afraid I was going to toss something else.

So, AIBU to chuck the truck? :)

Because it (sounds like it was) done in anger, and because you didn't warn him that continuation of his behaviour would result in the loss of his toy, yes... sorry.

Sounds like you had a crappy morning though. Today DS was mean to a kid in Ikea so I threw his ice cream in the bin..

i did taht once and i still feel guilty about it. not that he lost a toy but that i put a perfectly good working toy in teh bin when another child could have had it.

you gave him a warning and he knew teh consequence of bad behaviour. you have to follow through with that consequnce. can i just ask you though. are you prepared to continue to throw away toys? i wasn't so i had to change tack and remove tv time/play time etc. i jsut couldn't settle knowing that good toys were going to waste. i now use a reward chart rather than removal of priviledges. it seems to work better for us.

I may not throw them away, booyhoo, but I am prepared to give them away if necessary.

I'm thinking that maybe I could just put them in a box or something, though, and then he could earn them back with better choices.

Thanks for understanding Jareth, even though you think IABU. :) Sorry about your rough time in IKEA.

Oh, the hard thing about taking away TV time too is that we only watch TV on the weekends. :( If anyone has better suggestions I would be more than happy to use them. Feel free to advise! I could use the help.

DS1 (3yo) has started nursery, and they use, I'm counting to 3, with great effect. I asked what happened at 3, and the teacher said she'd never had to get there.

So I use it at home. In a very booming voice. Most of the time, he will do what I've asked on 1. If I get to 3, I then either take him to whatever I was asking him to do (go peepee, brush teeth, come to me etc....) or put him in his room for 3mins. It mostly works unless he is super tired. And in that case, we batten down the hatches and break out the gin

Is he closer to 3 or 4yo?

Disciplining is so boring and relentless and shows up all my worst bits. I hate it and myself sometimes.

Worth it all when they are have a lovely sunshiney moment, tho'!

I think that is nasty.
Surely you can come up with something else. Three is so little and while they must learn correct behaviour, parents must remember that they still are small children. Throwing away toys (esp favourite) can break their little hearts and trust and teach them to hate you.

How would you feel if your parent threw out your favourite possession because you disobeyed. (not a huge misdemeanor either).

YABU

It may not have been his fave toy but must have been good enough or you know you would have got no reaction.

We have getting dressed issues with DS(4) add I find they are much less if I give him two outfits to choose from.

Hello - I have been exactly where you are and can sympathize. I don't think YABU as you followed through on your threat and children need these boundaries or as someone once told me a roadmap. You have shown you care in wanting to improve his behavior.
I think your idea of taking toys away and putting in a box is great as he will also see that hood behavior is rewarded. Might use that myself! I will say that I do believe it is just a phase and please don't despair. My DS1 is now 4 and life is much better all round. I read somewhere that this kind of behavior is a really good developmental sign. Their cognitive ability outpaces their physical abilities at various stages and results in a fraught time for all the family. Hang in there... lol at breaking out the gin. I've been there too....

Was there a reason he had to get dressed? When mine refuse to get dressed I shrug and carry on with what I was doing. They usually panic and scramble into their clothes when they see me heading for the door with my car keys...

Throwing the toy away wasn't really a logical consequence of his actions. It was tit for tat punishment - he pissed you off so you pissed him off. I do understand why you did it (I have a 2yo who drives me to the brink of sanity most days) but I think a better consequence would have been calmly insisting that he tidied up the mess he had made (and maybe for good measure got to wear a least favourite outfit "because you messed up the nice one mummy had chosen").

So, YABU because 'an eye for an eye' is not a very good message to teach your child.

And YABU because 3 is awfully young to be expected to put on your pants and jeans all by yourself. I know they can do it, but shutting him in the bathroom until he has done it seems a bit draconian tbh. I still help my 4yo get dressed most mornings.

I totally understand your frustration and sympathise. But I wouldn't have thrown the toy in the bin. (Or if I had, I would have retrieved it later and washed it down, given it back to him at some point in the future).

But that's mostly because I can't bear the waste of good toys.
I like the idea of toys in "time-out" but would probably use an hour for each year of age, rather than a minute. Because toys can sit still forever, can't they.

I find with my nearly 3yo DS that if he won't get dressed, and tbf I only really insist if we're going to go out to do something, then the way to get him dressed is to say "fine, I'll go without you. You stay here and I'll see you later, bye bye". As I head for the door he usually caves and agrees to be dressed.
One of my friends took her DS to kindy in his underpants once because he refused to get dressed - once in the carpark, she threatened to get him out the car in just his undies - and he got dressed beautifully.

I am no paragon in the discipline stakes but I usually warn DS that I am getting cross and then that he is heading for a punishment; and then start the count to 3. He (currently) usually caves in just after 2 and submits. But I'm not smug - I can see that it won't be this way forever and he will get more stubborn as he gets older.

Please retrieve his truck from the bin and wash it down - don't give it back to him yet though.

Bathroom is a fabulous place for messy play. So many things there for him to be distracted by! What were you thinking...

I don't think tv time means much at that age. Do they even know how long an hour or ten minutes is in reality.

I would go and buy yourself a large plastic container with a lid, a see through one so he can see what is in it.

Explain the new rules and that he will get a warning and toys will go in the container and won't be allowed out again until he deserves it back.

Always give a warning. Always make sure he knows why the toy is going in the naughty box. And always praise and reward good behaviour quickly.

I have been tempted to do this soooo many times. However, I think a temporary confiscation would be a slightly better way to go about it. I tend to remove a toy and then allow DD to earn it back through good behaviour etc. She still learns the same lesson but I don't have to throw a perfectly good toy away

Right, you must not give him back that truck, or he will not take you seriously, so what's done is done, do not "undo" it out of guilt or a change of strategy. Its only one truck.

I would suggest you consider the following:

Withdrawal of privilige/possession DOES work quite well at this age for some children. I find it more effective with a better warning system at this age though. Yes, you did warn him before but not at the time. You did it as a reaction to him expressing his frustration at the fact that you were trying to make him do something he didn't want to do (which is perfectly acceptable in itself - but you need to teach him better ways to express his frustration, which will come in time)

So next time you could consider more of a "I'm going to count to 5, and if you do not come and get dressed nicely, I'm going to confiscate your truck". One, two, three... etc. If he doesn't, you confiscate the truck and put it somewhere out of sight. You haven't said you are throwing it in the bin, so you dont have to, and you can either give it back to him after good behaviour or simply after a week has passed, depending on your preference.

The point is, he didn't have a chance to correct his behaviour specifically to avoid the truck being taken - sure you told him to get dressed and not to say that, but without the real-time warning of a truck being taken away, so he had no compelling reason at that very moment to correct his behaviour.

I do it with my son occasionally - but I give a very specific warning of what will happen if he doesn't do it at the count of 5. If he doesn't do it, I ALWAYS follow through on that threat. (Consequently, he always does it on the count of 5, after the first couple of times of realising I meant business). So, therefore you just be careful what you threaten - its better not to threat or discipline at all than to make a false threat. So, never say "If you dont come here on the count of 5, we are not going to the Zoo" when you've got both sets of grandparents with their shoes and coats on sitting there waiting to leave for the Zoo! You know you dont mean it, and you will lose face! (You know this though, you dont sound to me like a false threatter)

So I've rambled on a bit but just to summarise, if you are going to use the withdrawal of privilige method, it can be more effective at that age if you do the warning there and then and give them a count of 5 to correct their behaviour before following out the threat.

Also consider at this stage the calling you "stupid" thing. Whilst its not acceptable to talk to parents like that, and you dont want to just "let" it happen, it can be helpful to consider why he is saying that. He's basically rebelling against being told what to do, which is healthy and natural.

When my son does this occasionally, I dont just take it from him, but I do take a minute to consider why he's doing it, and look to myself. Am I being too controlling? Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. Do I always talk to him the way I'd like to be spoken to? Sometimes I'm a little snappy or uncommunicative/unavailable if I'm in the middle of something.

He went through a stage of saying "oh shut up mummy" when I was telling him off about something. It made me realise that I probably was "going on" a bit, so I learned to summarise better (need to do the same on Mumsnet!). But I didn't just accept it from him - to his face I would say, "That's not nice. I understand you are cross with Mummy because she's telling you off. If you dont like being told off, rather than say "shut up", which we dont say in this house, perhaps you could consider not making mummy cross in the first place?" etc. I'd say that in a nice, non lectury voice, during a cuddle, that kind of thing, because they are still 3 and learning.

The reason I say this is because if you just silence them with punishments all the time (not suggesting you do, but if you find an effective method it is tempting to use it every time they do something you dont like) then you are really controlling them like little robots and at some point they will snap and get angry and rebel, even if it is when they are 16. So consider letting him express a little bit of that anger, and once he's cooled down, talk to him about a better way to do it.

Yank, I feel your pain. My DS is 3 almost 4, he knows what is naughty behaviour yet for some reason he'll do random things such as hiding all his sisters dummies.
Ive not gone as far as throwing a toy away but I have used the top of the kitchen cabinets to wonderful effect.
Yanbu, you are human, you lost your temper. He was good for the rest of the day. Result. Also if he's anything like my DS then he'll have more than enough trucks so he's not going without!

AmazingBF - Top of the cupboard worked well for me til I found DS climbing balancing pecariously in attempt to retrieve stashed toy!

Yes ferret he has plenty of trucks and no it was not his favorite, I wouldn't have done that. I will try top of the refrigerator from now on. :)

Tatty you are right, I often tell him that it is fine to say he is angry with me or that he doesn't like something that I've done, but it's not okay to call names, etc. (I think this is a skill a lot of adults haven't learned so I would like him to start working on it now! :))

Fez of course I gave him two outfits to choose from; it was the one he had chosen already. :) Yuno he can do pants and jeans well by himself, I help with snaps, zippers, etc.

Thank you for all the input and for understanding.

it's not okay to call names, etc. I think this is a skill a lot of adults haven't learned so I would like him to start working on it now!

I understand where you are coming from, but most 3 year olds don't have a well-enough developed sense of other people's minds to understand this rule. They don't fully comprehend that other people think and have feelings. Most children develop this around 5.

I think your rule of not calling people stupid is too sophisticated for him. I'm not saying just let it go - correct him when he does it - but expecting him to think when cross and frustrated "I won't call Mummy stupid because she is a person" is expecting too much.

Does time out for toys really work? Don't they just find another favourite toy to play with?

For actually throwing away the toy I think YABU. I would take it away and not give it back til bedtime, or next morning though.

AmazingBouncingFerret kids do random things because they are little and haven't really learnt how to behave properly yet.

Oh Cheerful I sympathise. My parents were smackers and I really do not want to be like them but there have been times I have smacked her bottom when she's been terribly naughty and I have felt awful afterwards! It's a tricky age. You put it in the bin as you were so cross and said he'd lose a toy so you were following through We all sometimes get mad with 3 yr olds. You're a great mum though, next time follow the amazing tips on here. I think I'll be stealing some of them. Putting DD's favourite toy in a cupboard for a while worked well for me at one stage She is getting easier lately but that may have more to do with the fact that home life is more settled now since separation etc.

Catch up with you on the buddy bench later as I need to cook dinner x

I don't think YABU. I had/ have a bag which DS has to put a toy/toys in for bad behaviour and when he's good he earns them back.

He knew what he was doing at 3yo despite it being a difficult age and as he knows you don't like the word stupid then yes he has to have a consequence for repeating it. I would guess he said it again as there was no consequence the first time and wanted to see if you would carry out what you said. Well now he knows you will he has refined his behaviour - what does that tell you??