or cruel to not let ds play outside with his friends?

[IAmBooyhoo]

ever since we moved here (in july) ds'(6.5) behaviour has become terrible. i try to think of reasons everyday not to let him outside the front of the house to play but there isn't always a justifiable one and on the days i do manage to keep him in he sits at my bedroom window watching the other children playing and keeps swallowing back the tears. i have exlained to him on different occasions that his behaviour gets worse after he has been playing out with his friends and that is why he can't go out but i feel terrible about it. his behaviours include hitting me, tripping his Dbro(2) up, swearing at me, wrecking his room at bedtime, throwing things out the window/at me. when he has been playing out and it's time to come in he either runs away and i have to wait until he comes back himself (as ds2 usually sleeping and if not, ds runs so fast i can't find him when i do go looking) or he will whinge and fight and scream at me. this evening's list of names for me was vile. i am ashamed that he knows these words (not learnt from me BTW) and that he is calling his own mother them. i have heard the other children call each other all the names ds has called me so i have no doubt he is learning them from outside. i hate the battle every evening that he has been out and today's great weather has made it clear to me how hard it is going to be to keep him in in teh next few months. i can't let him get any worse. i need to reverse this and teh only way i can see is to keep him away from the source (i heard/saw a parent across the road call another child (not his own) dickhead yesterday evening as in "oi, dickhead, what did i just say to you?" the child is the same age as my ds!! we have a small back garden and while ds2 is more than happy pottering all day in it, ds1 wont entertain the idea at all. he just wants to be out with his friends. it feels really cruel to keep him in but what else can i do?

sorry paragraphs!

I think you are going about this the wrong way.

You are never going to be able to keep your child safe from bad behaviour- not unless you home school and keep him locked up until he is an old man.

The only way forward is to make it quite clear that you will not accept a certain type of language/behaviour/attitude in your home and that you are completely uninterested in how his little chums behave. He has to learn to behave off his own bat, not because he doesn't know any better. It will be a long haul and it will be tedious, but it is the only way to keep him safe in the long run.

Agree with cory
Also, you can keep him in as a punishment/let him out as a reward for good behaviour ie no swearing, coming in when asked.
Good luck

Another agreeing with cory

I am agreeing with cory BUT oh my goodness OP, I was reading your post and nodding in recognition at some of it. Hard isn't it?

yes. you are right cory. i can't censor the world. i have tried the "if you dont come in tonight without a row then you wont be going out tomorrow to play" and i follow through to the point where he wont have been outside to play for a whole week (we go other places as a family so he isn't cooped up 24/7) but once he goes out again the behaviour comes back again. he knows we dont hit, swear or throw things but he goes into meltdown when it comes time to leave his friends and just goes for it with whatever tactic he can think of to let me know just how pissed off he is. he has always hated coming in time but until we came here it was never expressed violently or with swearing.

I never realised being a parent would be such hard work either :(

Is it because you are the first one to get your child in (not that it's any excuse)?

Looks like Cory has got a fan club! I'd make your rules very clear and stick to them. Accept that he wants to play out but make it plain that contravening your rules will result in the privelidge being removed. It is hard to do, but I've always made it a rule in my house that I trust my kids until they prove that I was wrong to do so, so far they haven't!

i dock his pocket money, computer time, we have a weekly dvd night and i cancel it for bad behaviour. none of thses seems to have a lasting effect.

undercover sometimes he is the first to come in sometimes not but he is never the last to come in so there is always someone else out playing (they stay out quite late here even on school nights).

It's the late times even on school nights I am amazed at. DS is telling me that x, y or z child is still out "and they've got school tomorrow too Mum".

euphemia do you think like a reward chart where he earns outside time?

I was always the first child in sob as my parents were v strict but I never reacted like this, mine don't play out except in the garden although 5yo shows major attitude when she has to stop doing anything she doesn't want to stop :(

Do you give him any warning that it is getting near to coming in time? My dd is better if she gets a count down ie 15 min ,5min, 2min.

You've probably done this, but this is what I would do (having read my positive discipline book in search of help ):

• Tell him the problem: meltdown, hurting your feelings etc but don't attribute blame to playing outside, I think

• Ask him what he thinks about it

• Ask him what both of you should do about it

• Make a plan together

It sounds a bit like hippy nonsense but we've tried various variations of this approach and mostly things work for quite a while. When it stops working we have screaming fits and much later I come to my senses and we start the cycle again.

Apologies if you've tried this and it doesn't work ...

yes he gets a warning. he goes out after dinner and so i tell him before he goes out that i will be calling him in in half an hour. i nip out every 5 minutes or so to check he is staying in the area he is supposed to (there are lots of alleyways that he sometimes disappears up) and if he sees me i will tell him how many minutes left. he always agrees when i tell him but when it comes to actually coming in he will start whingeing and trying to negotiate 5/10 more minutes "please please mum, just 5 more. ok 2 minutes. pleeeeaaaase!!!" i tell him, "no, we agreed half an hour and half an hour is p now so come in." at which point he will either bolt or come in pouting and whingeing and then once the door is closed start screaming, throwing his shoes and swearing. tonight he didn't get his shower again because he refused to go. i told him he had ten minutes to shower and get into pj/brush teeth etc at which point i would be putting him to bed. he chose to sit on the stairs swearing at me, calling me names until the ten minutes were up so he is now in bed fully clothed, unwashed and without his teeth done. this is happening about 3 times a week now. he will also swear at his Dbro once in bed (they share) and ds2 will repeat back what he has heard .

uptoapoint i haven't tried that. i will try tomorrow after school (before he is allowed out) and see how that goes. thank you.

if it was my child i would keep him in too.

there is no way on god's earth i would tolerate that kind of behaviour on a daily/weekly basis.
if he can't come in when told to then he can't go out.
if he can't be trusted not to run off, then he can't go out.

end of story.

he is 6.5!!

sometimes he is convinced that i have said something i haven't. like he will say i told him he could stay out for an hour. it's as if he has made up what i say to suit what he wants to hear but then believes it so then has a meltdwn because he thinks i'm being unfair or going back on my word when i'm not.

can you do other stuff after school? take them to the park? do something in the garden like planting stuff or things? (thinking if you have a specific activity it might entertain him longer) we often do tubs of bubbly water and toys, that keeps them happy for ages. or we use chalks to draw on the walls/driveway, or a big bucket of water and paintbrushes and we "paint" everything

basically give him other stuff to do that doesn't involve playing out with the other children.

maybe you could have one night a week when he is allowed to play out, and he always has to be in at the same time on that night? that way he can't say "but you said i could stay out for..."
if you had a loud timer you could say he has to come in when he hears it go off?

that's how i feel thisis. i just want it to stop. my head is throbbing every evening because of it. i try to ignore the shouting and swearing but it isn't possible to block it out. every swear word stings me.

it's very hard to watch him doing it tbh. all i want to do is hug him and tell him he can go out but i know that isn't going to help.