to ask if you smack your children?

[toofattorun]

I am not talking beating! Just a smack on the hand or bum when they are being very rude or naughty.

I was just questioning the 'each to their own' statement, actually. I am, in truth, a terrible parent. I shout, I lose my temper, I do not pay sufficient attention to my children's education, and I am in absolutely no way 'quite superior' (the clue is in my nickname). I do not hit my children precisely because I know I am a terrible parent, and I would lose my temper and whack them one. I personally am not absolutely sure that everyone proclaiming they 'only smack when it is necessary' is quite as controlled and virtuous as they make out.

ANd yes, I do think it is possible to condemn some of the things that go on in other people's homes. Whether that is smacking, or (even) more violent acts.

I don't think its fair to assume that parents that choose not to smack or try not to shout, look down on other parents. I don't think they feel smug or superior, I certainly don't.

I am in no way a perfect parent, Far from it, I've made many mistakes and no doubt have many more to make. I'm just trying to identify the bits I don't like about my parenting style and change it.

Having been a developmental psychologist and a primary teacher and having worked with children of all ages and abilities (including children with no language and limited social skills) I would say that there is no such thing as naughty behaviour and as soon as you realise that it makes you feel a hell of a lot calmer. Everyone, children and adults included, does things for a reason. If your children are fighting a lot proud, then they're showing you that they can't handle being around each other in certain situations. To a certain extent fighting is normal and there's a certain amount of it you have to ignore - it's their way of sorting out their power dynamic. But sometimes you have to step in and show them how to be together.

WRT the shouting proud- you need to identify why you shout. Why are you frustrated? Is it because you want your children to always play nicely and you hate seeing them being mean to each other? Or because you just want peace? If you identify why you're frustrated and come to terms with whether you can actually do something about it then you might feel less frustrated in future.

You don't need to shout or smack any more than your parents needed to beat you MrsNouveau. How would you feel if your parents said they "needed" to beat you? You smack because you have no other strategies to deal with the behaviour - you smack because you choose to.

Cailin I had the support of a brilliant psychologist who enabled me to turn round my son with severe autism's extreme challenging behaviour without raising my voice or ever smacking but by seeing every behaviour as communication. He is now an absolute delight and the cuts, bruises, chipped bones and deliberate destruction is nothing but a bad memory.

I've seen calm, structured discipline work wonders for children with autism insanity. It really can be amazing. One child I taught entered the school as a whirling ball of screaming fury and a year later he was talking in full sentences (having only ever said single words before) and rarely if ever got in any trouble. That's part of the reason why I get so frustrated on threads like this. To me teaching a child who can talk and understand what you're saying seems so easy in comparison to trying to communicate with a child who doesn't understand social norms and has little or no language. The idea that you would actually have to hit children to get them to behave just seems utterly mental to me.

There's no point in me stating my viewpoint, Calina has already put it far more elloquently and succinctly than I ever could. (I'm a self-confessed waffler)

I just wanted to add 2 examples of what I see as terrible parenting and complete lack of consistency

Mil is terribly passive agressive and well accomplished in martyrdom. If H ever stropped or agued with her she would just let him, no discipline, no telling-off, no consequences. She would just stand there and look sad/upset/hurt. Consequently he would get halfway to school and have to turn around and walk all the way home to apologise because he felt so terribly guilty.

Fil is a bully, plain and simple. He acts all easy going, happy-go-lucky then loses his temper in a flash without any warning. He once used a belt on H when he found him taking money from Mil's purse. Only afterwards did he ask for an explanation. Turned out H was taking it to pay off the bully who was beating the crap out of him every day. (Interestingly they didn't feel the need to do anything about the bullying)

Result - H has next to no social skills, no sense of boundaries and feels the need to win every argument by either sulking, shouting as loud as possible or both.

DN (4) is smacked by BIL. Not often luckily because she really is a lovely natured child. Unfortunately her one failing is that she has inherited her father's short temper. They were called into Nursery last week because she punched another child.

The nature v nuture argument could go on forever with both these examples but surely it's impossible to ignore the obvious message.

I've spouted a lot of anti smacking stuff but I haven't claimed to be perfect or superior, in fact I haven't even claimed not to have smacked my own children! I just don't condone it and think parents who think it's acceptable are not looking at the bigger picture. As a method of discipline smacking is unnecessary, there are plenty of other equally if not more effective methods. There are very good reasons why smacking is not recommended or used by professionals - why deny it? The only justification pro smackers are clinging to is that it's a quicker and more effective way of disciplining. It's not the best way of disciplining children.
"It never harmed me/my kids are happy" is not a reason to smack your children.

I find it hard to read and even harder to see children being smacked tbh. I have never seen a child that has been smacked doing anything even roughly on a par with what ds used to do regularly (many times daily) so I can never see the need for it. There are always alternatives there are always better ways IMO. When ds was entering nursery seeing the job description for the TA to support him describe him as having extreme challenging behaviour broke my heart as that seemed to be my failing and the autism nature.A few years down the line I got a school report saying his behaviour is second to none so we got there with patience,tolerance and understanding oh and many, many rewards and incentives

I'm interested in the not shouting. I would love to parent without shouting, but I have no idea how to do this! Surely if your DC runs off in the park (as mine has since he's been able to run!) you shout to get them to stop? What would be the alternative here?

Or if they double back when you've let their hand go on the entrance to the park and instead run towards traffic (one heart stopping moment 6 months ago!). OK, that's an extreme example.

DS is very strong willed and constantly pushing the boundaries, including when we're out (I don't drive so we walk & get the train a lot). We've been working on him not running off with lots of praise and games where we say stop and go, just for fun. However he still will run off sometimes. How could I do anything other than shout then? To be clear, I am not just raising my voice so he can hear me. I am shouting "DS! Stop now right now or you will be in trouble!" (after he has already ignored me saying it nicely!). What else could I do when he's charging toward a dangerous situation?

If I could drive, the alternative would be to drive everywhere I guess, but then he'll never learn!

I shout so rarely that mine stop instantly if I shout so I only ever shouted when there was imminent danger. Mine have run towards the road but that one shout "No! Stop!" was all that was needed. I think it was probably shock more than anything else tbh because they never heard me shout.
I do think that if you don't shout the volume levels in the house drop significantly. Anyone who came here always commented that the house was unbelievably calm and quiet considering we have five children and two of them have autism.
There are disadvantages to not shouting though dd has found raised voices in school very frightening although that could be down to the autism and my ds who doesn't have autism thought he'd discovered some hidden skill when he realised he could get certain teachers wound up enough to shout and enjoyed that for quite a while Oh and the same ds believes we have a genetic defect as apparently in Drama he was told he wasn't shouting but talking loudly and he really couldn't make his voice louder.

insanityscratching do your DCs run off a lot though? I wonder how much it's my shouting, and how much is DS's character? It seems to me that other children seem to have an invisible piece of elastic - they get so far from their parents and then come back. DS is absolutely fearless and simply doesn't have this!

From the moment he could walk he was on his own path, which is very rarely the way we should be going! He never toddled along happily with the grown ups as I have seen other DCs doing, he was always wanting to be off on on his own mission. It's only now he's old enough to talk and engage in make-believe games that us grown ups hold any interest for him! But he will run off at some point pretty much every time we go out. If it's in the park, then it'll be when it's time to go home. Or just because he fancies running off somewhere, perhaps with another DC's ball. If we're going to the train, it's a real struggle to get him to hold my hand, but he has to as I can't trust him not to run off on the platform.

He's a lovely, very bright little boy, but he certainly does like to test the boundaries. Constantly. My friend has a pond. It's DS who's ended up in it not once but three times! If I didn't shout when i saw him racing towards trouble what would I do?

He's 3.5 btw.

I wonder how much people who say they don't shout actually have children who are less challenging on a constant daily basis than my DS can be? (My mum friends do find him more challenging that their own DCs, this is not just me saying this!) Or if DS is challenging partly because I shout?!

Only once (so far) in the potentially life-threatening situation of him trying to insert things into an electrical socket.

Well they are all different. I have two with autism ds was a runner dd never has. Out of my other three one was worse than the other two. It was different with the ds with autism it took a lot more training because he couldn't understand my chatting and didn't particularly care whether I thought he was behaving well or not but with the others like most things I catch them being good and praise them. So as we got to the door I'd say "Now I know you are so clever that you know to wait at the gate for Mummy" and sure enough that's what they'd do. At the gate I'd say "Fantastic waiting. Now we need to walk sensibly near the road I know you are very sensible so I don't need to hold your hand do I?" And along the way I'd chat point things out and keep praising them all the way. If they went too far in front I'd remind them that only sensible children didn't need to hold hands and praise them for waiting for me and then we'd carry on as before. The consequence of not waiting or listening would be they'd have to hold my hand for a short while. Of course peer pressure helped as well so noticing that their sibling was walking very nicely was an incentive that was used liberally too

yes when necessary

Thanks for the reply "Now I know you are so clever that you know to wait at the gate for Mummy" and sure enough that's what they'd do. At the gate I'd say "Fantastic waiting. Now we need to walk sensibly near the road I know you are very sensible so I don't need to hold your hand do I?" And along the way I'd chat point things out and keep praising them all the way."

I'm doing all that. It does seem to be making a difference recently, but he still runs off a lot. The running into traffic really scared me! He'd been doing well, so I trusted him, but he literally ran as fast as he could towards the main road. he didn't stop when I shouted, I caught him up, running as fast as I could (I am overweight and was carrying lots of bags and he had a pretty good head start) and literally floored him - I didn't mean to but I reached out to grab him and he went over. He was 2 metres from the road and going at full speed (having run about 5 from the entrance of the park). It really shook me up, I feel I nearly lost him that day, and so he has to hold my hand on all pavements now except a few which we know well and I've judged to be relatively safe. I don't let on this is because I don't trust him particularly, I just say we need to hold hands to keep safe as there are cars around. Sometimes we do role reversal and he pretends to be me, and that works well!

I dunno, I guess I'll keep trying. I do think we should too much, but really don't know what else to do!

Can anyone recommend a book along the lines of "How to talk so kids will listen" that's less American? I'd like to get a book like this to read myself and share with DP, but I suspect the American language will put his cynical streak into overdrive!

He's probably just not ready yet to be allowed that freedom. My dd was and still is little Miss Sensible and could trust her from really small. Ds1 was one that was easily distracted and more strong willed so it took longer but he got there eventually.

Threeleft, shouting when there's danger is totally understandable and often completely necessary. But if you find yourself shouting a lot, then it's time to change the situation. Have you ever used reins with your DS? It sounds to me like he's just not ready yet to walk on his own. He hasn't learned how to walk sensibly so you can't expect him to do it, just like you wouldn't expect him to read a book if he hasn't learned his letters yet. Some children walk sensibly from day one, others need a lot of supervision for a long time.

I guarantee that if you keep a very tight rein (literally or figuratively) on him for the next six months or so and really monitor him carefully then you will see an improvement in his behaviour. But you must do it incredibly slowly - you can't jump from supervising him carefully to then allowing him total freedom, it's too much for him. You could start by holding his hand/putting him on reins up until you're literally within a metre of the park, then letting him go where he can't possibly run away (put yourself bodily in his way) and say "Let's see you walk sensibly into the park." If he does it, huge praise, then move on. If he doesn't say "No, we're going in the park, let's try again next time," put him in the park and forget about it. Let him do the metre a few times and if he's reliable move to 3 metres. You might have to go back to square one again at some point, but he will eventually get it.

The main thing that helps with this sort of behaviour from your point of view is to see it not as naughtiness but as a gap in his knowledge. Yes, other children know how to walk sensibly, but he doesn't. That's ok, not every child knows everything at the same time. As a parent it's your job to teach him the things he doesn't know and to go at his pace. Some things will click really fast, others will take an infuriatingly long time. But you just have to hang in there.

He wouldn't wear reins! I think in retrospect they could have been a great idea from the beginning, but he's 3.5 now, and putting socks / trousers etc on is a huge battle most some days! There's simply no way he'd tolerate reins.

I hold his hand at all times on the pavement now (with a few exceptions) which he took massive exception to at first ("no mummy! I can't hold your hand it makes me wobble!" - cue tantrum and me having to carry a very big 3.5 year old else we'd miss our train. He kept this up, every morning for 3 weeks! I started to worry there was genuinely something wrong that made him feel off-balance!) but he accepts it the majority of the time now - and we leave the house earlier now to leave more time to resolve stand offs. His best friend has been able to walk without holding hands for a year now, I'd taken the cue from them, but I see now DS does need longer.

I still don't see the alternative to shouting though if he runs off with another DC's ball in the park for example. Would you not shout then?

It's impossible for a small child to insert items into the live part of a (non broken) UK plug socket, just FYI.

Cailin I love the way you put that - not seeing naughtiness but a gap in knowledge. That's a really good way to think about children's behaviour, especially young children.

Hmm, but shouting isn't going to get the ball back. I'd run after him and tell him that the ball didn't belong to him and give him a chance (with help!) to work out that the right thing to do would be to give the ball back. If that wasn't working then I'd tell him he had until 3 to give the ball back, or I would take it off him.

With any kind of behaviour management the first rule of thumb should be "Is this going to help what I do want to happen?" - So for example, if at bedtime stories are a major part of the wind-down, relaxing process, it is counter-intuitive to remove stories for bad (ie, usually, overtired) behaviour at or before bedtime. If the stories are merely a nice extra, then they could be removed as a consequence of e.g. messing around and not getting changed.

Threeleft- your DC HAS to be physically restrained .If he is apt to run into traffic the stakes are just too high to take a chance while you tinker around with different methods of discipline.

Does the shouting work threeleft?