Soft play incident - WIBU?!

[Sianilaa]

I took my three year old to a soft play place the other day. He was playing nicely most of the time but then I noticed he pushed a child out of the way to get on a slide first. I went straight over, took him aside and explained pushing/pushing in wasn't nice and he was to wait his turn. If he couldn't wait his turn and I saw him do it again, he would go in time out. He started kicking off because I'd removed him from the slide and was losing the plot - he ended up lashing out at me.

I picked him up, took him to a quiet bench away from the play area, against the back wall and explained hitting was unacceptable and he would do 3 mins time out. If he repeated it, we would go home. I stood about 1 metre away from him and turned my back while he did his time out. Close to him so he knew I was there but not giving him any attention. I was calm but firm - Supernanny would have been proud!

He was sobbing hard though, but stayed put. About a minute later a woman came rushing over to me, pushed past me and picked my son up and started cuddling/rocking him! She kept saying to him, "shhh, there there. It's not your fault you have such a cruel, abusive mummy. It's ok now."

I was so shocked, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open, catching flies for about a minute. When I got a grip, I told her to put him down and stop interfering when I was calmly disciplining my own child. This woman had a smaller child with her, plus a female partner. She put him down and went back to her partner loudly talking about how awful and cruel and damaging I was to my son. I lost my temper, and went over and said how dare she touch my son and interfere when I was trying to teach him hitting and pushing was wrong and that surely time out was better than screaming/swearing/smacking him?! I walked away shaking like a leaf.

Her partner came over a few minutes later and apologised, saying she had very strong views on discipline and ignorance and that she didn't agree with what I had done but that she shouldn't have done it or been so rude. At which point I said I wasn't ignorant in any way, and that they should be careful who they say these things to as next time they might get thumped by someone or ejected for inappropriately touching a child.

What would you have done?! Is time out cruel?! I didn't smack him or shout at him, but I did have to wrestle with him slightly to get him over to the time out spot I chose.

It's still making my blood boil just thinking about it.

Oh btw... My girl was having strop today after being horrible to her brother. I took her to the other side of the garden, then crouched down to her level to "calmly reason" with her, and promptly got smacked. So I left her to it. She went over and kissed her brother and continued playing calmly after a couple of minutes.

No doubt now that removing her from a situation is the best strategy.

Wow!! Ha ha. Gosh, I hope I never have to encounter such a person. You are not being unreasonable! I think had you concluded that you slapped the lady upside the head, I would only justthink you were being unreasonable.

Your actions , in my mind were completely reasonable and appropriate. A child learns that pushing other children, hitting mum isn't o.k by being told it's not o.k. There are actually pretty much zero circumstances when this behavior is o.k.

Must've been a bit confusing for your ds. Luckily kids have a good instinct for crazies and are pretty resilient.

Let's play bingo!

So far I've spotted:
Mummy guilt from the attachment/NaturalParent crew
A link to internet pyschologist/reporter blog
Lesbian mums
Softpay violence
Basic discipline called violent thuggery (so bad as to evoke a tearful response from one poster!).

Laughable.

Look at the big, tearful, how-dare-you-discipline-me eyes in this:
big-eyed mummy guilt parenting nonsense

OP. The softplay lady was a nutcase. Your methods were fine. YWNBU.

The thing about articles like that "gentle parenting" one posted by Kiwiinkits is as well as being guilt-inducing, they don't actually give any indication of what to do practically.
What to do when your 4 year old has just clinked his baby brother for the bazillionth time? "Give him more attention and explain why he mustn't hit." More attention? No shit Sherlock. Address his needs? He 'needs' his siblings to disappear so he can have mum to himself again 24/7, like it used to be. What if you just can't give any more attention?
The gentle parenters never seem to have an answer and as a method it lends itself to those with low numbers of children, or big gaps between them.
Sometimes, sometimes the only thing you can do is remove the child from the situation. And sometimes they won't like it. That isn't "abuse", it's just common sense.

IMO gentle parenting can work as some children are naturally well behaved, I have 1 DS that rarely needs telling off, he is just finishing infant school and has only ever been moved down on the behaviour board twice in the whole time, once for messing around on the carpet in Y2 and once for pushing a boy away who had just punched him in the face. We have rare incidents at home also, he is just like that and has never hurt other children. The main problem is a bit of 'back chat' which he learns from school most likely as he doesn't have older kids around at home really. I think the label of gentle parenting sounds pathetic though!

Gentle parenting would not work on DS2, he has lots of tantrums and I tried cuddling him to calm him down initially but eventually gave up and a few minutes sat out in the hall or on the stairs means he comes back in by himself much calmer, says sorry, we have a cuddle and all is ok.

It is awful to hear him screaming and shouting in time out but its all over and done with in a couple of minutes and we can move on. It hasn't affected him and we are a very close family.

I have no issues with any form of parenting/disciplining if it works for you. The one thing I can't stand is the parenting that means children either aren't actually disciplined at all or are 'over' disciplined for minor stuff so continue to be naughty or violent towards other children.

If it works who are any of us to judge!

"The thing about articles like that "gentle parenting" one posted by Kiwiinkits is as well as being guilt-inducing, they don't actually give any indication of what to do practically."

Totally agree. They also give no evidence as to being right. I think one thing that we can all agree on is that children are now (and for the last 20 years or so) punished far less than in previous generations. If punishment was such a negative, you would expect the current generation to be better adjusted and have less psychiatric illness than previous generations. There is zero evidence of this being the case. Also, imagine an adult society with zero punishment for crime, would it work?

The other problem, of course, is these books kind of assume one adult per child, so the adult has an infinite amount of time to analyse and discuss behaviour. When you have two children competitively throwing food or refusing to walk when you REALLY need them to (for example), then you have to have a method of assuring compliance.

I think the criticises of progressive parenting here are ill-informed. A child does not need to be punished to learn right from wrong, and the same is true whatever personality your child has or how many kids you have. Punishment just isn't necessary, kind, or mindful. There are heaps of practical suggestions out there, but the point is there are no easy supernannyesque 1-2-3 fixes with kids. It takes mindful presence but most parents don't want to believe this IMHO.

www.nurtureparentingmagazine.com.au/Blogs/25/22/10-gentle-alternatives-to-punishment

the OW is a crazy biatch! i don't think I would of been so calm with her !

Lucky,

"8. Drop expectations and value-judgements

We need to start seeing our child as the unique human being that they are ? not an age, or a gender, or a label, but a person. Children can have intense feelings and needs and some are (at times) loud, curious, messy, wilful, impatient, demanding, creative, shy, confident and full of energy. We must try not to judge their interests, passions or personalities. If we don?t expect them to be doing certain things, in a certain way, on a certain schedule, we can begin to accept them as they are at that moment."

I have never read such a load of unadulterated tosh in my life. It is a recipe for anarchy. So, if my child tells a grown up that they look like poo poo and should go away, I should accept them as "they are at that moment" and not correct the behaviour. Or push another child? Or destroy a £1,000 piece of hifi equipment?

These recipes are ideal for those with infinite money and infinite time and, most importantly, those who don't believe that children should fit into society. It is a recipe for entitled brats (for want of a better word).

And, again, your link is merely a list of "shoulds" with no rationale or evidence behind it.

"Oh and I'd like to thank MN collectively for giving me an utter terror of the idea of soft play places"

To be fair, this sort of thing is rare in a soft play place. I've taken my kids to various soft play places loads of times over the years and can think of only one time that someone made a passive aggessive comment about me disciplining one of my dds.

luckymama, I think many of us have found that there is some kind of middle way between a punitive approach and insisting on gentle reasoning at all times

I am totally anti-smacking (grew up in a non-smacking culture so it wasn't really a psychologically available option iyswim) but I have never found that any one "mindful" technique covers all bases.

if you have a group of siblings including one violent one, then the other siblings do actually need to know that an adult will stop him or her from hurting them straight away, at the first attempt

it is not fair to let them live in fear while you work on your mindful techniques

none of the techniques outlined in your link actually seem to provide a quick remedy to the problem of the child who hurts his siblings

and children don't only hurt their siblings because their parents are not their heroes or don't understand child development or don't give them attention- there can be all sorts of reasons that a parent may not be able to control

but the other child needs to know that the action will be controlled

psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/10/12/kids-wont-listen-8-ways-to-get-them-to-hear-you/
Larry -
There are a heap of attachment/progressive parenting books out there with rationales and evidence to back up their claims. all the examples you gave shows you don't understand the philosophy. It is not saying kids can be anti-social monsters, it is saying kids don't want to be anti-social monsters. They don't need to be punished.to stop 'bad behaviour' because they are instrincally motivated to want to learn social norms if their parent is their partner , not adversary.

"8. Drop expectations and value-judgements

"We need to start seeing our child as the unique human being that they are ? not an age, or a gender, or a label, but a person. Children can have intense feelings and needs and some are (at times) loud, curious, messy, wilful, impatient, demanding, creative, shy, confident and full of energy. We must try not to judge their interests, passions or personalities. If we don?t expect them to be doing certain things, in a certain way, on a certain schedule, we can begin to accept them as they are at that moment."

How do you stop the other children from judging, if they are constantly being pushed out of the way or knocked down or having their toys snatched? Should the shy and timid 4yo just pick himself up and rub his bruises and say "well, I have to accept him as a unique human being"?

The problem with these ideas is that they see children and their immediate families as existing in a vacuum. But children need other children, families need other families, behaviour that isolates you does you harm in the long run.

Goldenbear Mon 10-Jun-13 21:58:34
"My DS manages his behaviour to an acceptable 6 year old level. He has been on the 'cloud' once since starting infant school and that was for shaking a tree. He is near the end of year 1 now so I think that demonstrates that it is actually possible to not use 'time out' and still have a child that can identify right and wrong."

Nobody has disputed that other methods can work well too. That doesn't prove either that time out can never work or that the same method works for every child.

Until someone can explain why the current generation of 20-30 year olds are not significantly and obviously much better adjusted than those 10-20 years older than them, I will not believe that the concept of no punishment parenting is any better (and is IMO worse) than the old concept of positive parenting reinforced with discipline when required.

It is almost impossible to see the advantages of one type of parenting over another on the child or family level (though if there were a "good" or "bad" way of doing it, surely we would not see quite such extreme sibling behavioural variation as we do). However, we SHOULD be able to measure it at the population level with less crime, less psychiatric referrals etc. We haven't seen any of the above.

You could look at that the other way round:

If strict discipline/smacking doesn't noticeably improve behaviour, why not use other methods and try to move human beings away from violence in all forms.

"There are a heap of attachment/progressive parenting books out there with rationales and evidence to back up their claims. all the examples you gave shows you don't understand the philosophy. It is not saying kids can be anti-social monsters, it is saying kids don't want to be anti-social monsters. They don't need to be punished.to stop 'bad behaviour' because they are instrincally motivated to want to learn social norms if their parent is their partner , not adversary."

I had a very good relationship with my mother and still love her dearly. But pleasing her by following social norms wasn't the only thing that was important to me.

I was a child to whom getting my own way often seemed more important than pleasing others. If I thought my little brother needed a wallop over the head with a china doll I would not immediately or easily be convinced that other people understood this situation better than I did.

I didn't see my mother as an adversary or an enemy; I didn't often do things deliberately to thwart her. But if it was a choice between her being thwarted and me being thwarted, the choice seemed pretty obvious to me...

I have grown up into a person who generally speaking accepts the rules of society or tries to change them in socially acceptable ways. But it's taken some time to get there.

My brother's head couldn't really wait for that.

Hully, don't you think there is some kind of middle way, between strict discipline and none?

My mother was not a smacker, she was not an aggressive person, and she was not punitive in her approach. But she would remove me before I got a second wallop in with that china doll. Which is all we are talking about on this thread.

The friend I talked about earlier, the one who only did gentle remonstrance, was leaving her other children open to being walloped. She was a lovely, lovely person, nobody could be sweeter to her children, but the walloper just didn't listen to her. And of course eventually the other siblings started fighting back, what else could they do? Their house was like a constant battle zone, with the tones of "please don't do that" floating unattended between the missiles.

Hully,

I actually agree with you. However, I do think that the current generation of children (middle class children of educated parents are all I am qualified to speak about) are significantly worse behaved than me and my friends when I was growing up, the psychiatric profession has never been so utilised and, with the exception of the past few years, crime has been on a continuous upward trend.

Of course it is impossible to isolate specific factors causing this but a lack of respect for authority figures is, IMO, at least a part of the problem. Everyone feels that their pleasure should come first. I believe that at least a part of this stems from overindulgent parenting where parents are so frightened of being parents rather than "friends" that children have no meaningful boundaries to their behaviour.

I don't agonise very much about the current generation tbh. Most of the children I see have been brought and are being brought up by loving and attentive parents who have still been able to let their offspring know that they will be stopped if they try to hurt someone.

My friend stood out because they were such an unusual household. They were isolated because other parents and children didn't think they had to deal with that, when there were so many easier families to deal with.