Advent calendar punishment

[LittleMissRayofHope]

Dd is 2.5 and going through a tough stage with defiance and tantrums etc. She's quite advanced (confirmed by nursery and development specialist not just me being pushy partner!) anyway, I have a great big santa decoration with numbered pockets as an advent calendar. Each night I fill tomorrow's pocket with a treat and something small.
This evening she was being quite naughty and I asked her twice to stop what she was doing. I told her I would tell santa and he wouldn't have a present for her tomorrow. She looked at me and purposefully did it again. This happened 3 times and then I walked to santa and told him what she had done. At first she laughed but by bedtime she was genuinely worried she won't get a present and she apologised to me and to santa.

DH thinks I should relent and fill the pocket. I'm not sure.
Is she too young? She will be heart broken tomorrow if there's nothing there.
Stick to my guns or accept the apology and hope she has learnt?

blue - I agree on that point. DS didn't like brushing his teeth, so we got him some tools to make it fun; Own chosen brush, Crayola toothpaste, these weird toothpaste lids that are animals and paste comes through mouth, finger brushes, pre brush gel (use as a game to see who brush the most off in 30 seconds) and of course songs . Works a treat .

Although, it might also be helpful to explain the mechanism whereby a 'no discipline' child comes to understand why they should act in a certain way.
Who's talking about no discipline?

To discipline means to teach, and it involves all the things that we do to teach children how to live. 'Discipline' is not a synonym for 'stick and carrot' or 'punishment'. Discipline involves a wide range of actions that are involved in teaching, including when you have boundaries (and respect your children's boundaries), when you talk to your child about behaviour, when you explain how to behave in situations etc. That children aren't subjected to ^one particular form' of sanction/behaviour modification technique does not mean that they have no discipline.

But actually, your question has been answered and there is plenty of information available online should you genuinely be interested in the topic.

Inthedarkaboutfashion Yes, I agree. I don't agree with children suffering long-term harmful consequences, and I can't think of many people who would. Young children cannot make predictions of consequences like that and it's ridiculous for any parent to expect them to understand and predict them.

Whether he sees you helping him as punishment or not, helping him brush his teeth is not a punishment. It is not your intention to punish him when you do it. A punishment would be "You won't brush your teeth so I'm taking away one of your toys".

multiplemama- that is my point-"He saw me brushing them as a punishment because I was very thorough"

There are ways and means of having children follow a course of action without punishment or rewards.

My dd has not been removed from her group into a group above. She remains with the same key worker and in the same group but they are using different material for her. Her nursery is free flow environment. So everyone interacts together at all times apart from meal times when they are sat down at their respective tables with their peer groups.

Writing the word fabricated with a line through it is nothing short of calling me a liar. I can't comprehend why you have accused me of lying??? Why would I lie? I felt the point was relevant. I have this piece of entirely true information to back up the relevance to avoid any drip feeding and so that all relevant information had been given at the start. So no, I don't regret giving up that piece of real information.

People use words different ways. Punishment is the result of the situation. IE: dd throws her toy on the floor through frustration, I get down to her level and we communicate about why she threw it. Sometimes the root cause is established, sometimes it isn't. Either way, throwing is unacceptable so she is asked to pick it up. If she refuses 3 times the offending item is removed and sometimes a timeout is also used. Sometimes not. I try to read the situation and her emotions instead of having hard and fast rules. But if I have threatened to remove a toy I do follow through, if I threaten time out then I follow through.
Choice and consequence. And she does understand this and it works most of the time.
But that is my choice to parent that way, I appreciate others choose differently.

I think the OP is getting a hard time here, she was only querying yet there's people piling in using the thread as a sound board to harp on about their parenting style and making wild claims about never enforcing, natural consequences etc but as I predicted, when asked a direct question ie. "What if a sibling snatched a toy" etc it comes down to "Oh eh well my children wouldn't snatch"

'Humour, creativity, imagination and love are far more useful tooles than any system of punishment or rewards.'

All are important, too, and praise is far more effective than punishment. Yet, punishment still has a necessary place, whatever you choose to term it.

I cannot imagine a school without some form of sanction. It just would not work. So why should a home?

fan - I agree OP got a hard time.

The thread just evolved from there; like most threads d

*do.

I find it fascinating that a parent would regard the natural consequence of a toddler hitter/biter that they would become alienated from their peers. How long is that going to take when Little Johnny and Little Alfie are forced into a weekly social situation, of no choice of their own, because their Mums are friends?

Far quicker that the 'natural consequence' aka punishment is Johnny gets removed from the situation until he learns it's not ok to whack Alfie round the head with a dumper truck.

Apologies to all parents of Johnny's!

Oh not just their peers- other kid's mother's too, and caregivers. I agree about removing the hitter from the situation, but that's not really a punishment. THat is about preventing further hurt.

Of course removing a child is a punishment - I find it odd that people who only choose perfectly sane and reasonable punishments want to pretend that they're not punishing, but it's best not to look too hard into peoples delusions, as then they'll look into yours. So I'll just nod and agree...

Outsourcing punishment to imaginary beings is really odd though.

Oh, FGS, the natural consequence of nicking other people's stuff is that other people avoid letting you near their stuff. You demonstrate this in toddler terms by taking them away from the other kids' stuff and explaining. You have to do this numerous times because toddlers don't naturally understand logical sequences; it's called learning.

Sorry, I meant to thank you for your update, LittleMiss. You sure provoked an intense discussion!

Yep, removing a child is punishment. Parents who really dont do punishment dont remove chidren from situations when they are being naughty, they just say "don't do X" but don't do anything about their child doing X. They give no concequences for actions other than the real 'natural' ones like other children hitting them back/refusing to play with their child/their child getting hurt. I have met 2 families doing this, their children truely don't get punished for anything.

Those children are all hideously behaved and I make excuses to avoid play dates, plus their children in school had very rude awakenings when they did find boundaries would not only be told, but enforced.

It's a real thing some people do, it's not just weak parenting, the parents are educated middle class types and have read lots of books about children learning natural moral compasses. Unfortunately, they learn it via being a process that includes being hideous to other children for a few years.

All these people who only do natural consequences any not punishment but admit to removing their children from situations / removing toys from their children / not allowing bedtime stories ......yeah ok, I believe that that none of those things can be deemed to be punishments. Of course they can only be seen to be natural consequences because those things have happened completely naturally without any adult intervention
I also believe in fairies and Elfs.......

Garlic, but that only works if the toddler who's getting their stuff nicked don't have parents who override their personal choice and say they have to share their toys. I know I made my children share even when my friends had complete pita kids. Because a) I wanted to hang out with my own friends and b) I knew everyone would grow out of it.

Fred,fred "but it's best not to look too hard into peoples delusions, as then they'll look into yours. So I'll just nod and agree..." I may adopt that as my new personal mantra!

I also agree with Garlic re the discussion. I know a lot of people think this has all been said a million times on MN but I'm genuinely fascinated in the so many different methods we all choose when we're all wanting exactly the same end result; happy, confident and contented adults.

i think a lot of people are missing the point of "natural" it's not about what would happen without intervention from the parent, nothing at all happens without the intervention of the parent really. There's nothing about consequence parenting that is allowing things to run off without you and the only reason you're still thinking we don't discipline.

Natural just means that you the parent follow through from what they did, that you connect it to what happened. You made a mess you need to tidy it - not chores as punishment. You're not talking to me, if you don't look up from your pad it'll be put away - not if you don't do X I'm taking your pad away.

If you don't get you pjs on quickly we won't have time for a story - not if you don't stop messing about I'm not reading to you.

If you can't be trusted to play nicely you'll have to sit away from the others - not time out to exclude.

Not hitting a child, not punishing afterwards, not doing something unrelated.

Not many on this thread can understand the differences unfortunately.

If they weren't pretending that "putting the pad away" or "not having a story" or "sitting away from others" aren't punishments then no-one would have a problem understanding the difference. It's this delusion that's difficult to understand not the choice.

You're better off not to use Santa as a threat to withdraw something she would like to get. And I don't really get why you told the santa as you did.

Now you have I'd just do the note thing and read it out together when she gets the treat.

It's this delusion that's difficult to understand not the choice

Precisely!

That's a pretty big leap from questioning the wording of whether something is a consequence or a punishment to hitting a child! I've never hit a child in my life but I have put their iPad away, and I would regard that as a punishment.

If I was going to give my parenting style a name it would be "The End Game" style of parenting aka laid back to the point of laziness with fingers firmly crossed that they'll all be alright in the end! It seems to be working so far

I have a teenager too, I didn't think it was relevant on a Santa sanction thread, my teen is lovely, she reads the Hobbit to her little sister every night.

I think (I'm no expert) that it starts with your babies having their needs met. Then they trust you,and you trust them as babies too, then it just goes on from there. I never told my babies off, or shouted at them. If one of them crawled to close to our open fire, then I would move them, it wasn't a punishment to not let them get hurt.
Then as they got older I would tell them what I'd like them to do, eg please fun your lovely Thomas train on the floor, instead of don't hit your brother with the Thomas Train. Sometimes little children don't realise the alternative. So it's better to tell or ask what you would like, rather than say what you wouldn't.
Because I haven't punished my children, they haven't lied to me in order to avoid punishment, we have mutual trust, if one of them says something in their honesty I will act on it to protect them, I also speak to my now older children about what we consider right or wrong. I'm not a lazy parent or a laissez faire parent, I'm on my game the whole time from day one and that is why I haven't had to punish them. I know I'm right with regards to my own children.

The thing I liked most when they were little, I never made them say sorry to anybody, but the genuine apologies they would say when they were genuinely sorry really mean something.
Some people don't like it, if you don't do something else. It would never suit somebody whose style is confrontational.