To think that the whole 'naughty step' concept is tosh

[mrsruffallo]

It is isn't it? Does anyone even keep it up? Naughty step, naughty corner, the whole concept seems wrong somehow. Yet it is always the first thing advised by many self proclaimed parenting experts. Don't you think it's time we called them on it?

I might at some point have said I don't like the words naughty and no

But that doesn't mean we don't have boundaries and I don't ever stop my child from doing something or consider some behaviours unacceptable. It's just that I think there are better words to use. No and stop it can be a bit ambiguous especially in a very small child - to quote from a blog I liked a lot when DS was younger: "...what exactly is the no to (breathing, walking this way, walking at all, swishing my dress as I do so, looking at that pebble, singing that song)? In the time it takes you to add something specific your child might not actually be stopping."

I know that sounds silly because it is obvious to us as adults what the problem behaviour is but in very young children they don't always know, and it usually is when they are very young that we insist on using "No" as a word to magically stop what they are doing. There is a thread every week asking when babies will understand it. They don't understand it - otherwise all languages would have the same word for no. We teach them the meaning of it by stopping them from doing something as we say it, but there are more descriptive words. Hot, Mummy's, yuck (dirty). You can get a more immediate and direct result by describing in one word what you want: Wait, gently, careful, look, show me, can I have it, drop it, over here, etc etc.

Does not mean you never say no but using another word as a first resort is not difficult to get into the habit of doing and it's more useful (IME).

As opposed to naughty, which I think I've literally used about three times ever: that hurts X, that makes a mess, it's too loud, it's annoying, it's a waste, it's dirty, it's rude. Not here, go there. Not this one, that one. Not like that, like this. Again giving instructions. Walk on this side, carry with two hands, play ball outside, inside voices, etc ad nauseum. I just don't find it a useful word or concept to declare an act to be naughty. I do understand the comparison to illegal activity but it's not fear of jail which stops me punching somebody in a pub, it's knowing that it is wrong to hurt other people.

If somebody else said no or naughty to my child I wouldn't mind but I choose to use other words myself.

This was just what I needed to read today Bertie. Thank you

You're welcome.

I wonder if Jeffrey's mum put him on the naughty step.

It was definitely a thing 20 years ago, in the US.

I couldn't see how it would work when a child could get up and walk away and turn the whole concept into a shambles -- child gets up, mum chases after her and puts her back, adds on more time, child gets up, mum runs after her and puts her back, adds on more time, etc. I agree with Bertie about better approaches.

I never used the word naughty. I preferred 'uncivil'. For DD3 who was prone to long tantrums, I used to bring her to her bed and tell her she could come down again when she was ready to be civil. She knew what this meant and would come down again when she had returned to earth. The rest of them were amenable to repeated reasoning and also to the odd shout of STOPITHATRIGHTNOW.

Bertie

"Keestrel where did I say nobody does this? I said it doesn't work and it isn't practical. Doesn't stop people thinking it's a method and trying it."

What you said was:

"You don't have to calmly and positively discuss every issue though. That is also bull. It is a fallacy invented by people who like the idea of a system that enables them to rule by fear/power/bigness "

To me, this comment implied that you believed that the idea of reasoning with children as the standard approach to bad behaviour was a straw man/distortion invented by people who like "to rule by fear", in order to discredit kinder methods. ( I don't really see how else it can be read.)

In response, I was pointing out that to my knowledge, this was an idea that was taken seriously in the 90s, and NOT by people in love with power and bigness. Unlike you, I WAS a mother in the 90s, I was paying attention, and I did read/hear/personally experience this. The strategy was advocated by "experts" in newspapers and on Radio 4 for dealing with toddlers, and I knew several families who were very anti-authoritarian (not people who wanted to "rule by fear" who believed in it and used it.

Yes, of course books also came out in the 90s advocating more sensible ideas, based on a better understanding of psychology, in part to counter these problematic beliefs. That is one of the main reasons why, fortunately, things have moved on.

Ok, then I was mistaken and I apologise, but I still think that they must have explained the idea very badly or something because it seems bonkers that anybody would believe such a system was workable. Perhaps the generally accepted ideas of parenting were so extreme the other way that it needed to be radical in order to differentiate.

I still know quite a few parents who seem to think that any telling off, saying no to your child, identifying any behaviour as naughty, any boundaries at all, is a bad thing. They would gently explain and discuss until the cows come home, even as their child is being dangerously violent.

I have even been told by another parent that it's best for children not to be given boundaries.

It's as if in reaction to the attitude to children in the past – which was brutal, beating them etc – some parents have gone to the absolute opposite extreme, you can never upset, oppose or control your child at all.

It seems obvious to me that there's a middle way. We do a lot of explaining and reasoning. I don't just bark "Be quiet!" I explain that we need to let other people in the cafe enjoy their coffee in peace, for example. But you can do that and still have firm boundaries about what is not on. So if the kids refuse to be quiet, I'll threaten that we'll have to leave, and follow through if necessary.

But I do sometimes feel like the ultra-permissive parents see me as a terrible ogre because I will draw a line in the sand.

Perhaps, we are all at different stages in understanding various things. I know when DS was younger I didn't really do boundaries as strongly as I do now because I didn't really know how, or that I should, if that makes sense. I naively assumed that if I always treated him with respect, acted kindly and calmly and listened to him that he would return the favour in kind. And this is what some of the websites and books do say. So it's then very frustrating when they don't magically do this and those same websites do not give any advice on how to react. (Luckily there are far more resources out now which are fantastic and do strike the balance much better.) I've met lots of "gentle parents" who tried this approach, meaning very very well and ended up in a sort of awful jekyll-and-hyde situation where they'd be nicey nicey nicey nicey nicey SNAP. And end up shouting, threatening, acting roughly or even hurting their DC which they never wanted to do. And then feeling terrible and overloading with niceness after the fact. In fact it took DH (who was a new bf at the time) to point out to me that this was what I was doing because in my mind I was doing everything "right" and then when I lost it I just thought I was failing or not good enough. That wasn't the case! I just wasn't managing the situation appropriately in the first place which was leading to uncontrollable meltdowns from DC and then from me because it wasn't that I had no way to deal with it, it was that it was an undealable situation by the time it had got to that point. It then took me a long time to learn to follow through, to learn where to draw the line, to understand that it's possible to draw the line without having to be scary or unreasonable, but mostly to accept that this idea that if you're always perfectly nice to your DC then they are always perfectly nice back is fallacy, and people who claim that it works are actually just very good at subconsciously reaffirming the boundaries of behaviour they won't accept, perhaps without realising that this doesn't come naturally to everyone, perhaps doing it so subtly that they are not even aware of doing so themselves.

It is true that you don't have to be overly punitive, it is true that you don't ever have to use sanctions which you find to be harsh or arbitrary, it is true that children do respond to explanation and reason, it's also true that there are ways to set boundaries other than attaching punishments to them, but it is not true that boundaries are unessential and it is also not true that you can use ONLY reasoning and it is not true that being perfectly nice to your children at all times will magically make them lovely and nice to you back.

It's also the case that some people are very good at setting boundaries and others are terrible at it, and it's a skill which you can learn and which is extremely useful in ALL kinds of communication, not just with children.

That's a great post Bertie.

Bertie you are the voice of reason. That should preface quite a few parenting books

Well I wish DS thought my voice was reasonable