Punishment arguments between family and I

[angryladyboobs]

Ok. ATM DC who is 4 years old has started to lie. Not simple stuff like "no mummy I havent eaten your chocolate". Pretty big things - for instance she has accused my of physically abusing her!. It came out that she said it because she was angry with me because she didn't want it to be bed time.

I've picked her up from nursery this afternoon and she has accused one of the nursery staff of the exact same thing she accused me of. (Same way of hurting her). And it's taken all afternoon for her to finally tell me the truth. That he didn't hurt her at all, he'd raised his voice after SHE hit another child.

I spoke to my father about it and asked his advice. He told me that if she's accusing me of hurting her, to do it! I flipped at him, no way am I hurting my daughter.

Spoke to DP (her dad) and he said if she does it again, smack her bottom. I just told him 'I am not hitting my child'. I don't agree with violence, I mean, some adults need a smack but I'd never hurt a kid, not on purpose.

Aibu about this? I don't want to resort to hitting my child when she's lying about me and others hitting her!.

I'm worried sick that someone will get the wrong idea and I'll have the social involved. I mean, ffs id gladly have cctv in my home just to prove it!!!

I'll find a way to sort this out. But hitting is a massive no to me.

Yes I'm stressed out. Yes I wouldn't mind advice. She knows she shouldn't lie. We've even gone through examples of lying and telling the truth.

Of course you can't hit back what would that achieve apart from reinforcing the idea that adults hurt children? Also i'd be afraid that she wouldn't tell me if someone actually did hurt her for fear of punishment. Are there any books such as 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' or similar which may help? I say this because DD3 has all the road sense of a hedgehog and was driving me nuts refusing to observe any road safety whatsoever until I dug out an old Topsy and Tip book from the 70s, where Tony gets run over and hospitalised and that seems to have made the penny begin to drop for her.

Exactly it'd just be reinforcing it that it's ok for adults to hit kids.

Just pick another consequence for serious misbehaviour and use that. Loss of privileges is a good one IMO because it's not frightening (like hitting or other intimidating punishments are), you're not depriving them of anything important like your love/acceptance, but it is something they mind, it's generally easy to implement - at 4 DS was flummoxed when I switched the TV plug off at the wall (when he wasn't looking!) if he lost TV - and it's temporary so they aren't dwelling on it forever.

I would not take away something big or that was a one off but something like early bedtime, taking something token out of the routine like no toys in the bath or missing out on something like screen time was a useful sanction for us for big things we couldn't ignore or problem solve. Or you could turn it around and say to DD when you go a whole day of telling the truth you get something nice like 30 mins cartoons or an extra bedtime story or playing a board game with mummy, whatever will motivate her. As she grows out of the lying issue you present another challenge to her to work for.

Another suggestion is the marble or pasta jar technique, that works well for many families. But whatever you choose, definitely discuss "serious behaviour" tactics with your DP because if he's okay with smacking and you're not it's something that you'll want to come up with a plan for before the situation where he happens to be the one disciplining her when she's done something really naughty.

FWIW, lots of children go through a lying stage at 4 and it's often a developmental thing that they are trying to see what happens if they say something different - some of them don't understand that saying something different doesn't actually change what happened, that the past is set. They do grow out of it :) Four is too little to generalise examples to real life, but you could keep having lots of discussions about how to tell if something is real or pretend every time anything pretend/untrue comes up. So for example when you're reading a story, when you're playing a game, when someone has a joke, when you see someone in a costume, and if you catch her in a lie. Lying can be a confusing topic because at that age they do a lot of fantasy and pretend play and we tend to praise this and see it as a good imagination but we somehow expect them to know where the line is and often they just don't. (Another point is that this is the age you try to discourage them from being brutally honest e.g. "I don't like peas, they are stinky" "I've already got this one" "Look at that really fat man, mummy!" which just adds another layer of confusion - it's not surprising that they get it wrong.)

It can also help to talk about lying in this way in terms of real and pretend, so you could ask her instead of "Are you telling the truth?" "Is this real or is this pretend?" and then explain that in some situations pretending is okay and can be really fun, but some kinds of pretending are nasty, like pretending that somebody did something bad to you, because that can cause the person to get into trouble. And actually, perhaps she wanted to get the person into trouble - which is another feeling you can talk about and see if you can get her to think of some other ways to deal with that feeling.

Or - sorry another tactic - that it's okay to pretend as long as everyone knows it's pretend. It's unkind to pretend something when other people think it's real, and that is what a lie is.

(This one may cause issues with Santa etc - but it may be far enough away not to worry about!)

Bertiebots thank you. You've helped a lot there. DP and myself have just argued about smacking. I've told him if he smacks her, I'll smack him if he thinks that's such a fitting punishment.

Obviously I have not said this in front of DD, she's currently fast asleep in bed.

He's said he won't smack. But believes I'm wrong in thinking that we shouldn't smack her .

I'll have a look at the marble technique. Thanks

I remember my ds went through the same at the age of 4. It was awful! My stepfather took him to the park and ds said stepfather had punched and kicked him! It soon passed thank god but they were worrying times. I remember telling him the consequences!

Mine is almost 4 and has just started lying. I read ( I read every child psychology and baby / toddler behaviour book going) that all children lie but the ones who keep doing it are those for who it is better for them to lie than face the consequences of telling the truth. I'm trying challenging her gently and saying that it's really important to mummy that she tells the truth and giving her big hugs and hi fives when she does.

When you disagree about parenting it can be really emotional which can get in the way of compromising or finding a mutually agreeable solution.

Something you can try is to both try and identify what the important part is to you. Because at the moment you're just hearing "Smacking is a great form of discipline" and he's (probably) hearing "I'm a total pushover". Obviously you don't want to be a pushover, but it might be that you feel the line is different to where he sees it, so it can help to think what your emotional reaction is about and/or what's important and state things in the form "It's important to me that..."

The problem is it can take some digging down. Because right now you'd probably finish that sentence with "It's important to me that we don't smack our child" which is the same sentiment you're clashing over because avoiding smacking is clearly not that important to him, perhaps because he just sees smacking as less awful than you do, but also because there's something else overriding which is more important to him than avoiding smacking. So take your statement a level further and ask "Why?" to which the answer might be something like "Because it's important to me that our child is not afraid of us" or "Because it's hypocritical" but work this into an "It's important to me that..." sentence so perhaps "It's important to me that we act in ways we're happy for her to copy" (don't use mine, really look to see what's the most important reason FOR YOU not to use smacking) and ask him to do the same - to tell you what is most important to him on this issue - for example, it might be "It's important that she knows right from wrong" or "It's important to me that we hold something back for serious misbehaviour". You can also look at phrases with "I'm afraid that..." to look at the root of a belief and see if it holds up. For example "I'm afraid that if we don't punish lying severely, she'll end up in prison" suddenly looks like a massive stretch.

Then you can have a discussion - even if he disagrees and thinks (as some people do) that it's important for children to have some level of fear of their parents or of punishment. It means you can work out where you are both coming from, whether your views are each as strong as you think they are and if there's a way you can both be satisfied that your values aren't being compromised.

I sort of agree with the above but - isn't lying about physical abuse unusual for children of this age?

My 3 year old tells me about lions in the garden and so on but I can't imagine her claiming we'd hit her! Could she have seen something on TV?

Of course you shouldn't hit her!

As PP have said, it's a developmental phase, as horrible as it is when she says certain things.

Do you know where she's got the idea of people hurting her in this specific way from?

My DD does still like that too. She says that there's robots dinosaurs chasing us when we are driving and points to a car and says "look mummy, a (colour of car) dinosaur!! It's huuuuugeeen! Quick, go faster!!"

She's only just started saying this stuff though. It got a major reaction the 1st time and caused a huge fight between DP and I. I will try some of these things though.

She's supposed to be going to a party tomorrow but I'm not sure she should with the way she's been. You probably think I'm a push over but I need her to understand the consequences of her words.

I don't want to mess up the way I handle this because if when she's older and needs to talk to me about something, I don't want her to choose not to because she thinks I won't believe her.

Yes Nellie that was me.

Honestly the only thing I can think of is sometimes she plays and wants to put something around her neck. (Like pretending she's a doggy and put her lead on or that I'm her horsey and she wants to put a rein round my neck to steer me ). And I tell her no, not around your neck as if it gets stuck or tight it'll strangle you/me. Or if she's hugging me from behind and wraps her arms around my neck too tight (by accident) I'll say to her to loosen up because she's strangling me.

I think at this age the line between reality and imagination is really blurred. My 4 year old tells me the most fantastical stories. She would also tell lies that were patently untrue, like if I told her off and she fell over afterwards, she would say I pushed her, that kind of thing. It's how it feels to her.

Be honest. Explain to her exactly what happens when she lies about you hitting her if that would help. ie that she gets taken away and she might never see you again. Or start throwing away toys for every lie. I agree lying like that is serious and potentially problematic for the whole family.

BertieBotts you are a wise poster.

Children do actually 'lie' at this age, and about who has hit who and why, including their parents. In their head, it's not really lying, it's expressing how they feel about a situation. Try to understand what's behind it. Don't get unduly freaked out, there's not going to be some horrendous consequence, because the professionals have seen this before.

The best single bit of childcare advice I ever heard, was ask yourself what does this child need.? Not what are they asking for, not what is my emotional reaction to them, what do they need?
Reassurance? Boundaries? Consequences?
Listen to Bertie

One of my brothers went through a similar lying stage. My parents tactic was to question everything to show that liars can't be believed for anything.
Such as, if he said "Good morning" they'd reply "Is it good? Is it morning?".
It worked for them but I can't be sure how old my brother was.

I'm not saying you're a pushover OP, it was just an example of what your DP might be thinking when you're blowing up at each other over whether smacking is necessary or not. He might not be thinking that at all either!

I know DH and I disagree about the seriousness of lying in DC - he thinks it's really serious and takes it so personally whereas I think it's just a normal phase. I do think though when a child is being fantastical and using their imagination a lot that lies can get caught up in that, and that's a different thing than lying to get out of trouble or lying maliciously, which is more worrying. As adults we know that saying a car is a dinosaur is a game and saying that X hit me isn't a game but that's because we tend to know what other people will find believable, a four year old really doesn't, even when it seems totally obvious to us.

I'm not sure I would tell her she might get taken away if she lies even if you're saying it about a specific thing because that's playing into a really primal fear of a child's which seems cruel IMO. And there is always a possibility that a child may have to leave their parents to stay elsewhere, whether just for a holiday or for something serious like the parent(s) being in hospital or something like that, and it isn't helpful for them to have ideas in their head that they might have caused it.

The last couple of days have been awesome.

I bought a chart and if she behaves a certain way to get a sticker. For example, no big lies all day and she gets a sticker.

Shes like a different child, 18 stickers out of a possible 22, in 2 days!.

If she hits 25 star stickers by bedtime, we are taking her to a safari park for the day tomorrow (she doesn't know yet, she'll find out tonight if she gets them)

She's also changed her tune on lying, she says to me 'I'll tell the truth mummy, I promise'

I've told him if he smacks her, I'll smack him if he thinks that's such a fitting punishment.