To think I only really have anger to get compliance from my children

[Summerslams]

Bracing myself here because I know I’m going to attract a certain amount of critical amount of critical comments here, but … I don’t seem to have any way of getting my children to comply with me without getting angry / raising my voice.

Yes, I’ve read the books. I’ve tried telling them what to do not what not to do (they ignore me) two choices (they refuse both) speaking firmly and authoritatively (I might as well be pleading) using praise (they like it but not always helpful in the moment.)

They are five and three. I know three especially can be a tricky age but I hate the fact all I really have at my disposal is anger. (I know I’m going to get ‘what are the consequences’ and if anyone can give me an effective consequence for a three year old I’m all ears!)

I have made them cry for three days in succession and would obviously rather prefer not to do so fir a fourth but I’m really struggling to manage them when they just bloody well ignore me nine times out of ten.

Spot the replies by people who haven’t had kids this age for a looooong time.

you just make them! You’re the adult!

ok sure

This whole post is gold dust.

The plant example, how is he allowed near a plant? He sits the F down and eats...... If dinners not ready he can play. If he doesn't then he's removed and put somewhere boring. You need to create a shutable time out space.

100% agree with this. I wouldn't have plants in reach.
The rule at the table is you sit down and stay in your chair and eat nicely. If you won't do that then dinner is finished so get down.

On the one hands I’m right there with you and I have days like this… so I know exactly what you mean and also know why you’re asking for people to be really specific about HOW you would actually ‘make’ them do anything. Because it can just feel completely baffling and people say do XYZ and you just think yeh but then what?

However ours reached such breaking point with such shocking behaviours in this house that I’ve had to really dig deep for some other ideas so I will share those and I hope they help you!

I think you’re absolutely right to recognise that you can’t ‘make’ anyone do anything, even when they’re tiny. And ideally we don’t want to shout or emotionally manipulate them into compliance. Because yes it works but everyone ends up feeling like shit and long term it’s not going to help either.
I have found a key part to getting compliance is connection. Try and focus on this long before there is even an issue. This helps them later want to listen to you and want to please you. This has helped me so much.

Then when whatever the difficult moment comes, you want to speak calmly, clearly, lower your voice if anything! Make a specific point of saying as little as possible, and as calmly and quietly as possible. Work on ensuring you say what you mean and mean what you say. Tell them you’re not going to remind them/tell them/ ask them again and mean it. State clearly what needs to happen and what will happen next and then follow through straight away no further reminding. Over time they will start to realise you mean what you say.
Remember that a boundary is about your behaviour, so it needs to be something you will do, not something they will do.
So it’s not don’t hit me. It’s I won’t allow you to hit me. And then don’t allow them to (for example).
Another examples:
1)The cushions stay on the bed
2)leave the cushions on the bed or we will have to leave this room.
then if they don’t listen?
3)I won’t allow you to take those cushions off the bed. I’m taking you out the room now.

Over time you keep doing this cool, calm, no shouting, completely in control of the situation, firm boundaries, mean what you say etc, and they start to get it. And that’s when ‘the look’ comes in, aka the mum stare. You will find they start to get in line and even just a look lets them know you mean business. And equally they also want to keep that connection to you!

hope it helps!!

Are you a single parent doing it all on your own? It sounds like it is just you.

If you have a partner, how are they handling it?

Wholeheartedly agree 👏

I do think you can tell tbh <cue clamours of NO I have 18 month old twins and 3 yo triplets and all you need are boundaries>

I know people would gone in on the plant 😂 I don’t GAF about the plant, point is, all you’ve got really is don’t do that or I’ll tell you not to do that again.

Dear OP, just here to send so much love to you! I have one strong willed DD (3) and some days she is so reasonable and the days progresses beautifully with just a firm "Ah-Ah!" or "No thank you, Alice!"
And then there are The Other Days.
The days when I could say: "sugar is sweet" and she would say "No it isn't." and on those days at least once, I'm going to make her cry by raising my voice because she just will not fucking listen to me and treats everything I ask/tell her to do as an option to be either debated or outright refused until I snap.

I can only imagine that with two egging each other on, this side of things can be really exacerbated. I would suggest you just keep doing exactly as you are. Start calm, do your best, and on the occasions that you shout see it as a natural consequence of kids being maddening sometimes ❤️❤️

No, what you've got is the opportunity to not make it an argument in the first place.
Easier for everyone to just not have a plant in reach (or breakable ornaments etc) than to police whether they touch it.

I always put my Christmas tree inside a play pen for example, so that I don't have to spend a month fighting over touching baubles or presents.

No, you remove the kid. That's rhs part you're missing. At this point I'm not sure whether deliberately or not.

@Summerslams
I have two the same age gap as you and the years between 3-6 were the most challenging definitely. My two are incredibly strong willed and we are currently going through the assessment process for ADHD with the youngest.

I think you need to be prepared to be really hands on at this stage. Don’t try to get chores done (apart from very basic, quick ones) - they need lots of supervision. Lots of active play with you joining in, lots of time reading/singing with you.

Telling them verbally to do/not do something isn’t enough. If they won’t fold the washing or stay on the step or tidy up the mess - you do it alongside them. They need to actually see with their eyes what it looks like to eg tidy up toys or clean up a spilt drink. Telling them isn’t enough - don’t forget their language skills are developing, not secured. Giving a really simple clear instruction of a couple of words followed by a pause for an action followed by praise can work well.

E.g. “pick up the sheet” (you show with a corner of the sheet) - wait for them to copy - “pull it hard” (show and wait for them to copy) - “fold it here” etc etc

You say the little one doesn’t respond to consequences - very normal as she’s 3 and working out that’s she’s her own person who exists separately to you and has free will. How does she respond to you when you frown or say you’re sad or shout? Does she seem sad too? Does she laugh?

I am a primary teacher and in my experience, the only way to get children to do what you tell them to do is to have built a positive relationship with them first. Then they care about upsetting you - they care about consequences as they don’t want to let you down or fall below the expectations you have for them.

What do you do with them to build those positive relationships every day?

This is fab advice

Anger never works, it makes them feel the victim and they are never going to listen to you or the lesson you’re trying to give whilst they feel that way.

I always took the approach of explaining WHY what they did was wrong, listens to his reasons and feelings. then explained how it made the other person feel/what the consequences of his behaviour were and helped him understand empathy and putting himself in other’s shoes (including pitting himself in my shoes if it’s me he has upset). I genuinely can’t think of a single time I made him cry from shouting at him.

My son is 15 now and we have always had a fantastic relationship, we get on so well and he confides in me so much, things about which I don’t think a teenage boy would usually ask for advice from their Mum! He has said a number of times that whenever he has felt nervous to tell me something, every time we’ve talked the thing through and I haven’t shouted, which he says makes him feel more confident to confide in me again in the future.

Trust me your relationship with your children, their trust that you respect them and their confidence in confiding in you will hugely benefit if you can find a way to discipline your children calmly, respectfully, listening to their feelings and opinions, letting them feel heard, helping them understand empathy for others feelings and saying sorry when it’s you on the wrong.

Best of luck 🌷

Mine are 4 and 6 so similar. I also feel like a shouty mum too much sometimes.

we do use time outs. I set timer on my phone they sit on bottom step until time up. 4 and 6 min. They have to say sorry and come to attempt to fix problem or they go back. But it’s fucking relentless. I feel like lots of my day is spent timing time outs.

What stands out in your posts, OP, is that there is a lot of telling your DC what not to do, rather than setting clear expectations so they know what you do want them to do eg 'When we sit down at the table to eat, we stay sitting down at the table until we've finished eating.' So you could try telling your DCs what's going to happen next and what to want them to do, so they feel a sense of structure. Are you holding eye contact when you talk to them, keeping them still by holding their hands? Using the word 'No' to set expectations - 'No, we don't strip leaves off plants.' If they continue, 3/5 minutes sitting on the bottom step.

It all sounds very noisy. There's a difference between ranting and speaking firmly. My mum terrified us by doing the former so I taught myself to do the latter as a parent. Sometimes, this meant repeating the same thing 10+ times in exactly the same tone - 'Please pick that duck up and put it back on the side of the bath'. If you don't want to shout but do, you then have to manage your distress that you too behaved badly.

Do they 'help' with domestic chores - loading the washing machine, sweeping the floor, weighing ingredients for baking, weeding, putting toys away - tasks that give them a sense of achievement shared purpose with you?

Invest early, reap the rewards for ever.

Typo

but that is how it is for plenty of parents. I think kids do better when they know the rules. It makes the kids feel safe and secure. You can be a less strict parent if the kids know the framework for what they can and can’t do. Consistency and clarity are the most important things. (Actually sleep is really important too!)

no one on this thread( I don’t think) has insisted that their method will work for every child. I think everyone understands that. You have to work with the kids you have.

My son put himself in time out once. I asked him what he was doing and he said he had swiped his brother and was doing 5 minutes. I said ok and left him to it.

I take it using Duct Tape to stick the 3yo to a wall isn't a go-er?

No suggestions, sorry.

Just keep shouting and buy some strepsils.🍹

I have ADHD, so I have many traits which make me not especially cool or consistent, and at least 2 of my 3 have ADHD, which makes their behaviour especially baffling/challenging. I only found out about my own ADHD when DS1 was 8, so I went through the worst of it where we clashed constantly without any idea why it was so hard. The younger two are 10/13 years younger than DS1, so I've done a single child and close in age siblings, essentially separately.

The youngest is weirdly the most active and won't sit still and needs to be on the go at all times but seems the least ADHD out of the three of them, in the fact that he actually has impulse control and can understand being told off and tries to follow rules and work things out and think them through. (The others have had very little of any of this).

Anyway there have been absolutely times where not much worked. A lot of my parenting has been extreme trial-and-error. I often felt I was firefighting, which is what I call the bit that you're doing. Like they're all over the place lighting metaphorical fires and all you can do is chase after them trying to put them out. You can't very well not put the fires out, but you know that putting the fires out is not solving the actual problem, and to make things worse now there's all this (metaphorical) smoke and broken stuff everywhere, which just makes it easier for them and harder for you.

I'm not saying the ADHD thing to diagnose anyone, because there can be other reasons that parenting is hard. I am just saying it to illustrate that there can be patterns which underlie everything which can be a sort of self-feeding cycle in that the traits in me which meant I was lurching from moment to moment trying to react also meant my children had more moments than most children and were less responsive to "standard" advice and also meant that I was missing certain steps of the "standard" advice which are obvious to everyone else (apparently) but are not stated so I didn't know I was missing them.

But also because everything was a disaster it kind of meant that I was trying to attack things at random, any time a "fire" broke out and realistically that wasn't making a dent in any of the more significant structural issues which were things like - our house was a tip, my default learned reaction was panic/irritation, we had no set structure to our day, the kids had too much screen time until I felt guilty and would pull the plug with little warning, bedtime would drag on so they were tired/our mornings started late, their toys were all shuffled up and mixed or bits lost etc, I was too burned out to play or give much positive attention, we often would not get dressed out of PJs, it was hard to leave the house, mealtimes were a bit of a disaster, I would let things go until they were a "fire" and then suddenly react (etc etc). So I often felt like things didn't work, but realistically - the advice was for someone who had their shit together and I really did not. You might not be as bad as I was, this is definitely describing me at my worst and it wasn't like this all day every day and TBF probably not all of these things at once but each of them has been an issue at least once.

The only thing that really helped was sticking to trying to solve one issue at a time and really making a very clear and consistent effort on that thing, understanding it wouldn't be perfect, understanding it wouldn't change immediately, understanding that other things would get in the way, but it was still worth persevering and making progress anyway. What I would advise my younger self would be to sit down, of an evening - use the time that they are asleep, and imagine that you were going to appear on a TV programme, maybe something like Supernanny.

You don't have to share it with anyone but if you look at your day to day life and imagine it through the lens of a TV programme, what would be the 3-4 issues that you'd expect the programme maker to focus on? Or if you could imagine say 2 things that you would love to wave a magic wand and change. Then try and think of ways that you could really set those specific things up for success and/or work on the skills associated with those things, and/or set up the environment or expectations in advance so that those things will work more effectively. And make that your highest priority over the next 2 weeks or so, as a sort of experiment. If you are too tired to do it now, make tomorrow an observation day instead and make notes throughout the day and then encapsulate it into a few things. See how it goes.

I remember those days, they’re hard. I think there is some good advice on this thread.

Is the other parent in the picture and what’s their approach. You can’t pour from an empty cup.

My point wasn't primarily about a laptop (that was an example of how my DCs are differently motivated, and how it's a long-term, shifting issue), it was about parenting being persistance not a magic quick fix and involving trial and error and finding what works for your children as individuals.

At 3-5 it's usually about removing the child or the object of that particular issue, distract, anticipate and prevent issues. If I'd recognised patterns like DS getting hangry years earlier, life would have been much easier. Are there patterns of when they play up more? Ultimately it's consistency of action that gets results down the line. It doesn't have to be one action, just reliability.

Some children are harder than others, and unfortunately that means harder work for parents. Mine certainly threw me plenty of curveballs especially around those ages.

OP I started a thread not long along quite similar, more along the lines of asking what people mean by ‘I just wouldn’t have that’ and got some funny replies! Just tell them this is what’s happening and don’t stand for it etc. not everyone has a strong willed kid and if you don’t then you’re lucky 😂 I’ll get flamed but not really bothered… I’ve realised mine don’t really care/think through consequences although I still give them before I get jumped on but what I mostly do now is just talk to them like actual people, not baby them or this talk calmly and they will listen bollocks because mine will not. So if my daughter threw the washing off the bed and wouldn’t pick it up I’d just say don’t come asking me to play in five minutes cos the answer is no, you’re not being nice so neither am I and I’d either play with her brother or put the kettle or in something. She’d either be picking the washing up in minutes or looking for someone to play with for the next half an hour cos it wouldn’t be me. For young kids they seem to understand this more than me explaining why it’s unkind to launch the clean washing around. Same with stop messing around, if they don’t do it after me asking a few times I just usually raise my voice with a I’ve asked you to stop that now I’m telling you

Just because our dc are older now, doesn’t mean that the techniques I’ve explained weren’t effective when they were much younger!

@Summerslams our dc definitely didn’t have phones and iPads until they were much older. I don’t see why yours not having them is making things harder for you.

Do they have a good bedtime routine and plenty of sleep ? That was definitely key to our household working well too

Ok, this is just condescending towards people who are trying to help you. Have it your way then, the only way to get your children to listen is to shout at them until they cry repeatedly, every day. No one on here has ever had (or has) children of that age and none of them ever managed to control their children in any other way.

@BertieBotts it probably does sound like it’s absolute chaos but it isn’t, far from it. They go to bed as a good time and sleep well, they wake up and have healthy meals and snacks at roughly the same time - the odd bag of crisps for bribery purposes sure but generally we’re good, they have hobbies, go to school / preschool, have friends and birthday parties and outings. All the things you’d expect to see in place for children this age.

I am finding my three year old extremely trying and thus have less patience for the older one. I don’t think they are awful children or anything but they are a difficult combination of high energy in one case and stroppy / stubborn in the other.