To hate the whole 'Naughty Chair' method

[TheLeftFelanji]

My friend uses this for her child (4). It just doesn't seem to work and the whole thing is so chaotic! She calls him 'naughty' ALL the time and drags him and threatens him all day. Do you want to sit on the Naughty Chair????!!! Ok, THAT'S IT!!! get on the Naughty chair!!!!!!

I am starting to feel really tense before I go round, it's a battleground. Can someone please explain if this works and how it's supposed to work and if you use this method? ....without me reading having to read a ton of toddler handbooks.

Much appreciated xx

Don't think anyone has said that runnybottom. In fact most people on this thread have said that they use some variant or other of the bold corner. It's just that they choose to call it different things (quiet corner, time out, thinking place) and use it in slightly different ways to suit their own parenting approach.

I very much doubt that someone who takes the time to comment on a thread like this is the kind of person who uses no other parenting tools apart from time out/bold corner and similar.

In real life I don't use these things, but I don't need to have big debates with friends who do because I see them using them as part of a package that overlaps, in places with the things I do as well.

But I have also seen, and I think this is where the conflict arises, parenting in which these kind of tools are the whole of the 'discipline package'. In other words the child is given little or no opportunity to correct the behaviour, and no guidence on what they should be doing instead. They, fairly predictably, go on to overstep the boundaries and then they are punished. They learn what not to do, or what not to be caught doing, but they don't learn how to monitor themselves so it happens less often. If they stop doing it they stop because they don't want the punishment and not because they have learnt a better way.

So - IMO there are ways of handling situations, especially with young children, where you can intervene before you get to the boundaries. Most people on here probably do. We react differently when the boundaries are crossed and because we don't rely soley on these reactions to teach our children, we probably aren't going to screw them up too badly whichever path we follow. Saying 'I think x is more effective than y' doesn't translate into 'you are a crap parent'.

But there are people who don't see discipline as an active process and only respond - misbehaviour/punishment. I do think that this is pretty crap parenting and very unlikely to work long term. I think that this is where you get the situations in which punishments grow into something completely unreasonable because they become less effective over time.

Runny, you keep shouting about how you're obviously right and how you have a great understanding of child psychology but you refuse to actually show that great understanding by giving just one example of evidence which supports the naughty chair.

There's plenty of evidence against. Piaget (who as you will no doubt know is pretty much the central dude in child development) is one example - according to him, until a child is six or seven, they cannot properly conceptualise time. So any time based method is rather meaningless and open to misinterpretation by the child. He supported the use of guided questioning to help the child learn and explore his thought process.

Rousseau made the assertion way back in the 1700s that children learned best from the consequences of their own actions and this has been explored further by all sorts of practitioners.

Montessori emphasised the dignity of the child. She suggested that behaviour written off as 'naughtiness' was 'the occult cry of unhappiness uttered by the misunderstood soul.' Her methods surround treating a child with the respect you would afford to anyone else. A 'naughty' child is an unhappy child who needs support with what is troubling them. Treat the root cause of the behaviour.

Then you can get into Kohn, UC, child-centredness and lots of splinter stuff like Radical Unschooling, but pretty much the mainstream guys agree on natural consequences, and self questioning or guided questioning rather than artificial punishments.

I second 1. piprabbit
2.bertiebotts
3.anastasia
4carmensandiego

Especially carmen; thanks for mentioning child development. Sussiq children are not mini adults they are growingup ffs.

not shouting about anything, and the only thing i'm right about it parenting my own child. You are the ones making massive assumptions, being erroneously judgemental, and unbearably smug.

Piaget....about 50 years out of date there Carmen, nobody quotes Piaget anymore, not least due to highly dodgy methodology and basic assumptions. You could not be less wrong calling him central to any modern theory of child development. Rousseau...you have to be kidding me, this isn't philosophy for beginners you know?

You can do whatever you want with your children. But stop making baseless assumptions about what others do when you don't know how, why, when or in what manner they use a particular practice. And trying to back up your own opinion with such waffle is just irritating.

but you have said you think UP is a crock of shit, I'm genuinely interested why you think that.

Runny, according to you, everyone else is wrong, offering a 'crock of shit' or 'waffle' or making 'baseless assumptions' whether it's based on supernanny, established child development theory (taught currently by major universities) or modern texts.

Yet you have not offered a shred of evidence to support your own opinions.

I don't need to. I'm don't have to support my own opnions. They work for me and I don't answer to you. I'm not picking apart anyone elses methods, I don't need to quote sources as I'm not doing any critiquing. You are.

Theres a little gang of you on this thread spouting off about how terrible the naughty chair is, how damaging, how this or that will happen to the children being subjected to this awful practice. Without knowing anything about those you are judging. Its downright silly, you are pontificating out of thin air.

Piaget is not taught as established current theory, I can assure you, it is taught as history of psych, in the same way we teach freud. Nobody treats it as an actual modern theory, thats absurd. Along with Maria and her century old opinions, some of them sensible, some merely laughable.

You are the one proffering opinions on other peoples methods, not I. You are the one who needs to back it up. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can.

I think you need a very large pan for that chip on your shoulder

I think you must have a sizeable arse to wear such mahoosive judgy-pants.

I'm still waiting for the evidence that Supernanny's methods are based on

erm..she goes into someones house, does her thing, and the children behave better and the parents find they can cope? what more evidence do you need?

I think alot of people fail to notice that what she does is all about getting the adults to face up to their problems, back each other up, and adopt a consistent approach - not just a single method of handling bad behaviour.

If a toddler is too young to reason with, the naughty chair is no good. You just repeat no and remove them from the situation

time out works for my small toddler, are you saying i am deluded in believing this?

frankly pschologists find it hard to prove anything - but you know when something works for you, that it is working...

if 'no' is sufficient for you - great! it doesn't cut it with mine....

I use the step for my ds (now 5) but don't refer to it as the naughty step. He gets a warning, a clear explanation of what he did wrong & how he should behave then gets time to sit & calm down & hopefully absorb what he's been told. It definitely works for us. I have a friend who spends all day shouting at her dd & threatening the naughty step before finally putting her on it for no particular reason. Needless to say this doesn't work.

Arguing over Supernanny is a bit silly as no-one knows what actually goes on. Reality TV shows are heavily edited, light on the follow-up and usually 'researched' by 19 year old runners who are on their summer holidays from a media course.

But assuming it's fairly accurate, the families Supernanny deals with are so apparently out of control that anything would be better than what is going on when she arrives. I think you're right in that most of the effective work she does is in getting the parents to behave more sensibly.

But the 'naughty step' is often trotted out as a brilliant life-changing technique, which I am very doubtful about as a 'best practice.'

Is hauling a child back to a step 30 times (as she advocates if 'necessary') really the least stressful, most effective way of dealing with a situation?

I'm confused about your time out point. Nothing wrong with a time out. In fact, you quoted me making a suggestion to remove a toddler from a situation but you're arguing I don't l agree with time outs? My definition of a time out is simply removing the child from the stimulating situation and giving them a bit of time and space to calm down as they need. Call it a time out if you like.

I'm doubtful that time limits are needed or helpful on this time though, as a parent's instinct is generally better than set time limits and it varies from child to child.

My objection is entirely with the 'naughty step' as a punishment and a label.

Fab post Claire236

Thanks piprabbit