to wonder why some intelligent educated people just don't discipline their dcs?

[mayonaise]

Me, DH and our 3 dcs have just had an exhausting week with old friends of ours who came to stay with their 3 dcs. It was a nightmare.

We were friends with this other couple before any of us had children. Me and DH are quite strict I guess, we take the view that the parents are ultimately in charge, there are consequences for undesirable behaviour and the dcs have to pull their weight around the house.

Our friends dcs were rude to us and their parents, never picked anything up and either me or their mum did it, whined and demanded everything with no manners, refused to eat the food I cooked, and one of them was quite mean to my dd.

These are lovely old friends of ours, intelligent, succesful, civilised adults, so what are they thinking letting their dcs behave like this? Can't they see they are going to have such a huge problem on their hands, tbh they do already....

I think you take your own experiences of childhood and they help you understand better if and when your own children behave the same way.

My DS has some difficult character traits that I haven't experienced before, eg he is super fussy about the way his socks feel, he is very awful when hungry, amongst many other things. As I am not like this, it took me a good long while to understand and empathise. I thought he was just fussy and whingey.

You shouldn't feel bad - he's lucky he has a parent that does understand him and help him.

Orm, same. i come from a totally loving family with a mum who considered her parenting. ds1, i just don't get. (ds2 is easy). makes parenting very hard when you have given great thought to you, how you act, your children,and what they need, what they aren't getting. and when you are none-the-wiser, that makes it very hard.

"My DS does show affection in inappropiate ways (smacking, biting, pinching, grabbing, scratching) I am trying to deal with it but there is no instant fix and it takes time to drill into him an alternative and appropiate way to show his affection."

• ummmm how do you know it is affection he is showing????

Totally agree with Orm and Oblomov, I was a very well behaved child with loving, gentle parents who rarely lost their tempers.

I am still struggling to get my head around dd1. Two facts help - a) she is bloody minded and argumentative like her Dad b) she is now being seen for possible dyspraxia and aspergers, which explain a whole host of hitherto baffling characteristics. DD2, mercifully, is just like me

Its never easy. I think if your DD especially is similar to you, the teenage years may be interesting.

< thinks of own "easy" 3yo DD ....>

Unfortunately that sort of thing is all too common. Parents at DS's nursery have a totally un-disciplined son who hits other children, throws things at them, pushes them over, smacks their heads with sticks, and yet they never, ever tell him off or correct his behaviour.

And when someone else tells him off, they turn on that person like hellfire released from Satan's own crypt of doom. "How dare you suggest our little angel did that, you liar" etc.

Fucking cunts.

hahaha@Sno you dont really like them do you?

Such parents are complete idiots; YANBU.

Sorry for holding my feelings back. I really should let you know how I really feel but I just keep bottling it up inside

Seriously though, these sort of people are infuriating. Their horridly behaved child ruins everything and even worse, he has latched on to our DS as a friend. Worse yet is the parent's behaviour which is both defensive and judgemental in the extreme, and quite frankly delusional.

They think their son farts perfume and pisses champagne.

in the end though - if your kids are difficult with you as a consequence of poor discipline - who pays more than you? most of such kids turn out ok. they grow up, get jobs, find wives/ husbands who whinge about 'how you ruined them' - it is the childhood bit that is the problem. the meals refused. the rages. the broken items. the embarrassment as your crapness as a parent shws. the talkings-to in the school office....

if you're friends, you put up with it (and i also don't think this is really a class thing, it just seems worse when people who aren't subject to the stresses of poor housing/ income have naughty kids too.)

I had a very happy childhood (which involved no pudding until dinner finished, and very rare smacking in extremis, but mostly lots of noisy childish fun with my siblings..) i hope my DCS wil have the same. I also think a thinking parent should always reflect on their day and wonder about the why of behaviour as well as how best to remedy it. direct discipline isn't always the best way (managing out the situation is usually much better, though harder in company, or when one has a set engagement)

i will add i have had peopel hint they think i'm too strict, but to be honest, I'm going to have 3 very tiny kids soon and even a little naughty can get out of hand fast with that many kids in a small space....you have to adjust according to circumstance. Others think i am too lenient (such as the mumy who looks daggers at me at playgroup. All DD does is go and play near her (very shy) daughter..then the child abandons her toy. I can't tell DD off for this! It isn't naughty...

drives me nuts too.

Today a Mum spent about 40 mins "trying" to get their DD to leave our house after a playdate (sorry for hated word). This should take 5 mins, max. It's one of my pethates in ADULTS (coming from a family whose relatives would take an entire 30mins standing in the hall to ACTUALLY leave), so when people can't take their kids out of my house at the agreed time of 6.30 so I can get my own 3 bathed and put to bed drives me nuts.
"But darling, really, we must go. Can't we. Now you are making Mummy cross....." and so it goes on - whilst I am thinking "where is the ultimatum with consequence". Sigh.

I often offer to bring the child home myself rather than have to endure nearly an hour of in effectual parenting. My kids can often be right PITAs but I have never had any of this massive kicking up about leaving places. I give them some advance warning (so it's not sprung on them) and then that's it - we are off ....

I studied psychology at uni and now teach it in a college, and can't understand why anyone who has studied it would be laissez faire?! (the comments made about psychiatrists etc) There are tons of examples under different psychology topics on why it doesn't work. And even if they may turn out ok in the end, like one poster said, it might effect the families sanity in the meantime. I try to be strictish with my DD- i never bribe and don't fall into the child centred mentality, but she still talks to me like crap alot sometimes. (she's 9)
I tell her she can't have everything she wants -no-one can- and if she did, she would be a brat and no-one likes a brat. I know of one child who was spoilt and was never disciplined and now has no friends at school and never gets invited to parties. Who wants that for their own kids. It's hard to know if you're doing the right thing most of the time. I used to think 'i'll do this different and that different from my childhood and i know most people think like this and yet why do we never achieve perfection? It only occurred to me as an adult with a kid that if the parents were laissez faire the adults might decide to be stricter, and then those children might grow up and think 'my parents were too strict, i'm going to be a little more laissez faire' that it will just go on forever. Fingers crossed that my child thinks she had a nice childhood.

We had the same with a close school friend and her 2 boys. We stayed at her house abroad (went there specially to see her) and her boys ran riot all day and then screamed/shouted and tore around the house for hours throughout the night.....we very nearly booked an early flight and left but were saved eventually by staying in a friends' empty flat. She later admitted that her boys do this every night but she really hadn't thought that it might bother us and our 3 children (who were all in a zombie like state for the entire 5 days) We spent £1000 to have no sleep and a terrible time. NEVER, ever, again. Some parents just don't seem to think that this might not be the way to bring up children. Sorry if that sounds precious but it's true.

Really pleased this dicussion is still going!

Sassy I have a friend who studied psychology and we've had some interesting debates. She does think children need boundaries. She also seems to have spent so much time analysing behaviour she strongly believes children are always trying to tell you something by their behaviour. I personally think they often are, but sometimes they just want to manipulate or make you feel guilty to get what they want.

Now she may be right and I may be totally wrong. But I have to say her kids are pretty much out of control and not much fun to be around. She does a lot of explaining and reasoning and they do a lot of ignoring and (imo) manipulate their mum by making her feel guilty if she gets at all cross with them.

mayonaise my DH has a doctorate in psychology....

Oh no! Are my kids automatic fuck-ups, then?

Sorry, I meant this as a reply to sassy who I see is a college tutor in psych....

I am a psychiatrist and I think my kid is pretty well behaved and I'm firm but fair but maybe I am just deluded.
My friend is also a psychiatrist and her older boy particularly is IMHO a nightmare.
I am OK with quite a behavioural approach to young children, not overly much talking. Bad behaviour leads to negative consequence (withdrawl of parental attention) should theoretically if consistently applied reduce frequency of bad behaviour BUT you need to do the other side good behaviour is rewarded especially by lots of parental attention and this is quite hard work.
My friend is a bit more analytic and she will look more at trying to find out why they did it. I reckon its a bit beyond a 3yr old.
One day we were at a soft play place when our DC were young under 2. They were in the little kids bit when an older girl came in maybe 5 or 6. This girl started to throw the balls from the ball pit around and then quite deliberately threw one at my baby. She was looking at me the whole time to see what I'd do. I saw red and bawled her out I'm afraid (she'd hit DD on the head and she was crying a lot) .My friend said to me that I'd been unfair. She had noticed that this girl had a baby sister about the same age as my DD and reckoned it was displaced anger. My response was I'm sorry I don't give a s**t. There is no excuse to physically harm a baby.

mamadoc chuckling at 'displaced anger'.... Since when did our toddlers start reading Freud?

I agree with you, btw, the immediate-negative-consequence thing works pretty brilliantly IF consistently applied.. the much harder one to implement long term (cos requires more effort ) is the parental-attention-for-good-behaviour.

mamadoc - sounds like you are a psychiatrist with sense! NOt so sure about your friend...

I think, like everything, one can't generalise about all psych types. But there does seem to be a trend among some to treat their children as little case studies rather than just get on with bringing them up!

Is there a general difference in parenting "laxity" between practising psychologists/psychiatrists and those who are not practising but have studied it?

Not quite the same thing but I trained in NLP (neurolinguistic programming) and part of that training is learning to use positive rather than negative statements. Trying to apply that to a 2yo is quite hard though! Sometimes it's simple - "get off that chair before you fall" instead of "don't climb on that chair" - but other times it's quite hard to frame something you need them to stop doing IMMEDIATELY in a positive phrase! I do make sure DS gets the positive approval of good behaviour - he gets a fair bit of ticking off too! My biggest downfall is forgetting to label the behaviour and not the child - I must remember to get that right or DS is going to think I really believe he is a bad boy, which he isn't.

I have a friend who basically let her children set their own boundaries and rules and it drove us nuts to see them jumping on our dining table, breaking toys, etc, but they are now in 6th form and Uni and the most polite helpful children you could ever want to know. We are not bringing our DD up the same way ......

I'd really like to hear from someone that they know of some DC who were shockers when young who also grew up to be shockers when older. I cannot believe that all these feral DC turn out to be beyewtifully behaved as they grow up - nor that all well-behaved tinies turn into delinquent yoof.

agree with thumbwitch. i find it hard to put a positive spin on a sentence when what i really want to say, AGAIN, is 'don't .....no.... don't". but i do try.
Am intrigued at all this talk of children who are badly behaved, and that this is a direct result of non discipline. this is a very narrow minded view. there are people, like myself, who are very strong on discipline, threaten and DO carry it through. and try very very hard to ignore the bad, praise the good. And yet the child doesn't respond. so that doesn't fit the profile of assuming that if a child is badly behaved there is a lack of parental discipline.

Well I have a psychology degree, am a trained counsellor and a qualified lawyer and I still think that brats are brats

can you change a brat, sunny ?
MN philosophy is that all children are sweet and to suggest otherwise is criminal. but we can't all be inherently nice, can we ?