Alternatives to smacking, advice please!!

[Noop]

I have two lovely boys but I have got into smacking them and I'm not happy about it. With ds1 (now 4) it seemed to be the only thing that worked but now we try and take away toys (after a warning). Smacking him now just seems to make him violent. Ds2 (2.5) is starting to be naughty and sometimes scratches me in the face, and it makes me so angry I find it difficult not to smack him. But I don't want to smack him! So I'm not sure what to do. I think smacking is ok to stop them doing something really dangerous when they are too small to reason with but after a certain age I think it is really counterproductive. When they were babies we did attachment parenting and coslept and we still lay down with them to put them to sleep. They are really happy caring little boys - apart from when they are naughty! I have had quite severe depression ever since ds1 was born and i wonder what effect that has on their behaviour.

Any advice gratefully received...

I agree with you that smacking is/becomes counter productive. With DD (also 4) we use time out/naughty step and consequences - no toy, cancelled jolly, no pudding whatever. If there's a particular behavioural issue, I pick a calm time to discuss the behaviour, why I don't like it and ask her how we should deal wth it/what the consequences could be.

It sounds like you need to find some space when you become angry - I've found that my 'interventions' are much more successful when I manage to override my own (instinctive) responses and Ican stay calm, has positive influence on DD. But yes, I'm sure your depression has an impact on that, if not their behaviour.

Could you get some counselling?

good luck

There are basically two approaches you can go for. One is to replace the smacking with a different punishment, so naughty step, removing toys, screen time ban, etc, and perhaps introducing something like a sticker or star chart for good behaviour. Or the other approach is to try and reduce (and eventually eliminate) your reliance on punishments completely.

The way the second option works is complicated to explain because it's not a quick fix like just replacing one punishment with another one. But I think it really helps to reduce conflict in the home generally. The basic principle is to move away from a general idea that they are being "naughty" and try to work out what is driving their behaviour, and fix that. So e.g. if they are being aggressive through frustration, you show them another way to deal with that feeling (and separate if necessary for immediate damage control) If they are jumping all over the furniture, you think okay, they need to let off some steam somehow, and make an effort to get out at least once a day to a park, or soft play, or swimming, or see if you can enrol them in a club of some sort, maybe nursery even?

People tend to be put off this approach because they think it means "let your child do what they want", but it's not. children do need boundaries, it's just about thinking outside the box to provide those boundaries without causing unnecessary conflict. The other misconception seems to be that it's just all about reasoning which is pointless with very young children. That's not really true either, yes it's best to talk to them about their behaviour, but that's not always enough, so often there are other more immediate ways to deal with things which fit in with the UP philosophy.

If this sounds like something you want to learn more about there is a long thread in parenting called Unconditional Parenting Support Thread. You don't need to read all of it, you can just jump in at the end. It's interesting for another point of view/another option to deal with a problem even if you decide it's not for you :)

What I found is that it helps to differentiate between behaviour that requires punishment and behaviour that can be managed in other ways. I am not opposed to punishment per se but I have always found it works best if it is infrequent. With a 2yo I would try hard to keep it to a minimum.

Using a deep (but not shouty voice) often helps- and dropping an octave when you want to make an impact. (Dh struggles in this department as he has a naturally shrill voice which goes up into a falsetto when he gets stressed- but a bit of training has helped him.)

Thinking ahead helps= if you are approaching the kind of situation where they might be tempted to be naughty due to boredom (e.g. supermarked queue) give them a job to do or start an interesting conversation.

Lifting them out of harms way can help.

Removing things they shouldn't have or want to use in the wrong way can help.

Never tell them to do something more than twice: after that, remove the object/lift them out of the way/take them by the hand and lead them to where they want to go/put their coat on- calmly but briskly. Eventually, they will learn that Mummy gets her way, so they might as well cooperate.

Ignoring tantrums can help.

Pretending that you are so calm that they can't upset you can help (doesn't matter if you're seething inside- fake it! )

Don't think you have to make an instant change in their behaviour through punishment- child rearing is work in progress .

Cool idea Pootle, I'd never thought of discussing what the consequences could be with ds1! I tried it today when we were having a cuddle and he said he'd rather not be naughty in the first place! I wish...

That is really interesting, Bertie, I'd never heard of Unconditional parenting before, although I suspect we already have some of those ideals.

I think the thing I struggle with is how to react in the moment when they are being naughty, especially when they are violent. I just ordered Sears "The Good Behaviour Book" so hopefully that will have some helpful advice, but I'll check out Unconditional as well.

The cuddle response was lovely, he knows it's naughty and doesn't want to be (is he doing it to push your buttons and get a reaction? Can you distract/divert his attention before you get to that stage? Can you remind him that he told you he doesn't want to be naughty and you'll help him not to if you go and read this book/do whatever?).

The violence I understand, I've simply said in low tone "that's unacceptable behaviour" or "no" and diverted/moved her away.

Take snippets that work for you, keep talking to him!

My daughter is still very young - but she has a rebellious streak! I give her three fair warnings (because of her age, to make sure she realises that she is behaving badly first). If she messes up again I give her time-out, it works a treat. When her time out has finished she gives me a hug and says 'sorry'.
It take a while for it to work but well worth the effort - that Supernanny really knows her stuff! ;-)

We actually saw the ed psych at the children's centre about ds's violence towards other children and adults (he's 2.9) as it was distressing me so much and stopping him from being able to engage with other children. We devised a time out programme with her which has worked brilliantly alongside other things - we decided that time out should only be used for very specific behaviours - in our case, violence, and ignoring, positive reinforcement, changing the environment etc should be used for anything else. One thing which she said which I found helpful is the time out is not meant to be a punishment that you use for an indefinite period, it is meant to eliminate the behaviour and if it doesn't do this within about 6-8 weeks, it isn't working and you need to think about alternatives (for example, think more about the consequences of the violence for the child, does it mean they get their own way, are they frustrated about something else etc). I was highly sceptical of this as he had been violent for over a year, but in actual fact it did work like this and after a month of using time out every time he was violent he has stopped being violent and we have only had to use warnings of time out in potentially violent situations. We had to be very consistent and I always had to hold him still in time out - he wouldn't sit there himself. Also, we didn't do the supernanny thing of a minute for every year as 2 mins seemed like an amazingly long period of time for him, instead we did time out until he calmed down and had stayed calm for the count of 10. I held him facing away from me and looked away from him, and did not talk to him beyond 'You need to calm down and be friendly before we can go back'. We had thought a lot about this behaviour before and I only tried time out reluctantly as most stuff I had read said not to do it before the age of 3, but it has worked for us. Also made me feel much more in control, before I was saying 'no' very firmly and making him apologise (he refused) and having no impact on his behaviour. Now we don't even say no, it's just straight to time out if he is violent.
I found 'The Incredible Years' by Carolyn Webster-Stratton helpful too, she talks about time out in there.

My DSs are nearly the same age as yours, and I have never smacked either of them - I was (occasionally) smacked as a child and remember feeling angry and hard-done-by - also that my mother had lost control, which was true: it didn't make me regret my behaviour.

I understand what you say about what to do in the moment. If they do something I consider really bad (mainly hurting the other one) then I make them stand in the corner until they say sorry - in a Supernanny sort of way: very calm and if they run off etc., just replacing them in the corner and reminding them why they're there. I don't have to do it very often.

For other behaviour - snatching things from each other etc., I say: e.g. 'No snatching' and make them give the toy back. Then I say 'DS1 (or whichever) had it first, so he is going to play with it, and when he's finished he'll give it to DS2.' When the toy gets passed across, then I praise DS1 for that, and ask DS2 to say thank you.

After reading various childcare books (a good one called 'Sibling Rivalry' - can't remember who it's by, but useful), I try to do the old chestnut of praising good behaviour a lot (and looking out for it to praise), reminding them both of what good behaviour I want, and also keeping on looking out for opportunities for one of them to be kind to the other (passing something out of reach, giving them a hug when they're upset etc.) and suggesting they do that, and praising them when they do.

Hope this doesn't sound prissy. I am far from perfect, and it is all aspirational. But I really believe that smacking and shouting just model bad behaviour for them to follow, and that working on fostering good behaviour is better (and not getting too worked up about the inevitable infractions as long as the general direction is good).

Really agree with everything Cory and BertieBotts have said - it's about directing behaviour towards a better place, rather than just punishment and reward of whatever comes up.

Good luck! Two boys are fab.

Time Out for behaviour which is socially unacceptable - so its not so much a punishment as simply reinforcing the fact that people who cant behave nicely towards others cannot take part in whtever everyone else is doing;
Logical Consequences - if you go through Mummy's handbag and lose her purse she will have no money to buy you icecream, if you scrath Mummy in the face she will be unhappy and too sad to draw with you this afternoon;
Praising positive behaviours and ignoring negative;
Having said that, my daughter was a rabid slapper of faces when tiny- until she was slapped back on one occasion and promptly stopped! So much for the 'right' way to do things!

Just adding on to what wolfhound said about snatching, I'm a big fan of "turn taking" rather than "sharing" for children under about 3 or 4. So instead of saying "Share nicely" - your average 18 month - 2.5 year old isn't going to understand what you are talking about, or have the developmental ability to cope with the idea of playing with something with someone else. Because they are only just starting to understand that other people have minds, it's still unfamiliar to them that the other child might do something different with the toy than they were expecting, and this is too hard for them to handle. But turn taking is easier to model, it's an easy, short key word to repeat, so "Harry's turn. You wait. Look, Harry's finished now, it's Sally's turn. Thank you, Harry. Well done, Sally, for waiting." - and I haven't found an 18 month old who hasn't grasped the concept within 5 minutes.

Also did you mean the book Siblings Without Rivalry by Faber & Mazlisch?

Yes BertieBotts, I think that's the book I meant - very useful, gave me good ideas. Especially about how to avoid me being the 'policeman/arbiter' and how to encourage the boys to effectively negotiate things themselves (with some help, esp for younger one). Now I try not to (except in dangerous situations obv) tell them to do something immediately (because that's a bit dominating and gets anyone's back up let alone a toddler) but I say 'It's nearly time to do x, but you can choose when. Tell me when you're ready to do x' Sometimes I have to remind them about it a few times, but generally within about 5 mins they say they're ready. It seems to defuse situations a lot. And I get the boys to say 'please' and 'thank you' to each other, and help them interpret each other's feelings ('Look at DS2's face, can you see he's sad? Why is he sad? Is it because he wants to play with a car too? Could you find a car for him to play with?') It is really astonishing how quickly they pick up on that and start doing thoughtful things for each other, which is lovely to see.