how do you cope when they just wont behave?

[IAmBooyhoo]

my children are taking the piss tonight. they were in bed but my landlord came and the dcs got up to see who was here ( i had hoped they would be asleep before LL got here but no such luck), ever since they have been hyper and i can't get them to settle back down to sleep. they are switching between fighting with each other, running back and forth to the toilet and playing (jumping about by the sounds of things). i have been up more times than i can count already, i have told them loss of priviledges if it continues (it has) and i have even shouted (not happy with myself about that but i am really struggling to cope) i dont mind them reading or playing quietly, but they aren't doing this. when i went up the last time (a few minutes ago) ds1 threw a sock at my face whilst i was tucking his brother in. what do i do? they are 6 and 2.

Booyhoo, I liked that book, but find it hard to stick with books myself, however good they are. It's great because you can just the read the cartoon bits and skip all the writing. Not to self: read the book again!

I did the Triple P course. One thing it talks about is 'escalation of behaviour' where kids behaviour gets worse and worse and worse till you snap. They had a really helpful strategy:

• Ask 3 times for something to happen. If it doesn't happen, leads to consequence. This means it doesn't get to the point of 'escalating'.
• A 'stop' command should be done first time or consequence.

They have a system whereby you have 'quiet time' which is sitting out of the activity for 3 minutes but in the same room. If noise is made, the 3 mins starts again, so 3 mins of silence. If that doesn't work, they move to time out in another room.

Bah! It's so hard isn't it? Much easier not to teach, train or discipline. But they make much nicer kids and grown ups when they are taught well!

thanks merry.

yes escaltion sounds very much like what is happening. i found myself getting very frustrated today when i asked both boys to put the toys from the floor into the basket. really simple task. they ignored me so i asked again, they started to move but too engrossed in dvd. i threatened to turn the dvd off and told them again to lift the toys. sounds like nothing but at the time it really annoyed me. it's a simple request. it took them 20 seconds between them when they did do it. very frustrating.

They did it! But yes, I turn off DVD and they have it back when task finished. Or, they promise to do task when DVD finished.

Marking my place. This is striking a few chords with me. OP sounds lovely to me.