URGENT .... Need advice on a discipline thing ....

[ghosty]

Hello
DH and I are livid with DS ... he is in his room now howling.
In the last two days he has deliberately destroyed three christmas presents ... He was severely told off yesterday for breaking two of them and when he laughed in my face I gave him a smack and spent a lot of time in his room.
This morning he snapped the aerial off his remote controlled car (well, it was a present from him to his dad, for him to play with).
We are fuming and have decided to make him take his own remote controlled car and maybe something else that he got for christmas to a charity shop to give to someone who doesn't have nice things like him.
Is this a good punishment do you think? I can't stand this blatant disregard for toys and possessions ... he is a very lucky boy to have what he has ... we live in a nice house and he has nice things and in the light of all those poor families involved in the Tsunami I just can't bear him growing up to be such a spoilt brat.
My DH was fit to be tied this morning ... he gave DS a smack too and he never smacks ...
Any advice????

Thanks for all your thoughts everyone
We did take his remote controlled car to the Salvation Army Store and it was bloody hard. I didn't want to do it but DH was adamant. DS cried and cried and cried ... he didn't believe we did it. I made him carry it in and give it to the lady. He said, "Please give this to a boy that hasn't got any toys" ... I had serious lip wobbling going on myself ... I am never doing that again. I really think that DS has learned a lesson here, it was harsh and although I feel awful about it I think it was necessary.
There has been some attention seeking going on, particularly when we are all together as a family ... DH and I had a row about it today ...
Basically DS worships his dad and his dad loves him to pieces, but DH has to share his time between DS, DD, the house and garden, and lastly me at the weekends (I don't demand that much attention, I promise). Whenever DH is cuddling DD (11 months) DS wants to join in, gets too rough, gets told off and sent off, DH then carries on playing with DD and DS is miserable. I try to make it better and try to distract him but today (classic example) I was in the middle of cooking dinner ... it was really difficult. Then DH felt bad and they went and played a mad game of football and DS got over excited and it ended in tears ....
I have told DH that it would be better if he was a little more consistent rather than 'full on' one minute and 'distant' the next but that ended in DH getting in a strop with me and telling me that I was saying he was a bad father ... Which he IS NOT ...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Sorry for the rant, just need to get it off my chest.

G thats does sound awful

Oh, Ghosty.

I told my dh today to use a less tired and jaded voice when asking Bob to do something (meaning that he would get more co-operation if he made it sound fun and urgent). He took it to mean "you are a poor quality father" and went to wait in the car.

He did sound more upbeat for the rest of the day though!

Did the Salvation Army person get a wobbly lip?

ghosty, I was a destructive child. I particularly liked chewing the feet off my Sindy dolls or scribbling on the margins of my books. A bit of me didn't see it as damage, though I knew it was. But I didn't think my Sindy with chewed feet was no longer mine to love or the book was useless because it had my pen marks on it. I still wanted to play with them. It was a way of me making my mark on my toys, just as I made dresses for my Sindy out of tissue paper. I don't remember feeling great remorse that a toy had been broken, even when my parents told me off. The toy was my toy, not theirs, and I still wanted to play with it just as much, so in my eyes it hadn't been broken in the same way as in my parents' eyes. They didn't make a huge fuss.

OK a remote control car is easier to break than a doll, and some toys, especially modern electronic ones, need to be in perfect working order. I just wonder though, did your son, and could your son, still play with the toys he had broken? Even if he was cross at the time, and didn't want to do anything with them, any chance he might have played with them afterwards? A lot of construction and transformer toys are based on the idea of breaking and making.

I think mimsie's approach, saying it's up to him what he wants to do with his toys, is very good for this reason.

I also think cheap toys are great because no one has to be very precious about them. I loved my broken plastic dolls house furniture just as much as the special wooden furniture I got for christmas. I didn't automatically value my quality toys more than my trashy toys, even though I knew some toys cost much more than others. My 5 year old son has a huge box of toy army vehicles and men, all cheap, most of it broken, but he playes with this stuff all the time and prouldly shows it off to his friends. Ditto his toy cars. He does get upset if he breaks something by accident or on purpose, but after a while, usually plays with it again.

I do know some children place much more value on keeping their toys nice. My husband was like this as a child. It mattered to him that his toys were perfect. He gets cross with me that I have less regard for our possessions than him. So I don't want to generalise, just giving a viewpoint from someone who was a destructive child.

The other thing I wanted to say was this: how much do you think your son actually likes toys? He might just prefer people. My oldest son never got into playing long imaginative games with cars, lego etc by himself. He would only play if a friend or and adult was with him. When he had no one to play with, he much preferred chatting to us and doing anything (good or bad) to seek our full attention. He is now 10 and still like this. Just having nice toys around the house did not make him play with them. If I take him into a toy shop there is hardly anything he's interested in. His 5 year old brother is so different. He loves immersing himself in imaginary games with toys, oftern the ones I bought for DS1 that never got played with

Hi ghosty. Sorry you're having a bit of a rough time with the wee man. Feels so shite when you can't seem to get through to them, doesn't it? I know you will find a way through it though.

I think that tigermoth's post is very interesting. Though I wasn't deliberately destructive as far as I remember, I too wasn't particularly careful of my possessions as a kid- there were many incidents of dolls getting haircuts and felt tip pen makeovers, book pages being ripped, etc etc. I don't know if the two things are connected but I also tend to think of my kids' toys as theirs to do what they like with, unless something dangerous could occur by leaving them to it. If they broke something deliberately I would certainly not replace it and I would probably make it clear that I thought they'd made a mistake- because I would be genuinely angry in the heat of the moment, like you were, ghosty. I'd say something like "I feel very cross that you broke that toy. I/whoever bought it thought you would like it and take care of it, not break it on purpose." (and then witter on crossly. undermining my clear short message until I felt better!) However, I would definitely then leave them to reap the natural consequences of their own destruction, even if, like tigermoth's younger son, they didn't seem unduly bothered playing with the broken toy.

I'm guessing that the real problem here is to do with the attention-seeking aspect of this, honey? It sounds to me like your son has got the idea that the way to really, really, really ensure your and dh's full and total joint attention is to deliberately break a toy. Some children seem more prepared than others to risk even quite scary wrath from their parents with this sort of behaviour. I don't think it is always necessarily to do with lack of positive attention and doesn't sound like it is in your case, though upping the praise for anything even vaguely praiseworthy is always worth considering when you're in a rough patch with one of your kids, IMO. One of my twin sons tries to elevate this sort of behaviour to an artform- especially when told off about something. He has a strong sense of his own dignity, combined with a love of the dramatic, and seems to find it almost impossible to calmly accept situations where he feels powerless, responding by using any trick he thinks might restore him the upper hand in the power and attention stakes- laughing in our faces, using really unacceptable swear words, hitting his brother or saying with deadly seriousness "I'M NOT GOING TO LIVE WITH YOU WHEN I"M A TEENAGER!". He clearly thinks that we will certainly crumple under one of these counter-attacks and (apart from the teenager comment, which I find hilarious) I have to say he is pretty much spot on in identifying from past incidents which of our buttons to push in order to provoke a sure fire reaction. The only thing that has worked to get us out of previous horrible feeling cycles of escalating bad behaviour/telling off/worse behaviour/more telling off or punishment/even worse behaviour etc etc is by banishing our own emotion and dealing with him as matter of factly as humanly possible. This usually happened only when we'd stopped seeing his behaviour as abnormally dreadful and were therefore able to either ignore him or, if necessary, dole out justice more dispassionately- e.g. quiet but firm "time out now", lead him to room, ignore all laughter, protests, expletives. Calmly return him ro room if escape is attempted- no conversation. At end of time out a short "Ready to behave? Ok off you go." No immediate post mortem to draw attention to his crime, no further punishment for same reason. Might plan a conversation for a calm moment in the future if it's an ongoing problem.

This feels so different and so much more positive than responding in a spirit of gobsmacked rage combined with churning worry about his character and prospects (and, oh yes, I do know where he gets his dramatic streak from!) which was essentially the trap we were falling into- and I'm sure will do again next time he comes up with some behaviour we find shockingly unacceptable. I don't know if any of this will be helpful for you right now, stuck in the middle of it all, but I think and hope that when you and your dh start to accept that toy breaking is a fairly normal, if not acceptable, phase of behaviour and that, in some ways, your boy has been pretty darn clever to pick up on the fact that you (understandably) find it particularly frustrating, things will improve. Really hope it will be soon.

(btw, in case a 5 y.o perpective helps, I just asked my son what I should do if he broke a nice toy on purpose and he said, "Wait till I'm being good and then fix it for me!")

Can I just say - and Ghosty, this is absolutely no criticism of you at all - how much I agree with Tigermoth's post. I also 'destroyed' toys sometimes. I remember dismembering Pippa and hurling her out of the window once because I was cross about something. Also cutting dolls' hair off etc. I would have been extremely suprised to have been punished, and I didn't expect them to be replaced or mended either. They were still my toys. Breaking things belonging to other people would have been quite different, of course.
BTW my son isn't interested in toys either. I sympathise very much with the jealousy re sibling thing as am thinking about how to handle this after my baby is born in Feb. It clearly isn't easy. But maybe your dh could make a real point of spending one on one time cuddling your ds so he doesn't feel like he's been displaced. It's my HUGE worry atm (that and the lack of cash!!)

Also agree with Scummy that your little lad has worked out that the way to get total attention is to break his toys - so shrugging and saying 'Oh dear' might break that cycle.

I used to chew my Sindies feet off too - I thought I was the only one.

Much sympathy, ghosty - and your dh sounds spookily like mine (super defensive in the face of perceived criticism). It's hard work, isn't it ?

marthamoo, re sindy's feet: I can still remember the satisfying sensation, can you

Ghosty, my husband grew up in New Zealand and said good toys were very hard to come by. That was the sixties. It seems not much has changed. I hate it when my sons smile at me after I have told them off. I didn't mention that in my last post - sympathies.

Scummy, my youngest has a strong sense of his own dignity too - he gets in such a rage. As you say, a calm packing off to his bedroom is the only way to break the mood, later followed by a talk to ensure he feels listened to.

Aloha, sorry to hear you're feeling apprehensive about sibling jealousy. If I remember rightly, your son can express himself well, so hopefully he can tell you how he feels about his new brother/sister. That's got to be a major plus.

You are all fantastic ... and I feel so much better now that I see that DS isn't some kind of monster child like that one in Toy Story ... I was beginning to expect awful torture things happening to his teddy bears!!!
Scummy, thank you soooo much for your long and eloquent post ... and you are (as always ) so right.
It is an attention thing ... and tigermoth, you are right too, he doesn't like playing on his own ... he will play for hours with anyone but if he is on his own he needs constant help or reassurance ... or I simply need to watch him doing stuff. One of my big regrets is that I left it so long to have another baby ... but then I originally was going to have a 3.5 yr gap, not a 4.5 year gap but I had an MC didn't I? ... We should have planned a 2 year gap but I had PND ... Oh well, this is the way it turned out so I can't get my knickers in a twist about that can I?
DS has amazing techniques to take the heat away from him when he is in trouble ...
An example: He was in his room for hitting his sister (or something equally horrible) and was howling ... when I put him in there I told him to stay there and he said, "Forever??" ... anyway, after 5 minutes or so he was still howling so I went in ... I opened my mouth to tell him to stop making such a fuss when he said, "Mummy, do you know why I am crying?" I said, "Because you feel sad for hitting your sister?" and he replied, "No, I am crying because I will never know Daddy's Grandma 'cos she died when I was 2..... waaaaahhhhhhhh waaaaahhh!" ....
I was floored and speechless, I mean, WTF????? So of course all the heat of the misdemeanour was gone and we had to have a big cuddle and cry and talk about what Great Granny was doing in Heaven ...
We have several instances like this ... "I miss Grandma" and the best was "Why did the baby Jesus die?" We don't even go to church!!!!!!!
I have to face it, he is far too bloody clever for me ....
Anyway, sorry for the long post again ... it really helps to off load.

my ds1 doesn't value toys much either, but i am now beginning to look at it as a positive rather than a negative. i think we have to teach or condition a child to want things -. we have had so many broken toys over the last 4 years and i had so many high expectations of how i thought he would like them and play with them appropriately which i now realise there is no appropriate play with a toy - its all valid, even if they take the thing to bits - they are at this age just trying to make sense of the world and i have been guilty of buying both my ds's toys which are a few years too old for them. you can model the way a toy is suppose to be played with but if its fragile then its going to be a possiblility its going to break. if he likes taking things apart have you thought of trailing car boots/recycle centres/charity shops for stuff like radios, typewriters, cameras and let him get it out of his system.my dh and i have vowed not to get sucked into the whole xmas frenzy next year. we spent about £300 on presents, food,days out etc. after 1 day, my ds1 (nearly 5)went back to his favourite activities of drawing, making dens from old sheets and my ds2 (19months) has gone back to his favourite things which is playing with his toy football, tickled and being sang to! i've said to my dh the greatest present he could get would be a cleaner for 2 days over the xmas holidays so i could be a serene happy mummy that could spend the time with my children instead of being a grumpy, stressed out old bag!

Message withdrawn

Ghosty, I truly believe there's no such thing as a perfect gap - my pattern is so similar to yours: PND, then a miscariage, so my "perfect" two year gap turned into five. Your ds also sounds eerily like my ds1, strangely enough- he has cried about never knowing his great grandma too (I never knew her, FGS ) My theory is that my ds1 has been here before...

LOL at the thought of your ds turning out like Sid - Sid, if nothing else, has an extremely inventive imagination

He'll be fine - he's not a pyschopath in the making and you're not a bad Mum. He's five and you're muddling through and making it up as you go along - just the same as the rest of us. Best thing about kids is that they don't know we're winging it - they think we know what we're doing

tigermoth - I can so clearly remember that strangely satisfying rubbery resistance as you nibbled away. Weirdly enough (as I am not a hoarder) I have kept all my Sindies and their clothes ( mostly lovingly knitted by my Mum). I got them down from the loft when we put the Christmas decorations away on New Year's Day so my friend's little girl can play with them when she comes round. Wonder what she'll make of the lack of toes?

Ghosty, I missed this, just wanted to say how I sympathise.

Ghosty - lots of good advice on here. I shall keep coming back to it as I need it!

Just wanted to add (as a fellow mother of Feb 04 DD) that no age gap is right. I have 18 months between mine and while most of the time DS behaves pretty well, his attention seeking is definitely related to the attention DD receives. Recently she has been very cute and it's being commented on more and more by friends and family. You can see his brain working overtime on how to get some of that for himself. It's not going to improve when she finally learns how to crawl and can get hold of his toys

Loved the tears about the Grandma. Maybe he doesn't need toys after all - far too bright!

ghosty, my oldest son used that deflecting blame tactic too. Just like your son, he used to cry about not knowing dead relatives. I wonder if there's a secret manual they all read.....