am absolutley fuming.....but think i may have ott with punishment?

[micci25]

dd1 4 has always been the apple of every ones eye, or the golden child, of my family and is therefore v spoilt, but lately her behavior has been getting worse and worse.

today we were walking to her nan's where she has her sunday lunch and she was pushing her wooden dog toy along when all of a sudden she screamed and started smashing the toy up on the side of the road!

i asked why why she told me she hated the toy it was stupid and she is glad that she broke it!

as her punishment i told her we were going home she wouldnt be going to her nan's that day but that just seemed to make things worse!

she is not sorry at all for what she did to the toy or telling me she hated me, or slamming all the doors on her way back in the house

her punishment i have decided is that she has lost all priveledges, her tv, dvd, cd player have been taken out of bedroom and there is tv or access to laptop, ds and wii untill i believe she is suitably sorry!

when i went to check on her and see what she wanted for lunch she told me she smashed up her toy because she angry with it and she also angry with me!!!!

i know that this punishment sounds extreme but i have had it up to here with her behavior, she is constantly answering back and just blatently ignoring me, telling me she never gets anything and her cousin has loads of good toys and she gets nothing, she is prone to violence towards me, is constantly in a temper at something .... the list could go on..she is just generally ferral!!!!

i know my punishment seems a bit ott but really dont know what else to do her behavior needs to calm down before she hurts herself or some one else!

does any one have any suggestions or has had similar experiences with wild uncontrolable children?

Smutney, sometimes all people need is support and camraderie and, with time, they can get round to the self-analysis themselves, it doesn't make support less worthwhile. Much as you'd seem to like to, you can't beat 'discovery' into people, it's their responsibility to decide what is right for them. I'm guessing you'd have even less interest in humanistic therapy than CBT but holding someone's hand while THEY sort their own lives out is sometimes the best you can do for them.

There's so much weird stuff bubbling up on this thread about the amount of control parents should or shouldn't have over their children's lives.

Decide for them what they eat (nstead of asking them what they fancy, which is what you'd always ask yourself before making lunch)?
Decide for them what sort of play is best (with wooden toys winning over the evils of technology)?
Decide for them when they should first taste certain tastes (4 being "too young" for any kind of alchohol. Unless you are French, presumably)?

Truly, Micci25, this idea that you have to be the boss and you have to exert control over your child is only one idea. If controlling your child and trying to mould her into what you want her to be is attractive to you, then go for it. But there are other, perfectly valid, ways of interacting with your children, through guidance and negotiation and respect for their autonomy. Not punishment and rewards, not discipline, but something else. There are lots of authors writing books about that sort of thing: Alfie Kohn, Deborah Jackson, Alison Stallibrass (golden oldie who my mum was reading in the 70s), that "respectful Kids respectful parents" book or wahtever it was called...

So please don't take away from this thread the idea that you absolutely have to start being the boss of your daughter, that's just the mainstream opinion. Not all of us live that way. Some of us think DVDs and computers for children are great if the children get a lot out ofthem. Some of us ask our children what they would like to eat. Some of us would certainly give our children a taste of our wine if they showed an interest, just as we ourselves were given a taste of wine as small children (ack eugh gag spit clutch-throat-dramatically, that's disgusting daddy was the usual response till we got older...)

w'knicks
'humanism'? don't get me started! -as we posters say.Do you take your children to church? is religion part of the panoply of behavioural theory.You can't really have both, its god or its man -where do you pin your colours?If its god you can pray for better behaviour if its man then don't be disappointed if all you get at the end of the day is a man (or woman) because that is all you started with and whatever you try to change will fail.You are looking at your mother/father in microcosm.Design your dungeon of total control here.

thanks onward i dont think that i would have a chance of controlling dd1 anyway as she far to headstrong and always has been. also the 'wine' that she drinks is not wine schloer is a kind of pop in a bottle that looks like wine, it was her who decided to call it her special wine, as she saw me drinking wine.

she usually has a choice in what she eats as she is a v poor eater and is v underwieght as a result so if allowing her to choose means that she will eat it then i am happy to do so.

and just to clarify again, the wii is NOT in her bedroom its not even hers it is her dads she is just allowed to play on it when she chooses (or was allowed rather)the ds in n ot even in her room as she is not allowed to take it upstairs

also whoever said i seem to have a lot money, no i am constantly struggling i save all year to get her these things for xmas (well her tv and ds anyway) the dvd player was my old one and her cd player cost about £20 from tesco.

smutney do you post on the Steiner threads under another name? Because you have a very similar style of posting - the same use of inpenetratle language which makes me want to bang my head on my desk rather than read the post.

kewk
simple is best I agree.no tired phrases or words no pretend science no names.But then no boring examples of ididthisandshedidthats either please.Ask a question answer one.Is that agreed?

Kewc - it's the lack of spaces between the full stops and the next sentence which get me. Literally impenetrable and therefore figuratively also impenetrable... And therefore the writer thinks their arguments are rock solid. Smutney, I did get the feeling that your posts much, much earlier on were quotes from some kind of brainwashing cult schooling. Do you also talk in RL without taking a breath?

(And lo and behold, no answer to your Steiner question, kewc...)

I'm inclined to agree with Kewc that this smutty person sounds awfully like a certain middle-aged gent who likes to wind things up in the education thread... The lack of spaces may be a cultural thing, pointing to a continental European poster...

no agreement, sorry - I quite like pontificating. But if you are going to can you leave some more spaces and use words I can understand otherwise my head hurts.

Lordy lordy I must stop pontificating and go get some work done.

WOAH - smutney, back up a bit! Humanism is NOT the same as humanistic theory/therapy! The first is an ethical philosophy bordering on the religious, the second is a psychological theory, otherwise known as 'person-centred' which is up there with CBT and psychoanalysis as one of the main therapies currently used in psychotherapy. It doesn't exclude any religious beliefs but it certainly doesn't directly have anything to do with church or religion.

Seeing as you asked, I don't take my child to church because I happen to be agnostic, so the god vs man debate isn't what I'm talking about here. However, I don't think spirituality of any kind excludes you from the responsibility of raising your child... unless you're planning to give it to a cult which is another thread completely.

Seeing as you don't seem to be clear, humanistic therapy values the person above any technique/theory, which is why I (cynically) suggested it wouldn't interest you as you seem far more concerned with the end result than supporting the poster/mother/child.

And to get back on point, micci, you sound like you're trying your best, it just seems like some of the things your dd is used to may not be helping her behaviour as much as possible. Would you feel able to get her to do some more independent play in the day (playing with non-tv related stuff without you)?

Sorry Duchesse, I don't accept that continental Europe excuse I've worked in Holland and France (and regularly work with Germans) and NOBODY leaves no gaps between sentences...

This smutty guy must be -as I predicted- one of those people who sent me those letters in the past...

Jane - were the letters all angry with no spaces between the start and end?

Neither guy nor European.
Not particularly interested in Steiner. Never a poster nor a Times related letter writer.

You see I can learn.

The question is do we really believe all this behavoural nonsense ?

You never say 'and I am after all my parents' daughter despite all the attempts to improve me'.

why would one say that?

I take it you don't believe this 'behavioural nonsense' so could you answer two questions;

1 - If behaviour/personality/whatever you'd like to call it is inbuilt and can't be affected by anyone else, would a child turn out exactly the same if they were brought up by loving parents setting boundaries or by parents who couldn't care less and the child more or less grew up without parental input(NOT referring to the OP at all, just using two opposites)?

2 - What would be your explanation for the thousands who have CBT and find their behaviour, outlook on life and view of themselves radically changed afterwards?

hullygully
because you are either (i) an improvement on your parents in which case you may say that is because of what you have done
or (ii)much the same -some good some bad.In that case any attemt to make you behave better had little or no effect
or (iii)completely different -which suggests anything they did was perhaps a waste of time
or (iv) a little bit of everything - more complicated than behaviourists allow for.

yes that is why we are having her day more structured to ensure that some if her time is spent 'doing things' rather than just sat watching tv which she was never really keen on anyway, most of her time was spent diving all over the furniture!

her free time without me is encouraged not to be tv she has a choice of tv, playing with her toys (which is what is encouraged) playing with any of the computers, a lot of the time she likes to put on dancing shows for dd2 or continue with her learnng games/books.

she is far too active and imaganative to spend too much time using any of the things she has (apart from my laptop, she likes the dora games and cbeebies). i think it just the fact that she has been given so much that has affected her behavior rather than the fact that she actually uses these things to an extreme.

giving her set times to do things does seem to be helping atm, although as i said before it is not set in stone that she has to do learning at 8-930am ect she does have the option to change things, as long as that time is spent doing something constructive with me, i.e. crafts, reading etc.

Bravo to Micci25 for ploughing on with her original points and completely disregarding the slightly more tangential material...

wobbly
identical twins studies is really the answer to your question .Ulrike Reichenbach and Cornelia Holzbrecher are the best most recent example.If you go to the 'Sunday Times' site that will lead you to their fascinating story There are of course many other similar stories that have emerged over the years.
They all seem to prove(if that is the right word) that behaviour control in the widest possible sense is pointless.

To be fair to micci25 she posted for experience of others and advice, the strange rantings of smutney have been ignored, as they are not useful on this thread, i'm guessing it's not what she wanted or expected. [eink]eh micci???

that was a !!!

I don't think most parents exercise "behaviour control," I think most parents spend time inducting their children into the agreed rules of the society which they happen to inhabit. "No dear we do not spit on the bus etc" and preferably explain why, so that they have the necessary life skills to negotiate their way through the particular cultural and social mores of their environment. Isn't it just about manners in the end?

Hullygully excellent post, but not just about manners knowing the social boundaries helps children feel secure, to allow them to grow and develop

Indeed. We must understand before we can overcome.