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?

PosieParker just want to take you up on a couple of things. You ask "if its age difference in the house then find something else for them to do". Do you yourself have an 11 year age gap between children? If not then really you would not know the pitfalls. A 3 going on 4 year old needs just as much space as the 14 year old but the 14 year old needs to be close by when around with mates rather than up in his room sometimes especially given some of the mates 14 year old has. Also your last sentence is interesting to me you say "TV is not a necessity, it's not neglect not to have one" which I think is totally true but the on the other hand it's not neglect to have one either.

Funny, when I was a child there was no such thing as 24 hours TV for kids and not that many people had a private collection of videos and so we entertained ourselves. If I had a fourteen year old then they would be in the kitchen/dining room/lounge and the three year old could be in another room playing or helping me.

And time moves on. Used to really hate it when my father started with the "when I was a child, we had no tv, had to walk 5 miles to school with barefeet in the snow" he was saying it in jest mind you

I don't buy all this 'we need to entertain the kids so they need a tv at 4' - my dd knows tv is a treat to be watched in a communal room, not a right for her own room.

In the end I think it all comes down to cause and effect - if kids are constantly (not just now and again) left to be amused by technology and have little firm boundaries they don't learn to amuse themselves and have no outlet to their feelings other than anger, simple cause and effect. Sometimes kids will act up to push the boundaries, no-one's child is going to be perfect 24/7 but it's how you deal with it to make sure they're happy and behaving as much as possible.

And sorry but I'd say anyone who comes into contact with my child has to play by my rules to a greater or lesser extent and gp's are no exception to that. If my dad locked himself in the loo with dd I'd treat them both like 4 year olds, they'd both be told to come out that second (and if not I'd leave them to it and have grave words when they finally came out, using my speaking-to-a-4-year-old voice to BOTH of them). If the gp's want to act like kids, respect their wishes and treat them like kids.

As to the 11 year age gap, there was a 12-year gap between me and my sister and when I was little she just had to accept there were more people to be looked after than just her and get on with it (which she did). If she wanted to watch/do more adult things she had to wait until I was in bed, if I wanted to annoy her friends when they were all in the living room, I was told off - there is a way to coexist. In the end my sister and her friends even used it to their advantage - they'd stick music on, have a laugh watching me trying to dance then tell my mum they couldn't wash up/set the table/clear up etc because they were minding me .

Children are not as happy these days, I wonder why?

Some children are not as happy these days. I think it's sad if you think that of all children. And as I have said time moves on, the 70's/80's were a different time and generation. A lot of us were more active that is a given but we were safer(niavely or not)to go out etc on the other hand I think we were feed more "junk" food. And I bet the a lot of our grandparents generation were tut tutting at all the conveniences our parents had too eg washing machines and microwaves.
Not trying to pick a fight but as I have said in a earlier post. Technology is not a dirty word and if used well as you say wobblyknicks then has its place.
I think the OP has seen the light with regards to that and other parts of her parenting that may have led to the incidents she mentions.

And maybe its because I come from a family of 8 children that I'm so hung up on our own space within the house

Nzshar, your excuse for your child having a tv was to enable your other child have space with friends????
And my children are very happy, just statistically children aren't according to research. I think it has to do with less interaction and imagination, amoungst other things.
Besides I still haven't heard a good reason for all this technology in a bedroom. My children all use a PC very well and are good at games, but give them a tennis racket and good encouragement over Mario anyday.

I think it comes down to how much to follow modern change and how much to use common sense. To me, having a tv in your bedroom when you're 16 seems like acceptable change from the gp's days of walking 5 miles to school in the snow (just how much snow was there?!?) whereas having one at 4 seems like going against common sense.

I understand wanting to give each child space but surely there are 'low tech' ways round that - shove one of them into the garden if you have one, one takes over the living room while you do baking with the other, one plays in their bedroom (plays, not vegs in front of the telly) etc?

I thought I was pretty lax letting dd (almost 5) have about 30 mins of telly a day but she has no clue what a ds is for, has no 'tech' in her bedroom (not even a clock - she knows to get up when I start wandering about) so now I'm thinking I'm turning into my gran

PosieParker I admit I havent got a good reason for a tv in the bedroom in your eyes. But to me its no different than having another toy in there like his play kitchen or his train tracks etc. And I may be lax or follow modern trends but I still find myself saying the same things my mum said to us wobbly

only read op but at tv, dvd, cd player, tv and laptop at 4!!!!!!!!

Enid Posieparker Twinkie and whatever happened to micci25? no doubt busy marking out the boundaries.The idea is a simple one ;no matter what you do as a parent (alone or in league with the other one)you will find that your child will get there without your petty disciplines and rules of the moment.You haven't commented on the well-timed smack yet I can see a deluge of posts on that one all wearily following the same well worn path of reason signposted along the way by the flickering signs 'disciplne''parental right''reasonable punishment' 'love'(always a good word to throw in when the arguments falter).And as in coping with the mummy grump do you look forward to having your leg smacked when you argue with hubby in the biscuit aisle?
As always the son is father to the man; so do nothing least of all confront let alone smack the child will get there in the end and may even like you.

micci i agree with colditz comments

my younger children have not been brought up with 'screens' and i see the difference and embrace it

please do not let you mother 'bully' you by siding with dd and making you feel bad

dd is your child not hers

i just thought I would butt in to say Micci hasnt got a 14 year old in the house - she has a 4 year old only i think

The reference to a 14 year old was because people felt she was treating her dd more like a 14yo than a 4yo

I hope that makes it clear!

Smutney, you're the first person that I have encountered on MN that talks utter shit. Who has mentioned smacking? Personally I have never smacked any of my children and fail to see what that has got to do with the tv. What are you talking about confrontation for? Why would you not confront a child about their behaviour? And no, a child will not get there on their own, without rule and discipline a child may first be run over, set the house on fire, break bones jumping off a flat kitchen roof, never respect adults and not learn anything as they sit outside a head's door, have no friends as they sit on their very fat arses whilst they eat all they want and watch tv.
I cannot believe you live by the crap you're spouting.

posiep
why don't you ask yourself whether its your guidance that stops the fire the jump the break or the fat.It is unlikely that your child will do any of those things except by accident and by its nature that cannot be prevented.You can say 'don't run in the road 'until blue but if that stops anything is another question.As for fat well we all know that to a fat extent the problem lies in the genes.Fat mother fat daughter.
tv? unlikely to have much effect on the normal child,games? even less so.Neurotic parents? well ,like parent like child-unfortunately.
As for 'talking shit'-i couldn't have said it better myself;that is clearly the way to express yourself if all else fails.Perhaps you could mention it to the 'kids'next time they pull you up on the contradictions and generalisitions in your arguments.

Fat does not lie in genes, it lies in the eating and no exercise. Fat mother fat daughter comes from mother having bad diet and no exercise and daughter doing the same.
Guidance is obviously the reason children don't play with matches, etc. And as I have taught my children to be careful near the road they have NEVER run out in front of a car, unlike my nephew who hasn't been taught.
'Kids' is a shorter way of saying children, in RL I say children.
Your arguments cannot come from a reasonable place as they're truly laughable. I have many ways to express myself but just don't believe that you have these views and so I think you are lying to get a response, you talk in 'speech' like sentences with stupid ideas. What do you think it is that stops a child of 4 from being run over, it's not their innate sense of consequence is it?

PP I'd ignore her/him - mad or an attention seeker!

Mmm, twinkie you're right I am avoiding sorting out a couple of rogue cupboards!!

smutney are you seriously saying that teaching DS to hold my hand to cross the road and not run into it does not make him safer . Are you suggesting that small childrne should learn solely by experience and that they will not understand not to run into the road until they'de been hit by a car? Maybe paretns should just keep their fingers crossed and hope the car just wings them and teaches them a valuable lesson. You do understand that even animals teach their children and discipline them - its a survival instinct.

This thread has become truly bizarre.

posie
'innate' now you're talking ,yes probably the best example is in 'hard-wired'language (See S Pinker)which leads to innate sense of justice 'thats not fair' and similar playground chants.Innate sense of fear (for example of heights?most children are born with that) and self-preservation? both have been proved many times over.Fat in the genes? (see www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article1647517.ece )
Arson? very little to do with 'playing with matches' Do you have matches? Have you ever actually said the words 'don't play with matches'or given a practical demonstration of how to or not to or explained the consequences.Have you ever actually seen a child playing with matches? These ideas of guidance and restraint are more theories of perceived 'best parental' practice than truly
thought out.Its more a question of self examination than anything else.

A school friend of mine's mother listened her child scream as her house burned to the ground, with matches. Yes I have said do not play with matches when my ds was at a friend's house and was going to light a candle.
You cannot be serious and blame genes which govern a very very small part of fat issues with the control of diet and exercise.
I don;t think children are born with innate fear of modern day inventions, evolution is just not tat quick.

I have an inherited "fat" gene, I am fat, my mother is fat, my sister is skinny because she exercises daily and eats about half what I do.

most "fat" genes are only a predisposition and can be overcome. Its not like inheriting blue eyes.