Whoever said ignore bad behaviour.....

[hayleylou]

was lying! I have tried ignoring bad behaviour and praising the good and had been doing for a few months but my DS does not seem to learn. I am getting tired of him saying the same thing over and over again... I need help

I found that ignoring ds bad behaviour didn't work. What I do is:

Lots and lots of praise
Ignore tantrums
punish bad behaviour with the naughty step. (bad behaviour being things like biting, throwing toys in rage that sort of thing)

It took a little while but worked for us and I feel in control, whereas I used to feel like ds was in control iyswim!

I think that different things work for different children.

I agree. There is only so much you can ignore I think it depends entirely on what they've been doing... I definitely don't think all bad behaviour should be ignored, otherwise it makes sense that they'll probably keep doing it.

I ignore bad behaviour with ds1 because he likes all punishments I can use with him (espeically shouting, he loves shouting). And yep it takes months to get the point across- actually usually rather than ignoring bad behaviour I try to prevent it. SO if he's climbing on the playhouse rooof (the latest) I take him inside.

Ds2 however does respond well to the naughty step

Whoever said ignore bad behaviour? Distraction/prevention is good, time out (like naughty step)works well and praise too. I am not aware of any good practice suggesting ignoring bad behaviour - where did you hear this?

My HV's advice was to praise good behaviour and ignore any behaviour that we didn't want dd to repeat. Really bad behaviour needs more than just ignoring though, and we used the naughty step/time out as well.

I've found ignoring undesirable behaviour works. I don't mean the really bad stuff, more the whining or stropping. My son (9) also likes shouting, as well as slamming doors etc and when things come to a head it's horrible, lots of shouting and storming about the house, our neighbours must think we're barmy! I have realised that a lot of it is attention seeking and if he finds a more positive way to get my attention, that's progress. Me and my dh have started to say to each other walk away when one of us is tempted to get into a big shouting match with our son. Have to say, we have to really try hard to be consistent and remember to support each other and don't always succeed.

LimonAde, ignoring bad/undesirable behaviour is a very common, well-known technique. It should work best when the target of the behaviour is attention. It doesn't mean ignore the child, although that can be an effective option sometimes, as others have said you could ignore the behaviour and redirect, e.g. introduce some new train of thought/activity or just keep going calmly with what you were doing anyway. Ignoring has to be absolute though because, if they keep at it and you give in, they learn that the MORE they do whatever it is, then they will get what they want.

Hey, it works for us!
I think my ds has a similar temperament to yours Jimjams...He finds the idea of naughtiness and drama rather thrilling and we have to make it boring.