How do you do Unconditional Parenting when you need young DC to stop doing something immediately?

[WildhoodChunder]

DS is nearly 3 weeks, DD nearly 2 - bfing DS so can't always intervene physically with DD unless it's drastic - relying on talking to her to control behaviour... Dinnertime last night, DS on breast, DD will not stay at table, starts running around trying to draw on things with her super-staining spag-bol sauce covered spoon, isn't listening to me explaining/asking not to. I cracked and used Angry Mummy voice - "DD. STOP THAT. NOW!" - which sort of worked, but isn't really the UP way and not how I want to raise my DCs - although with two I can see UP being much harder to sustain. What should I have done?

doesn't it just mean trying it on? eg behaving in a certain way to see how much they can get away with? and if they get away with a certain amount, next time they will go a bit further - eg push the boundary.

so today it's writing with sauce on a wall. that was fun and ok no-one told me off. tomorrow I'll do it again but this time I'll write on the sofa. Then still no telling off, probably means no-one minds if I try it out with unwashable markers...

(or at least that is my interpretation of a toddler's mind)

A lot of it is to do with respect. So giving the child warning that it's soon going to be time to go home. Explaining why you need to go home. "Validating" the child, making it clear that you understand where they are coming from. Acknowledging the child's feelings.

It's not a cure all. No parenting ethos is going to result in a 100% peaceful life with no tantrums or arguements. It's just how you deal with them when they arise.

The same goes for punishment. UP doesn't ban punishment, by any means. But teaches you to question the point of it. If, say, Billy scribbles on the wall - our first instinct would be to punish Billy. But UP teaches you to question why Billy scribbled on the wall. Was it attention seeking? Was testing limits? Was is just that he didn't have access to pens and paper?

If it was attention seeking - surely as parents, it's our responsibility to ensure our children have enough of our attention. Even if it feels to us that they get plenty, they may not. If it was testing limits, then it wasn't necessarily malicious. It's obviously something to explain to the child was wrong. If it's boredom/not having access to pens/paper, then that's easily rectified.

It's a bit of a simplistic scenario, but I hope you see what I'm getting at...?

I appreciate that a lot of people will grow up feeling that they were loved unconditionally, even without UP parents. But a lot don't.

I guess it's akin to the different ways of weaning. Some puree-wean, some BLW. All children will become adults who eat solid food. But the journey they take to that point, can be just as important. Similarly, some puree-weaned kids will eat everything you put in front of them, and some BLW'd kids will be as fussy as hell.

BLW doesn't profess to be a cure-all, 100% successful system. But it suits some people, and fits in with their lives beautifully. Equally, others don't get on with it.

UP is similar. Even down to the way it's misunderstood by some!

tillymama - what you are describing sounds like what I do anyway, instinctively (and not because I follow any ethos). A lot of it depends on a)the child's age and b) the whether they have been told they shouldn't do it before and c) the type of child you have.

If a child of mine was writing on a wall, for the first time, and was just 2 years old, I wouldn't punish her. But I would tell her she couldn't do it and take the pen away. If she did it again, I would up the stakes etc.

However, if I was very busy (eg breastfeeding) and she was about to write on a wall, I would shout at her not to. I don't think it would do her any long-term harm and it would keep the wall clean. If she was very upset I would obviously give her a hug and explain why I had done what I did.

Pushing boundaries to me is trying something out and seeing what happens! It's not a term I normally use TBH, I think it was used further up! But it's something all kids do, and all kids should do. If they don't try stuff out, they'll never get anywhere.

strandedatseasonsgreetings - but you're implying that if my DD drew on a wall I'd just say "Oh never mind".

UP isn't the same as No Discipline.

I would explain to her that we don't draw on walls, if she was old enough I would try to establish why she drew on the wall, and I offer her an alternative place to draw.

But equally, I do try to not intervene unless I really have to (i.e if she's going to really hurt herself or someone else, or will break something)

tillymama - not at all. I am saying that you do what many people do the first time, myself included. I am wondering what you do if they continue to draw on walls. Do you never finally get to the point where you snap?

Agreeing with Tillymama here wrt respect and meeting the child half way. I don't think the word naughty can realistically be applied to small children under 6 or so.

I think you did exactly the right thing with the spag bol spoon (maybe she should have been using a fork for spag bol?) situation -- if you were horrified at the thought of trying to clean it all off the walls and furniture or walls, then it's no harm for her to understand a bit of where you're coming from too, so I would have pointed out that bolognese sauce is very hard to wipe off things.

To take the UPing and make it work in this situation might maybe involve putting out some newspaper on the table for the purposes of decoration with sauce and therefore have an alternative to decorating the walls right there to hand. Or you could ensure she has some opportunity to get her hands into something really messy during the day (sand or mud or finger-painting or soap and bubbles for instance) and while she's messing point out that there is a time and a place for everything; dinner time is not the time for sauce painting but mud time is perfect for that kind of mess.

I think feeding the two of them separately is a good idea but this won't always be practicable -- if the baby cries when you and DD are settled down for a meal, you'll just have to adapt.

WRT drawing on walls repeatedly -- paint a wall with blackboard paint and restrict writing materials to chalk. Plus providing plenty of paper, or something like a Megasketcher that doesn't involve writing tools that could make a mess, but does provide the gimmick of magically erasing what's been written.

'I have never understoood what "pushing boundaries" really means'

You obviously haven't had a DC who has deliberately tried it or you would know!
I think that you can do it up to a certain point. When they first write on walls you explain all the reasons why they don't do it and explain the alternatives- but the second time you are mnost definite-they DON'T write on walls and they ARE NOT GOING TO WRITE ON WALLS. At that point it is non negotiable.
I think that it can work spendidly with one DC, but no one has said what you would do with my scenario with 2 DCs.

piscesmoon - having had a think about this while I was juggling the two dd's earlier, I get the feeling UP as an ethos probably works best if you only have one child or have a large gap between two (or more). I just can't see most people having the time/energy/patience to be such a perfect mother (as this is what it sounds like is expected of you) with more than one.

I have a friend who sounds like she is an "unconditional" parent. But she has a full-time nanny and a cleaner. She is a great parent - but there is always someone else to clear up after her ds1 when he makes a mess.

It always make me smile when parents have an extremely well behaved, reasonable DC and they polish their halo and put it down to 'good parenting' and then along comes DC2 who is the opposite and it doesn't work! It happens a lot.

I don't see the usefulness of any sort of label for your parenting style really, and painting yourself into a corner with one particular approach can lead to beating yourself up about being human; consistency and kindness and heading off trouble with common sense go a long way.

I bashed away with 5 DCs, trying to make it possible for all of us to live reasonably peacefully together, and found the best way to deal with mess is to have the DCs participate in cleaning it up. Leaving them all free to wreak havoc while I followed them around with the mop or the broom was never going to work once I was seriously outnumbered.

I agree mathanxiety-I never see the point in slavishly following someone else's theory. It is good to read about it, but then take out the bits that suit you and your DCs personalities.

With the scenario about drawing on walls - first you tell them "Only on the paper please." and give them a piece of paper/physically move them to the table where the paper is, and then don't allow them unsupervised access to pens until you can trust them not to draw on walls.

I live in a rented house so can't go around painting walls etc, and I definitely can't afford a cleaner etc. DS has one of those magnetic "magic" drawing board things (cheap made in china version which cost £3) and a set of aquadraw mats which my sister got him for his birthday. He used to have pens and I could trust him not to draw on walls but then he went through a stage of doing it deliberately, so the pens have gone away until I get a moment where I'm in the mood to do it with him and able to supervise him properly. Actually he seemed okay with them the other day so I may move on to the in between step which is him having access to them when I'm not actively joining in but not if I'm doing something I can't stop.

I guess this would be hard/impossible if you had more than one child - would it work to make the older child in charge of not letting the younger one(s) draw on the walls? Another thing I do (but is probably irrelevant as DS is an only child) is if I see pen on a wall I don't say "Oh DS, you've drawn on the wall!" or "Who has done this?" I just say "Oh no, there's pen on the wall! Pen is supposed to go on paper. This will need cleaning up now. I'm really annoyed/upset." - remove the blame from it and you avoid (okay, reduce ) the automatic reaction of "I didn't do it!". They get the idea that pen on the wall makes mummy sad, or cross.

I do get DS to help me clean things up as well but it's not really a punishment, it's just what we do anyway - he helps me clean up general mess as well.

I'm not at all keen on bringing out the idea that things 'make mummy sad'-it puts a lot of responsibility on a DC, especially if they are sensitive. Much quicker to say 'we don't draw on walls because....'-end of -and move on. It is nice and clear and the DC knows where they stand.

I suppose, that makes sense. Actually it does sound a lot worse than I was thinking written down maybe a rethink on that front. I say it makes me feel sad if he kicks me though (since I'm not sure he understands others being in pain and I'm not about to kick him back to demonstrate!) is that not a similar thing?

Unconditional parenting doesn't work with two small children. You may want to be gentle with them, and gentle is fine, but you are trying to reason with something that is still, developmentally, an infant chimpanzee.

And remember, she may be desperate for your attention, but that doesn't give her free rein to be naughty (which she was being, and I think you handled it well)

'infant chimpanzee'

I think that being kicked makes you feel a bit more than sad! I think that you have to be yourself and give an honest reaction i.e it hurts and you don't hurt people! (if you kick him back you are being just as bad!)
I agree with colditz, she may have insecurities, she may simply be bored, there may be 101 reasons, but she hasn't the right just to be naughty. If you stop that sort of thing early on then you don't have problems later.

I think tags like "Unconditional Parenting" serve the function of helping adults to communicate with each other - like a kind of short hand. At the playground, if I want to chat to other parents about how I want to parent and ideas I have, I can save a lot of time by first referring to unconditional parenting or a particular book I've read and then, if they are interested in that too, I know we're on sort of the same wavelength and so we can carry on with our actual discussion of "what would you do in this situation". I don't think it means that you are claiming you are a perfect parent!!! (those kinds of miracles DON'T happen!) - nor that you are only interested in following a protocol of parenting like a cake recipe: first do this, then do that. It is just an indicator to others of the kind of ideas and ideals you have.
I found the ideas discussed in this string interesting and useful.
I am working hard at exploring the ideas of UP and think situations like op described are the hard ones. I think you can only look into the background situation of giving lots of attention to older child. By shouting "stop", you didn't punish. I think with a slightly older child you can do more along the lines of "look at the walls! They're really messy! And food on the walls starts to go all smelly and horrible. What shall we do to get the mess off the walls?" but with an under two year old, you can't do that! I think you did the best thing in the situation... I have one nearly two year old and one five year old and with the five year old, I find it's much easier to think how to deal with a situation with unconditional parenting.
I know that I, as a child, always felt patronised and misunderstood - misunderstood particularly when my parents punished me. I often felt they overreacted and assumed that I was being naughty rather than that something just went wrong or I was feeling bad and didn't know why or how to communicate it. This is why I like the ideas of people like Alfie Kohn because it really addresses a lot of what I can remember feeling as a child. But this is talking about much older children. With an under-two it seems that a quick "stop" followed by distraction (and a cuddle) is as good as anything???

To me UP is about explaining to the child why it's not acceptable to draw on the walls, so that they learn not to draw on the walls - not to avoid punishment, but because they genuinely know it's the wrong thing to do.

(Otherwise you are teaching them it's OK to draw on walls as long as you don't get caught)

Now, it's very hard to explain this to a toddler. Although you still can. Explain to them in simple language why you don't want them to draw on the walls.

UP is about the long term. It's about raising children who will turn into the adults you want them to be.

Unfortunately in the heat of the moment I do still yell at my kids. But later I would then explain to them what my problem is.

If a child has no empathy than UP is very very hard to do. But most children don't want to make Mum unhappy and can understand 'drawing on walls makes our house messy and ugly. Mum doesn't like living in a messy and ugly house. It makes her sad. I don't want to make Mum sad'

I think UP is about a lot more than explaining - I see explaining why as one of the principles of UP, but UP can apply right from babyhood up until teens (theoretically, anyway, ask me again when DS gets there!) but you're right, developing empathy is important for the explaining part.

BTW I don't think the UP approach would be not to draw on the walls because it makes mum unhappy, it would be to understand that drawing on the walls makes the walls a mess. Whether that's good or bad is the child's own decision, really - but generally the wall won't belong to the child so it's not his or her decision to make. It's confusing!

I find this site very good.

"To me UP is about explaining to the child why it's not acceptable to draw on the walls, so that they learn not to draw on the walls - not to avoid punishment, but because they genuinely know it's the wrong thing to do."

Ime there are two types of children with whom this approach does not work:

the wilful child who genuinely does not believe their parents' explanations. I was such a child: I really thought getting my own way was more important than anything else and that if I wanted something it had to be the right thing and more important than what anybody else thought. I never believed anything just because the adults said so. I grew out of it eventually (more or less) but my parents could not afford to sit down and wait for that, as my siblings had needs too and they were not always compatible.

the angry child who genuinely wants to hurt his parents because life has hurt him. Dd was such a child, for circumstances that were totally beyond my control. Explaining that her behaviour upset me wasn't much cop- that was what she was aiming for in the first place! What she needed was for me to stop it and for her that was actually the most reassuring thing, to know that somebody else was in control at a time when she was not capable of controlling herself.

Upsetting Mum sounds rather like a delicate Victorian lady who will take to her bed if things don't suit!
I don't think that they should not draw on the walls because of punishment but neither do I think that they should not do it because it will upset Mum. They shouldn't want to draw on walls because they recognise that someone has put a lot of work into painting or wallpapering them to look nice for everyone-rather in the same way that you don't drop litter because you want the place to look nice for everyone.
I think that you can do it with one DC, if that DC is amenable, but that if you have more than one it can easily become the weakest gives in. I was very reasonable as a DC and so was my next brother but the youngest wasn't reasonable whatsoever-he was like cory-getting his own way was the important thing.
I don't think that those who practise UP realise quite how dreadful it is from the point of view of a reasonable and sensitive DC! They maybe had the opposite themselves as a DC. I was a reasonable, sensitive DC and adding the fact that I might upset mother to the mix would have been a step too far!!(luckily she didn't).
You also get DCs like my DS1 where he was a perfectionist and his frustrations with himself sent him into meltdown in certain situations and he was beyond talking to until he calmed down.
UP suits certain parents and certain DCs. If you have 5 DCs, like mathsanxiety,I can only see that it is poor mother who exhausts herself!!

I don't know what UP is and I've only read about the first 20 messages but feel I need to cut to the chase here.

Your daughter isn't sitting at the table through a meal (not a problem in itself, my dd's are just 7 and have only just got it).

The solution is to say to her that if she gets up from the table then you will assume she has finished eating and therefore won't need any pudding and won't be getting any snacks until the next meal time.

You need to mean it (with a bit of give i.e. maybe warn her of what's going to happen twice and mean it on the third time) but I assure you that if you do mean it she will learn to stay at the table.

She's only a little girl but good table manners are part of life and she will learn.

I agree that 'making mummy sad' smacks of emotional manipulation, and placing responsibility for mummy's feelings on a child is probably not the healthiest approach imo. I think it's up there with avoiding 'making mummy mad' as a less than satisfactory (but undeniably workable) way to keep things ticking over.

Developing a sense of community responsibility on top of the individual empathy that you try to model and inculcate with UP is the way to go when you have a larger number of DCs -- they learn that chores are for the benefit of all, that keeping the house neat and respecting the environment has benefits for all; it looks nice, we avoid mice and ants, etc., and I have time to spend doing things with them all instead of scrubbing mac and cheese off the walls. I don't think you can make UP work for older children or for larger families without a large does of 'chores for all' and following up on performance.

Simic -- I agree that the label has its use in communicating your values to other parents. Overall, I think it is a long term programme with long term goals, and involves a lot of fine balancing of rights and responsibilities, starting from the point of acknowledging that everyone has a right to their own perspective and to feel comfortable and 'at home' in their environment, with ultimate responsibility (for maintaining your own equilibrium, for health and safety of all) falling upon the adult. (Bertie's link says it better)