Discipline for 6 year old boys... Come tell me your consequences for bad behaviour

[CharlieBoo]

Hi, just wanted some ideas really as being sent to his room is not really working for our 6 year old ds. I know our problems with him aren't huge (the usual asking him to get dressed 20 times, to come to the dinner table no fighting with his sister etc.) Mainly the not listening and cheekiness is driving us crazy!!

We've always sent him to his to his room in the past but it's not an effective consequence as in he's not overly bothered and the behaviour continues. Dp always makes empty threats i.e were not going to grandparents at the weekend ( we don't see them often as we live far away from them so he knows once we've arranged it, we will go.)

Any ideas? What do you guys do?

I think 4madboys is right Norma I used the playful parenting approach when mine where 2-3 or so .
It avoided the meltdowns and stopped things turning into a battle.Useful for the terrible 3s when everything is a battle.
I personally dont think it is pandering -just a different approach.
By the time they are 5 ish they know what is expected.
Can you imagine saying to an 8 year old -lets have a shoe putting on race -mine would look at me like [hmmm]

or even !

Mrs Baggins - yes agree, diversionary tactics are good for little ones...

CharlieBoo, I think your six year old boy and mine must be twins separated at birth!

I had better confess Norma that it was more than a diversionary tactic and was taught to me by a child psychologist she was one of the other Mums at my baby group .

DD was going through a serious case of "No" -yes completely normal but very very wearing and it was spiralling into even more negative behaviour.

She taught me that if I presented things to DD without the Yes/No option - ie "not put your shoes on now" NO! but" who can put their shoes on fastest" there is no option to say No . There is also the positive expectation that shoes will be put on . This worked so well for DD and she has grown up to be a lovely, polite teenager.

I know somebody who does playful parenting and their six year old completely dominates the family

Not only would I put him outside, but I would probably extend the punishment to the wheelie bin he's so completely awful.

You need to put your foot down and show children that the adult is in charge and that they must do as they're told. Anything else just results in chaos and stress for all involved.

I speak from experience

I did playful parenting when ds started school as he was stressed with the change and it was a way of getting him dressed and ready and out of the house. So we'd all have a race to get dressed and while it worked getting him dressed, if he didn't win... Complete and utter meltdown. He is highly competitive so knocked that on the head.

So far we are saying for good behaviour all day he gets 50p in his pot. At the end of the week he could have a maximum of £3.50 with which he can use to buy his magazine and some sweets. If he gets 3 warnings in a day, no 50p. So far so good.

Thanks for all your input... I think there seems a few of us in the same boat with our little 6 year olds!

I´d just like to make the point that the Playful Parenting book doesn´t only talk about making a game out of things to get the children to do what you want. It starts off by talking about that a bit - and I´m afraid I put the book away for 6 months after reading that because I thought everyone worked that one out for themselves and I was not going to learn anything from this book. However, after keeping seeing the book cropping up on threads on MN I took it off the shelf again and read further and I´m really glad I did. It is more about Laurence Cohen´s own experiences as a "Play Therapist" (he´s a psychologist) working with children with real problems but how he feels there´s a lot that all parents can make use of to help their child with more normal problems of childhood. A lot of kids find it hard to communicate to adults what they´re experiencing and he has some good ideas for making it easier. I could really imagine if my 6 year old became a victim of bullying or a bully herself at school or whatever, there are ideas in the book which might really help. I know this is completely off-track for this thread (sorry!) but just where there was so much discussion of "Playful Parenting" I just wanted to point out that the contents of the book are actually a bit different from what is being assumed on this thread.

i know this thread is old, but putting a child outside in all weathers as punishment seems a tad barbaric to me... i remember being stood in corner, gosh that was so humiliating...

I walk home with DC in bad weather, any sort of bad weather but hard hail, that can easily take 15 minutes. Is that abuse too?

OLD THREAD

masuki - why not just start a new thread if you want to discuss it? It's really not the 'done thing' to re-air a thread and to waste peoples time reading it just so you can make a pointless comment.

Hi I am having the same with my 6 nearly 7 year old boy we have tried taking toys, taking his tablet away, time out etc but it hasn't helped and he has continued to not do as told instead he answers back for example I ask him to tidy his toys I get no you do it etc what else can I do ???