Kids are feral

[moocow123456]

I have written before about how my eldest (4) doesn't listen and gets her bum out when we have visitors and doesn't let me speak etc.

Anyway, I also have a 2 year old and I realised today just how feral they are. They just don't listen. They scream and shout and don't do what I ask.

I never receiving any real "parenting" growing up. We were just left to do what we wanted all the time. No rules etc.

Which rules do you find are important? How do you make sure you don't have completely feral children? What action do you take when they won't listen to you and play your etc? We did have a star chart which actually worked really well so will need to buy another one but someone please help me parent properly!

You decide the standards of behaviour you want to see and you enforce them. I would say choose your lines in the sand carefully and be realistic but, barring any SN, your kids can learn to behave nicely. In our house rudeness, including interrupting, is not permitted. If my DS (just turned 5) is rude or interrupts, he gets a warning and then I would remove him to time out or put one of his toys in the cupboard for a short period. I particularly hate the interrupting so I’m quite strict with that. Other things are mostly safety related eg don’t touch the fire but enforced in the same way: a warning, then a consequence. I ALWAYS follow through with the consequences and I won’t negotiate, but I would never threaten anything too ridiculous if that makes sense. I mean, if we were at a play date and he hit someone we would leave immediately but there’s got to be levels - low level silliness I’d probably make a joke with them and try to redirect rather than punish daft behaviour. Rudeness never ok - time out for this. Not doing as I’ve asked - start with trying to encourage good behaviour eg making a game of it or a race, then if he’s still not tidying up or whatever I’d put something in the cupboard and set a timer before he’s allowed it back.

We keep our children busy with productive activities and engage with them while doing it. At that age they need to be supervised and engaged with the huge majority of the time.

Modelling the behaviour you want is the best way to encourage it, if they are shouting and screaming redirect the behaviour:

A loud gasp then an excited whisper “I just saw an elephant/dinosaur/lion out of the window, quick let’s see if we can find it but we need to be quiet so we don’t scare it”, you spot it then you build a den to hide from it, maybe it’s hungry, then you read the tiger who came to tea, then you make lunch together for you all and the elephant/dinosaur/lion

By the time you’ve done that it’s been an hour or more, the kids have been played with and fed and had no time to scream, fight, get into mischief etc.

Thank you both!

I think I do need to engage with them a bit more & also need to have consequences in place that I stick to.

I will often give in and don't carry out the "punishment" (by that I mean stay in the bedroom etc - for the eldest).

@Flangeosaurus when you say timeout - Do you take him to his bedroom and leave him there for a set time or do you put him on a "naughty step", or the "thinking step" or whatever the correct term for it is now. Do you put him on that and keep putting him back on every time he walks off etc?

Sorry, just want to see what other do!

Thank you!

It's not a one size fits all situation.

You need to try lots of different things to see what works for your family. Star charts were a waste of time for ours. Cutting times on tablets is always a big winner for us, dh does this a bit too much though as we can do it remotely. I let ours get on with it mostly at home, since having baby I cba with being on their case so much. I have much higher standards for good behaviour when out and about or if we have guests though. They get a countdown from 5 and usually comply before I get to zero or get a punishment (type varies by child).

Let them help with chores. Make it fun. Most 4yo love trying out a bit of vacuuming! Empty can of polish and a duster..
If they aren't great at the table put their lunch - even a cooked one - in a lunch box and have a picnic..

Naughty steps, timeouts were also rubbish for ours. Little buggers would take themselves there before I got chance, smartarses!!

You need some time to seek advice and plan this, do some reading or perhaps seek a parent support adviser, through school or nursery.

It is better to plan rather than start something then stop.

Consistency is so key.

When I work with families I start with 'what is the behaviour you want to change most?' And work just on this so that your DC's experience a sense of success and so that you are not distracted by other random behaviours (unless unsafe).

Positive praise is vital, it is not unknown for children to misbehave to gain attention. Sometimes any attention, even negative, is better than none. You need to be turning your children's behaviour around through positive praise and not just a cycle of negativity.

Complicated isn't it...get that help or do some further reading. Good luck and well done for realising that you want to make change.

Don’t use bedrooms as punishment

One other quick tip to support compliance is to give children time to think and react. Often sudden and quick expectations of change, cause upset.
Time through a countdown helps with this. In 5 minutes we need to....supported by a very clear visual timer to help.
Or 'first we are going to do, next we are going to do...' again a visual (pictures of this) really help.

What behaviour do you want to change first? Have you stopped to watch your children, what triggers this behaviour?

There's no one size fits all approach.

We don't use time outs or naughty steps and have well behaved DC. We model what we want to see, try to create 'yes spaces' so if we don't want kids raiding the cupboards they don't have access, if we don't want the room to be a tip then we don't make all the toys accessible at once. Some behaviour is attention seeking so we don't pay attention to it because any reaction can be taken as reinforcement to a child that it's a good way to get attention. If something needs challenging or a boundary needs holding we challenge it calmly (usually) and redirect to something else.

We have an armchair in the main living space which is the time out chair. I take him over there (calmly!) and say you’re going to time out because of x y z behaviour for 5 minutes, then I set a timer on Alexa. When the timer goes off I go back and ask him if he’s ready to say sorry then we talk about the behaviour and have a cuddle. It’s actually pretty rare I use it now because he knows I’ll make him sit there so now the threat of it is enough, same with something going in a cupboard! We don’t have a tablet so removing time isn’t an option for us but if we did I would definitely start taking time off as a consequence for bad behaviour. For the older one what about a jar? Sticker rewards need to be linked to a certain behaviour IME whereas if you have a jar where you put a pebble/pompom etc in for good behaviour and take one out for poor behaviour it’s a bit more flexible. My friend has a line on her jar and if her DD can keep the jar filled above the line by Friday evening she gets a treat. They start Saturday morning fresh every week with 15 pom-poms which is enough to be over the line, so she’s plenty of opportunity to “win” just by maintaining all week. You don’t ever want to be in a situation where there’s nothing jn the jar though, you need to create situations where DC can be rewarded for good behaviour.