Do you do things/activities as a family all together?

[staryeyed]

If so what do you do and how old are your children?

The whole point of this discussion is the language we use (terminology and also tone etc), and the strength of the emotional reactions it provokes (or does not provoke) in our children. Does a child shed a tear or have a tantrum? Because there is a massive difference between the two, both for the parent (who has to deal with it) and also and much more importantly for the child. The child in whom a tantrum is provoked is not learning emotional control - he/she is getting flooded with emotion and cannot reason. The child who only sheds a tear can be talked to, rationally, and can progress, emotionally.

Children deserve to be spoken to gently and treated with great patience. It makes a huge difference to their ability to learn self-control.

Well then, as you have no understanding of how to parent a child with SN you may in future refrain from using the ridiculously emotive and judgemantal term 'brutalising' as a means to express rule based parenting.

Your preposterous position - that anyone who deviates from your method is being brutal - has upset another poster already.
Your logic implies that as I cannot discuss with my son i must per se 'brutalise' and dominate him which I do not.
I would be offended by what you say if I considered your comment to be anything other than generally fluffiness.

Your SN experience is not at all relevent to a child with profound SN, including vitually no speech and extremely limited understanding but a cute story nonetheless. How surprising that includes a child denied by poor,unsympathetic parenting

pagwatch - why are you getting upset about something that wasn't a response to you?

pagwatch - please don't bother - you will just get point-scored - it isn't worth it, really.

Anna, given that pagwatch just asked you how she should parent her child with SN, it is hardly suprising she is reacting to your explanation of how a child with SN should be parented.

I would also love to know whether your DD has ever had a tantrum. Presumably not. I can assure you I do not provoke tantrums in my children. They have tantrums, and also benefit emotionally.

Are you a native English speaker, Anna?

I obviously don't mean they benefit from the tantrum itself, but their emotional development does not appear to have been stunted.

But neither DS (4.4) nor DD (2.6) are quite emotionally ready for Atonement yet .

This is madness - it isn't a thread about parenting children with SN and I have said absolutely nothing about how children with SN should be parented.

My son can refuse to do something without uttering a word. He can outstubborn any adult, even multiple adults at the same time. Staring competition, anyone?

Fortunately, he does seem to be able to discern between non-negotiable and voluntary activities, and any blurring of the boundaries can quickly result in a screen ban.

Tantrums are very rare in this household.

'Children deserve to be spoken to gently and treated with great patience. It makes a huge difference to their ability to learn self-control.'

anna your implication again is that we don't know this and don't practise this whereas you do. How dare you make so many assumptions about other people's parenting.

It is possible to be 'firm' as you have said you can be and calm you know and speak to children gently and with great patience. As a teacher I often speak with my most patient voice to kids whose behaviour is the most abominable.

I wonder what kind of monsters you think we are and why. You have an absolute assumption in your own superiority as a parent and everyone else's inferiority which is really quite offensive.

5candles, dd calls this 'the quiet voice that scares people'

Most effective

Because of what you have written, fivecandles.

Maybe the words you used don't actually describe what goes on in your households. Presumably you aren't an English teacher ?

Our scariest teacher at school is the most softly spoken and patient one. She scares me sometimes

I think you should defend that anna. Where exactly did I suggest to you that I was anything other than calm and patient with my children?

Which words please have I used which could possibly imply I am a brutal, impatient and uncalm parent? I'm waiting oh so patiently.

Still waiting. Still calm. Still patient.

Me: Dd2 brush your teeth please
DD2: I don't want to
Me: If you don't brush your teeth they'll get holes in and you'll smell like a dog.
DD2: I don't want to
Me: Do it now please. Thankyou.

Is that really how you talk to your child? Really?

Completely agree with your point about tantrums just happening too Idris. I don't mean to be patronising anna but you really don't know much about children and you are confusing them with mini adults. You assume that tantrums both are caused and can be prevented by rational means. They can't.

My daughter once had an almighty tantrum because the dog that is quite often in the garage across the way wasn't home once when she got back from school. There was no way of predicting or preventing this and nothing I could do or say made it any better. I just had to wait for her to get over it. Which she did and then it was forgotten and she was all smiles.

Can I also just take issue with this point you made Anna

'MB - you are confusing life's negotiables and life's non-negotiables.'

But it's really not that simple is it. You tell your dd that school is 'non-negotiable' but bed time is. Why? Why can't she negotiate school if not bed?

And when you want to take dd to adult films like Atonement and restaurants do you present this as 'non-negotiable' too?

And how can a 3 year old be expected to cope with these subtleties. i.e. that you expect and even encourage her to contest decisions you make about what clothes she wears and when she goes to bed but then you DO expect her to go to school without negotiating. And why the hell should she respect your authority and your 'non-negotiable' areas if you've actually been encouraging her not to?

As MB says we deal with a lot of kids who have been brought up to think they're in a position to negotiate every decision and not to respect any authority figures and they're a nightmare. For MB in the science lab this could be a life and death issue but actually for me in the classroom a kid questioning why they can't get their mobile phone out or listen to their Ipod can be equally disuptive (if less hazardous).

In my family bedtime is no more 'non-negotiable' than bed.

bedtime no more 'non-negotiable' than school that should say.

Anna, the tooth-brushing example really doesn't seem that bad! My teeth were totally neglected when I was a child so on the odd occasion that one of my DSs protests about teeth-cleaning, I can tell them from personal experience just how nasty the consequences are if you don't look after your teeth. What is so wrong with that?

What??? Is that the best you can do? You think that when I ask my dd to brush her teet using please and thankyou calmly and patiently is brutal??????

But you think it's acceptable to take your child, your precious three year old child to the cinema to watch a film which hinges on a child being raped? And also deals with sex and the violence and death resulting from warfare?

What planet are you on woman?

Of that list of Anna's activies, 5candles, I see a division of non-negotiable: anything outside the home, negotionable: anything at home.

And I'm sorry I still see nothing in that little bit of dialogue which is lacking in calmness or patience. And you can't see it on Mumsnet by the way but all said with a smile.

Hygiene and tooth health are the reasons for enforcing teeth cleaning though. What other way is there to position it?

Actually what I'm seeing is anything anna wants her child to do is non-negotiable and therefore it is legitimate for her to be 'firm' even if this means her child 'shedding a tear' but anything we want our children to do is or rather should be negotiable and is entirely about us wanting all our own way and being bossy etc.