sorry mami comes only if i scream and shout ---- please help

[joburg]

I'm upset right now after our last episode right now, so if i don't make much sense please forgive me. DD (almost 7yo) will very nicely say sorry about things she did but ONLY when she hears me raising the voice! I don't want to do that. We went through millions of situations where she would screw up things, i would explain 'nicely' what was wrong etc etc the next minute DD would jump around the house happy as a bee. Sometimes she would through a formal 'sorry' in between ... and i can only feel that 'sorry' was a 'leave me alone mum, here is what you want, sorry'.

The situation changes if i raise my voice. she would really sit down in her room, feel .... bad,even cry (more or less, but at least not jumping in happiness around the house) .... i'm not that sure she feels really sorry but at least she feel that the situation is not 'funny' right now.

I don't want to scream at her .... but she doesn't seem to get it otherwise ..... please help! what else can i do?

Have you tried having her sit near where you are for some time to 'think' about what just occurred? Then you can talk about it?

So DD does something which you feel is wrong,
~you get to her level and point out that your unhappy with what she just did,
~you then have her sit near you be it lounge, kitchen and let her 'think' while you calmly continue to do your task,
~after a number of minutes you then sit together and talk calmly about why her action was not one you accept,
~how she could behave in the future and that is that,

Should she go off happy etc that isn't a bad thing as she had the 'thnking' time.

ok, my take on it is as follows:

a) forced apologies are pointless. you are merely teaching your child that they can do what they like as long as they say "sorry" afterwards.

b) a child can be sorry about something without actually saying sorry- although agreed that ongoing chats about WHY people say sorry are necessary

c) why do you feel the need for her to cry/feel bad? if she does something wrong, and you tell her off and talk about it then she goes off to play why is that a problem? it seems that you want her to be upset and "feel bad" as some kind of visible sign that she is sorry??

if i do something wrong and someone points it out to me i would apologise and I would expect that to be the end of it. I wouldn't then expect to have to mope around to "prove" that i wa sorry

do you see what i'm saying?

i didn't make much sense last night did i? i'm not trying to force DD to SAY sorry, i'm trying to make her understand when she does things wrong, exactly like MobileNumberPortability pointed out. The problem is (why i got so upset about) DD doesn't give a damn about me telling her this and that, and don't get me wrong, i try to keep it as short and simple as i can, and avoid going on and on about a thing, and bore her. i'm not even sure she listens to things i say if they are 'inconvenient'. On the other hand, as soon as i raise my voice to her, she starts to pay attention and i'm pretty sure about this because in time, many of the calmly/nicely told things vanished from her brain the second i shut up.

thisisyesterday, I don't want her to walk around half the day crying and begging for forgiveness i just want her to register things even if they are told in a nice voice.

How do i make her understand 'this is serious' without using an upset voice or shouting?????????? Just saying it, explaining what's wrong, etc doesn't seem to work ....

yes but what i am saying is how do you know she isn't listening and understanding?

you seem to be using the fact that she feels bad or cries as a measurement for whether or not she has listened to you/is sorry.

is it not possible that she can listen to you, accept she is wrong... and thn play happily?

how do i know it? because i see that next day she does the same crappy thing again like we never talked about it .... DD is my only child, so not much experience with kids, but i had some kids spending time with us and even if they were guests i had to tell them off when they did smth wrong. And i could compare their reaction to DD's. Noticing things like looking down when guilty, thinking for a second when being told smth was wrong, small details that do give a hint about how the child feels like .... same with DD's reaction when shouted at and she really seems to pay attention (the next day she would remember things) comparing to if i talk nicely and everything seems to just disapear in the blue.

well, that's what kids do! they learn through repetition. she isn't going to just never be naughty again just because you tell her off once.

but hey, you know it all, so no point asking us really is there#?

Ok,so you could

[a]have clear consequences of a repeated unwanted action?

[b]ignore her behaviour, this is hard but if she knows something annoys you and she is repeatedly doing it, this would be a course of action.

joburg - I echo the advice you've had here. I'd also say - looking after someone else's children is SO different from your own. Your own push you, because they basically know you very well and are secure enough to know you'll still love them.

She can't change what she is doing because she is a child. You do need to change your way of reacting. I know that is hard because you are feeling so angry (and maybe worried there's something "wrong" with her ?). I really sympathise - I used to think that children would just stop doing something if you told them off once ...

Jamieandhismagictorch, you are right. And i do feel I need to change somehow. That's why my OP in the first place. Oh, i don't expect DD to learn just because she is told off ONCE, but i am worried about the fact that she doesn't really register things as being serious, unless i raise my voice. Only then she pays attention and i can see the results of it in the long term. But i don't want to shout at her to make her pay attention. What can i do to change this`?

As for the consequences, we do tend to try to keep pretty consistent regarding them. Consequences don't seem to work in her case (she gets pretty negative about them, another worry of mine, she takes them as if she doesn't understant they are BECAUSE of her behaviour, and she is 7, as far as i know she should be able by now to understand that kind of cause and effect by now) but this should be the subject of another thread

bump .... anybody having some ideas?

At school sometimes teachers try to explain it as a choice the child is making so if she is literally jumping on the sofa, you'd say, "that is not a good choice to make is it? If you jump on the sofa you're going to have 7 minutes thinking time."
Then you could offer an alternative like, if you're bored and want to do something you could go for a walk/play in the park etc.

(i.e. don't make it about you or your emotion or feeling, each choice or decision she makes has a consequence)
A reward for a whole day of good choices could be a trip at the weekend to the swimming pool/ice skating rink/insert preferred treat.