Discipline - Our Way

This post is inspired by several of you, who asked me to write about how we discipline our children. Thanks for your input! Again, I must stress that I am not an expert. I offer you this information as a guide, to give you ideas. Use what works for you, and discard the rest.

First, I want to confess that I am, in fact, a yeller. I believe this tendency to be genetic, as I grew up in a family of bellowers. I'm not proud of this. I wish that I had more patience, and that I never raised my voice to my children, but I do. This is an issue that I pray about, and seek God's help to correct.

While I might yell, I do not physically discipline my children. Oh sure, I might grab Cakes by the arm and haul her into time-out when she's being especially defiant, but we do not spank or hit our children. We have three reasons for this:

1) On the very rare past occasions when we did spank, we found that it taught the children absolutely nothing.

2) We want our children to always feel comfortable coming to us with problems, even if they're a result of mistakes or bad behavior. They won't do this if they fear us.

3) We believe that hitting in anger just teaches kids that violence is a solution to problems.

We also do not discipline our children with methods that I believe to be cruel, such as withholding meals, or long periods of isolation from family. Furthermore, name-calling/swearing of any kind in our house is strictly forbidden. I absolutely cringe when I hear parents call their kids horrible names. Once, I heard a man call his son a "stupid little s**t" in Target, and my heart broke for that poor child.

That said, we do expect that our children will respect and obey us. We have no tolerance for back talk/sarcasm, poor attitude, or defiance. We employ several techniques to deal with this type of misbehavior:

Time-out. For young children, this works well as long as it's handled correctly. The "naughty spot," as we call it, should be in an area that is isolated from the rest of the house, but not in the child's room! The key is to make the time-out as boring as possible. When Cakes needs time-out, we park her in our front hallway, facing the wall, for 3 minutes (1 minute for each year of age - we use an egg timer for accuracy). If she gets up, we say nothing to her, and calmly return her to her spot. Then we add more time to the timer. She must stay there until she has completed 3 consecutive minutes in time-out. When we first adopted this technique, she got up countless times, and then got mad when she realized that we weren't going to give in. Now she just sits.

Removal of favorite things. This works well with both girls. For example, if we tell Bee to do something, and she argues, we'll give her a warning. If she continues to protest, my husband says nothing, but he walks into her room and finds something that he knows is important to her (such as her American Girl doll), and puts it up on top of the china cabinet. If she continues to protest, he takes more things until she gets the picture and does as she's told without complaint. She must earn the items back through good behavior.

Removal of privileges. Once, at her American Girl Club, Bee had a snotty, disrespectful attitude toward me (she was trying to look cool in front of the older girls). My husband told her that if she couldn't be respectful of her Mom while with her friends, she wouldn't be going to American Girl Club. True to his word, she wasn't allowed to go the following month. We've never had an attitude problem at AG Club since.

Removal from situations. We use this method for Cakes when she's being naughty in public, and fails to heed our warning. I can't tell you how many restaurants, malls, grocery stores, libraries, etc. Cakes has been removed from. My husband takes her out to the van, and makes her sit, while she screams and protests because she's being excluded. Now, at age 3, she has learned that sitting in the van is really boring, especially when her Sissie gets to play/shop/look at books. We usually just have to warn, "Do we need to take you outside?" and she shapes up.

Addition of chores. My husband always says that children will obey when the price for disobedience is more than they're willing to pay. He is a master at "adding to the sentence." For example, if we tell Bee to clean her room, and she argues/protests/complains, he will say, "Fine. Now you can clean the toy room too." If she continues to protest, he'll say, "Now you can clean up the living room too. Do you have anything else to say?" She usually doesn't.

The key to success with all of these techniques is consistency and follow-through. Your kids need to know that you mean what you say, and you're not going to back down. If you're always making empty threats, but you don't follow through, or you discipline them for a certain behavior one time, and let them get away with it the next time, they're not going to take you seriously anymore. Even if you're tired and weary, you must be strong and follow through! It's just like with sleep-training - when your child realizes that you're not going to give in, they get the picture pretty quickly.

When we see our children do the right thing, we make a real effort to praise and commend them. We believe that if you're always punishing for bad behavior, and you never take the time to reinforce good behavior, children will start to feel discouraged and defeated. Children naturally seek parental approval, and if you give them the incentive to do well, they will strive to succeed.

I also want to stress that after our children are disciplined, when they right their wrongs and apologize, we hug them and tell them we forgive them quickly and emphatically. Then, we move on. We do not give the silent treatment, or continue to act angry (in look, word, or deed), or shame them, or harp on the same issue over and over. If they apologize sincerely, and take measures to fix their mistakes, they are forgiven. Period.

Our attitude is this - if our Heavenly Father can forgive us, and wipe our slates clean when we admit our sin and ask for His saving grace, well...we can certainly forgive our own children, can't we?

What works for you? Please share your suggestions in the comments.