Positive parenting: Discipline without pain

[FJismyheadship]

Earlier (before I realized she was going through a growth spurt and was just tired and hungry all the time) I had my daughter in the stroller heading to the store. She had woke up and eaten an hour before, but was incredibly cranky and I couldn't figure out why. I checked her diaper which was ok. She had juice and her monkey. She threw the juice out of the stroller and for a second I wad angry. I picked it up and yelled "No! We don't throw!" and swatted at her. I didn't actually hit her, but I felt bad about it. Its sad that its ingrained because that's what MY parents did. I'm trying to do the right thing and not hit. I don't hit, the worst I do is a tap on her hand with my finger when she tries to grab stuff she doesn't need that I can't move. It still scares me though. I had to call someone to get her when she started fighting diaper changes because I nearly smacked her leg. I let her go and called a friend to get her before I did something I regretted.

I'm glad this thread is here. And as for diaper changes she is big enough I can use pull up diapers instead of us fighting over a diaper change. I also use cloth when I can because then she WANTS to be changed.

[August]

I don't hit, I don't even raise my voice often, but the anger and urge to hit is in me like a reflex and what if they can sense that?

When I am so angry at someone I would like to hit them, I will (if the time is right) say "I am so angry I want to hit that oerson, but I'm going to do xyz instead". As a parent you can model how to deal with strong emotions.

http://www.parentingcounts.org/informat ... -coaching/

Emotion coaching, Ellyn Satter and How to listen so kids will talk inform 80% of my parenting. Some other useful books are:

Sleepless in America by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Raising your spirited child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Playful parenting by Lawrence Cohen

Episodes of Supernanny on Hulu.

[latraviata]

Latraviata, I'm so sorry for your loss and I love your parenting advice. I, too, am parenting a child with a serious medical condition. I remember after he was born wondering how I would parent him and the social worker at the medical center gave me the same advice you give- parent him like you would any other child. My son's condition is genetic and I'm the carrier so guilt played a huge role early on in our relationship. The advice not to let that affect how we parented helped prevent a lot of issues later in life. Just once he has said to me "It's your fault I'm this way". I pointed out that I also gave him a lot of good traits and without the one bad trait he might have ended up a totally different person without all his other wonderful gifts. He's never brought it up again. He's now 11 and has taken responsibility for taking all his own meds and managing his condition. I don't think he'd have gotten to this point if we'd guilt-parented and babied him.

I also read a ton of parenting books and, being a fairly literal person, got bogged down in trying to follow them exactly. My mother gave me the best advice- trust yourself. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. So, I never let them cry it out. It felt wrong (to me) but I didn't co-sleep because the data on co-sleeping and SIDS is scary. My 3 are all still pretty little but they haven't robbed any liquor stores yet so we may be onto something. Oh, yeah, we don't spank. It doesn't feel right.

I sort of recognise that. I told Rigolo more than once he was so much more than just a kidney. Rigolo suffered from a glomerular nephritis a complication of scarlet fever when he was 5 years old. Awaiting his third kidney transplant, the kidney to be donated by his brother, he died of very ugly complications of dialysis.

By the time they were born I had a PhD in child psychology and working on a second PhD, my academic knowledge wasn't exactly working because this was my own child and as your mother said, I went on my own instinct.

That is exactly the reason why I didn't co-sleep other than an afternoon nap on the couch with the baby sleeping on top of me and always somebody else around.

[latraviata]

When I am so angry at someone I would like to hit them, I will (if the time is right) say "I am so angry I want to hit that oerson, but I'm going to do xyz instead". As a parent you can model how to deal with strong emotions.

http://www.parentingcounts.org/informat ... -coaching/

Emotion coaching, Ellyn Satter and How to listen so kids will talk inform 80% of my parenting. Some other useful books are:

Sleepless in America by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Raising your spirited child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Playful parenting by Lawrence Cohen

Episodes of Supernanny on Hulu.

I am convinced that almost everybody had that urge from time to time, I know I did......

[SquirrelySquirrel]

My biggest shortcoming is most definitely yelling. It's a daily battle for me. I am not a patient person and I have a short fuse. It's damn hard at times, but it is so important to me to not be that person.

We don't do arbitrary punishments at all. No spanking, no time-outs, no taking toys away unless they are being misused, etc. We do logical consequences, and we talk and listen. Listening is very important once they become old enough to communicate their feelings to you, and is something that is easy to forget. There is already some really great advice here, so I'm going to try really hard to not write a tl;dr.

One of the key parts of positive parenting in the toddler years that helped me the most was limiting the use of the word "no," and teaching a "good" behavior to replace the "bad." Not because of an objection to the word, but because I wanted her to listen when I did say it, usually to avoid something dangerous. They may understand that you're saying "no," but they truly may not know what to do instead. For instance, a 1 year-old is throwing a car across the room. Instead of shouting "no!" I would say, "Here, let's roll the car. Vroom vroom!" And then give praise the next several times I see the child rolling the car. If they continue to throw it, then it gets put away for awhile (the logical consequence), and we find something else to do. As they get a little older, old enough to understand, I would explain why we don't throw cars. I found having that mindset really kept me focused on staying positive.

I'm actually pretty proud of how I solved the issue of my daughter, who is 8, taking forever to get ready in the mornings. Despite getting her up a little earlier, making sure everything we could possibly do to prepare was done, and keeping a toothbrush and paste in the kitchen so it was right there after breakfast, she was still always very close to missing the bus and I was very sick of having to prod her along. So one day I told her that if she missed the bus because of her dawdling she was going to have to pay me $1 to drive her to school. I tell ya, that worked better than anything else I ever could have considered, and it fits in with using logic. If she misses the bus that is free she is going to pay for the gas it takes to get her there. She has yet to owe me money, and I don't have to nag her non-stop in the mornings.

[cindyluvs24]

Back around 1970, when I was (briefly) an elementary ed major, I admired the work of Haim Ginott, who advocated speaking to children with respect. More recently, I've enjoyed Mary Pipher's "Reviving Ophelia" and "The Shelter of Each Other," which, while not child-rearing books, contain a good deal of content on the characteristics of successful families.

Fun anecdote from my son-in-law: When he and his siblings were little, one day they were running around and being rowdy in the house. Their grandfather, who was watching them for the day, warned them, "Cut that out or I'll go get the strap!" The grandfather had never laid a finger on any of the kids (and they knew he never would), so my SIL thought he meant that he'd strap them into a chair to keep them from running around.

I exclaimed, "Success! You grew up not even knowing the concept of corporal punishment!"

I use Haim Ginott ("look, the juice has spilled. ") all the time at work. Instead of pointing fingers and declaring "Youuuu fucked up and must pay..." I leave out the personal pronouns and get a solution and everyone is happy. I think it works better on adults!

[2xx1xy1JD]

The "How to Talk..." authors studied with Ginott, and the books uses many of his methods.

I also found that it works for adults as well as kids. I used their tip about not arguing with a child's feelings when I was dating my now-husband. He would often get really stressed out and burnt out with his studies, and would vent to his parents (since he lived at home until 3rd year med school). They would immediately tell him why things weren't so bad, why he should be grateful and not complain, etc., which just made him argue even harder that things were horrible. While I wanted to say what his parents were saying, I bit my tongue and following the "How to Talk" advice instead, letting him vent and repeating back some stuff. To my surprise, it worked.