The Parenting Thread

[Trent]

My brother currently has a 1 year old and shared with me a technique that I wish I knew when my daughter was that age -- how to make your baby sleep without waking up during the night! Because my nephew goes to bed and doesn't wake up until morning!

Apparently here's the trick: routine. Everything that the child does every day should be on a strict timetable. Each meal, nap, bath time, bed time etc. should all be scheduled and happen at the same time on the dot every day. This in turn basically adjusts the baby's body clock, meaning that they will naturally get used to sleeping and not waking up until morning! When Yuki was younger, we did have a timetable that we mostly stuck to, but there were exceptions -- lunch might half an hour late one day, or bath time an hour early another day etc. In hindsight, this would've thrown her body clock off. We may have had better success if we stuck with our timetable more strictly.

So yeah, while this advice comes too late for me, hopefully it will come in handy for those of you who still have little babies who are keeping you up at night. Now to invent time travel and tell this to my past self...

That's not the case for me. Arty has just started sleeping through on most nights, occasionally he wakes up for a drink but for the most part, he sleeps from about 8:30pm to 5-6am 5-6 nights a week. The thing is that nothing has changed. His routine, while not super strict, is basically the same as it was when he was waking up at least once a night, every night.

Also, that strict a routine doesn't allow for much flexibility to live a normal life. If I had to feed Arty breakfast, lunch and dinner, bath him, put him down for a sleep at the same time every day, I doubt I'd ever get out of the house, let alone have any fun outings with him.

While strict routines can help and believe me, I know how important a good routine is to a toddler, there is nothing to say what works for one child will work for another. In fact, in my experience, the opposite is usually true, what works for one child, will most likely not work for another. Otherwise, parenting would be easy because we'd all have the instruction manual that they gave us in the hospital!

[prjkt]

Gah, did something to my neck yesterday morning, still hurts like hell, can barely turn.

Hardest part is I can't hold/cuddle my little one

[5FDP]

Should you smack your kids? That's the topic running on news.com.au. After reading some of the comments, I think people are confusing 'belting' with 'smacking'.

My daughter used to play with the electrical sockets when she was about 2 or 3 years old. We'd tell her 'no' but she continued with this behaviour. She received a smack as a last resort and she never touched them again. I'd prefer to put up with the guilt of smacking my child rather than them electrocute themselves.

One woman agreed and said smacking your child only made you feel better

This person obviously has no clue or doesn't have any kids if she thinks any parent in their right mind feels better after smacking their child.

[Ralph Wiggum]

I got a good smack on the bum as a kid. I recall my mum once struck me in the face and she instantly regretted it.

I'd be inclined to use verbal discipline, but a smack on the bum is probably my last resort if my kid was being an absolute shit. And yeah, there's a big difference between a smack on the bum and an absolute belting.

[GoktimusPrime]

Before I unload my thoughts on this issue, I'd just like to start with a disclaimer to say that nothing in this post is intended to be any form of judgment on anyone here. We all make mistakes, myself included.

I'm personally not a smacker, and it's something that I can't say that I'd advocate. But let's take a closer look at this.

The purpose of smacking

The entire purpose of enforcing consequences is to teach children the difference between right and wrong, yes? So positive consequences for positive behaviours and negative consequences for negative behaviours. We reward the positive behaviours to teach kids, "That was good! Keep doing that!" and we penalise negative behaviours to teach, "That was bad! Don't do that again!"

Obviously smacking falls under the category of being a negative enforcer. And a very punitive one at that. And of course, as many of us here know all too well, punitive measures are often necessary when managing the behaviour of infants (age approx. 2~3) because the child is still learning how to rationalise. They are full of raw emotion and it makes it difficult to simply sit down an reason with them, at least in the immediate short term. So smacking is a simple and immediate negative form of behavioural enforcement. The child does something wrong and receives a smack. It is unpleasant and maybe even painful, and like Pavlov's dog, the child associates the pain with the action and learns to avoid doing the action. In theory.

Is smacking a rational or emotional response?

While I've never smacked a child, something that I did in my early parenting which I'm not very proud of was angry shouting. But I came to the realisation that this was more of an emotional rather than rational response. I raised my voice because I was frustrated and upset at the situation, rather than because I was looking at working towards a resolution. I'm also concerned about using emotion to resolve an issue, as it may teach the child to also respond with emotion rather than reason.

The shift towards reason

So I moved away from using emotionally driven negative responses and more towards ones based on reason. These included:
* Reality Therapy
* Choice Theory
* Positive Behaviour for Learning
Rather than getting upset at the child, this is more about giving the child choices and allowing them to be masters of their own destiny. One reason why more punitive measures like shouting or smacking etc. doesn't work as effectively is because it takes power away from the child. And when a person feels impotent, their natural reaction is to lash out. By re-empowering the child, this takes away their urge to lash out. I know that this may sound like politically correct do-gooder nonsense at first; I was also initially skeptical, but it actually works really well. I've used PBL at my previous school which was a very tough school to teach at, and it worked. No more shouting, no more arguments... just higher rates of compliance. And I still use it at my school now, which still has its fair share of challenging students.

And believe it or not, but being less emotional is much more effective in managing student behaviour. This is because becoming emotional is an outward sign that you are no longer in complete control of the situation. And if the adult is no longer in control, then who is? Maintaining a calm and cool demeanour allows the child to know that you are in control. The child can get upset or angry and jump up and down and wail his/her head off, but you have control of the situation. And with this control, you will help the child regain control of their situation too. You will direct them to reassert power.

How does all that stuff work?

By asking questions. When you simply tell a child what to do, that child is required to do no thinking or reasoning.

e.g. if a child grabs a kitchen knife, the parent might give them a quick smack and/or shout at them saying something like, "DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT! KNIVES ARE SHARP AND YOU MIGHT GET CUT!" Although the parent has explained the rationale behind why the child shouldn't touch the knife, the child has done no thinking or reasoning for him/herself. The adult has done it all for the child. It's like seeing a student staring at a puzzling maths problem and then just telling them the answer rather than showing them how to work it out for themselves.
"The hypotenuse is 5cm." <---great, now the kid knows what the hypotenuse of that one triangle is. They have no idea how you worked that out, let alone how they might be able to work it out themselves. Asking questions is a far better way to elicit a child to figure out answers themselves. Looking at the same scenario with the knife, the parent would immediately get the knife out of the child's reach (remove the hazard first), and then sit them aside and ask them questions to understand what just happened. So they may be questions like (be aware that the nature of the questions may vary depending on the age of the child),
"Do you think that knives or sharp or blunt?"
"How would you feel if you hurt yourself with a knife?"
"What should you do if you see a knife?"

Another thing to bear in mind is that when the child answers these questions, they are essentially helping to create their own ground rules. e.g. If a child says, "I think that I should leave knives alone," then the child has created his/her own rule for what to do if they see a knife on the kitchen bench. The parent has not created this rule or even told them what to do -- the child is telling him/herself what to do. This gives them a sense of ownership (and thus personal responsibility) over their own rules. These are no longer rules that mummy or daddy are imposing over the child, these are rules that the child has imposed on him/herself. The child cannot think, "I don't like your stupid rules," because the child has helped to create the rule. When people set rules for themselves, they are more likely to want to stick to them. Herein lies to key to intrinsic motivation. Emotional responses like shouting, scolding or smacking are extrinsic motivators, which - IMHO - simply doesn't work anywhere near as effectively as intrinsic motivations. It's also arguably a "slice of democracy."

My own experience

When our daughter was around age 1, I did the whole angry shouting and scolding thing. It didn't work well. I'd get upset, she'd get upset... everyone's a loser. By the time she reached age 2, I switched to implementing more RT/CT/PBL-based strategies. By Age 3, I didn't need to scold her anymore, and the need to use time outs had already become a rarity. She was already on the path to becoming self-disciplined. By Age 4 she had achieved it, and a school counsellor and principal determined that she was ready to start School, and so she did. Our daughter attends regular day school and two different community language schools and all of her teachers tell us that she's always very well behaved. But yeah, it's been over 3 years since I last had to raise my voice or impose a punitive penalty on her like a time out. Age 2 was the trickiest because that was when she really tested us for the next year. Little wonder why it's called the Terrible Two's. But I remained firm, fair and consistent, and parenting has become massively easier ever since. Once you've established your expectations and standards, it allows you to establish and maintain your authority.

I sometimes see other parents in public shouting or getting into emotionally fuelled arguments with their children. It seems so counter-productive. I see the same thing with some teachers too; like the ones who are shouting at their students practically every lesson and then say that their students are too difficult to control. But yeah, I don't see any real long term benefits of smacking.

[5FDP]

Yelling at a child does far more damage than smacking IMO. The mental scars can last a lifetime.

[Trent]

I never believed that there was anything wrong with smacking and always thought that I'd give my children a smack when required. However, I have so far found it unnecessary. We use time-out with Arty and have found that very effective. So much so that through the consistent application of the warning system we hardly ever have to place him in time-out. The threat of it is usually enough to stop any bad behaviour.

I couldn't bring myself to smack him anyway.