calling M. Foucault, M. Foucault come in please

[metaphortunate]

Mr. E had a visit with a friend of his this week. Said friend has kids older than the Junebug, and as they were talking shop, as parents will do, the friend asked if we had any thoughts on discipline. Because at this point, apparently it is hard to take the kids over to anyone's houses because they do not hear the word "no" and that turns out to not be very much fun.

This is not a situation I want to find myself in four years from now. But I don't really know what to do about it. This is one reason I've loved the baby stage: you don't have to discipline a baby. Babies do what they gotta do. Older kids, I know you have to actually train and stuff - but I have no idea how.

Parents of kids older than babies - what have you done about discipline? Has it worked? Did you try different things? What did you start with, and when did you start, and how has your approach changed as the kids have gotten older?

I'm turning on anonymous comments on this one.

Comments

[norah]

Oh my God, I have such admiration for anyone who can parent like Kohn recommends. Like, how do you get dressed and SHOES on in the morning? How do you make sure they EAT when it is EATING TIME? How do you get teeth brushed? Showers/baths? Homework? I believe in what Kohn says, but I don't know how to DO it - so much of life is a compliance activity, and we have things that need to get done by a certain time, etc.

Tips?

[laurajv]

I think the answer is, one messes up a lot, because it's such a different mindset and because, as you say, a lot of life is a compliance activity.

I try to re-read sections of the book frequently to internalize suggestions more -- most recently I re-read the bit on pseudochoice and on what to do when you have to take away autonomy (like, yeah, get your shoes on/teeth brushed etc), because I've had to take away a fair amount of autonomy lately (sorry, kid, but you actually CANNOT throw hard metal toys at the baby's head). I work really hard on being warm, caring, and regretful about causing the kid to lose autonomy and not blaming him for acting in a developmentally appropriate manner. And I screw up a lot. And I spend a fair amount of time thinking that maybe Kohn is just a nutty nut guy who's nuts.

I've found my particular child (not the baby, the older one, obviously) is fairly responsive to things like "I know you don't want to do X. It's not much fun, is it? But X is one of those things that you just have to do in life, even when you don't want to. We all have to do things we don't want to do sometimes. Let's do it and then later we can do something more fun without worrying."

I imagine that doesn't work as well with all kids, though. But R really responds to straightforwardness about how I know he doesn't want to do a thing, especially if I can give him an empathy-based reason for it -- like, I just got him into his afternoon quiet time, which he didn't want, by telling him I knew he didn't want quiet time but that I was tired and needed a break, and quiet time was really to help me be calmer. I didn't expect him to accept that explanation but he did so quite readily.