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

[kate_nepveu]

Beyond what other people have said--I pretty much always blathered to SteelyKid about what we were doing or going to do, even when she was a baby, because otherwise I felt like I _never talked_, and being in a habit of giving explanations and reasons has I think been useful. Also it helps me pick my battles (can I explain why this is important? No? Then it's not.).

Anyway. Not acting reflexively and paying attention to her reactions have been kind of my meta-principles. Like, arguing from negative future consequences does not work (though we keep trying because *one day*!), but "if you do X with that again I am taking it away" works just fine. She hates count-downs from 10, so we use that for time-sensitive compliance. Happily we haven't needed more than that so far.