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

[lovepeaceohana]

This is such a complicated thing for us, right now, because we've got Lu who's three and a half, and KK who's newly two, and it's tough to maintain any kind of consistency when they both respond differently to us (as in, each of us individually, and to different methods of discipline).

We're still searching for things that work. I've read Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting book and it kind of broke me a little - because if punishments don't work, and rewards don't work, really, in the long run, what the hell works?! - and I had to decide that what is important to me is 1) my relationship with my kids and 2) that they internalize a sense of self-decision-making, like, not that they do things just because they're asked/told, but because they can recognize that doing a particular thing is better than the alternative. To this end I talk to them, a lot, lots of "Okay, I know you'd rather throw your toys across the room, but that's not a very nice way to treat your toys and they're liable to break. You'll be able to enjoy them longer if you play gently with them!" and trying to put a positive spin on things, f'rex "Let's make sure we're ready to play outside by getting our clothes on and our teeth brushed!" instead of "No playing outside unless you brush your teeth." It's more a model of working-with instead of dictating-to, I guess, and picking a stance on what things are worth fighting about - time-sensitive things, sure, safety things, sure, but if they want to go to the park instead of the library, or want dessert with their dinner? Eh, why not. I like to let them have choices when they can. I'm also a huge fan of counting, as in, "Okay, you can keep playing for another five seconds, and then I need you to come here so we can change your diaper" and that usually works a charm.

This is harder on my partner, I think, than on me, because I grew up in a household where "because I said so" was more the exception than the norm - my folks were pretty good about having good explanations for why they asked me to do stuff, or not to do stuff, and they were willing to listen and compromise on things that were a matter of preference instead of, say, safety. My partner, otoh, grew up in a navy family where he was pretty much expected to obey his parents, period. So he gets a lot more upset when Lu gets into a defiant mood and just flat-out refuses to do anything we ask.