Discipline besides time outs

Time outs work well for two out of three of my children. My oldest son couldent care less! He will sit in time out for 45 minutes instead of the 3 minutes and apologizing. He has been getting frustrated lately and has started to push or throw toys. Right now I have him in his room and he still does not care! Taking away toys or tv time does not affect him either. Any ideas??

 

I wish I had a "cure all" answer for you, but there isn't one. I have found that my kids respond differently to different consequences as well. Finding that right one is so hard! I don't know how old your oldest is, but what about the "ticket" method? There are 3 tickets on the fridge. He loses one for bad behavior, and after the third is gone, he's in his room the rest of the day. Should just take one long day in his room to figure that one out. But, if he's not old enough for that yet, it won't work.

My best advice is to remain consistant with whatever consequence you use. There can be no warning...just immediately into consequence when the behavior happens. That generally stops the behavior, where as when there is a warning first they know they have so much time to get away with it. I need to go back to that on occassion. Then things go well, and I loosen up. They start to get worse again and I have to tighten down again.

:hug: never fun! Good luck figuring out what works.

 

We have started taking quarters away from their bank, or the threat of it anyway. They earn quarters for cleaning and they are able to put them in their banks. We match their money when we go buy something so with this new way it is working for right now.

 

Timeout wasn't really working for us as neither girl would stay there and I didn't like holding them there - it felt too physically coercive. And one of ours really couldn't care less. Also, I wanted them to learnt to calm themselves when they were out of control.

So we use time out as a calm down period instead of a punishment. I put several soft cushions and a small rug into a corner of our living room. Then when the girls need a calm down period we send or carry them over to there. We don't physically make them stay there, but will completely ignore them if they come out within 2 minutes (that bothers them enormously). Sometimes they'll stay by themselves a long time until they're calmer. We also don't make them apologise afterwards as we found it was grudging and not meant - although sometimes they will anyway. Finally we tend not to use it very much - only for the dangerous or aggressive acts.

 

I have a sticker chart, where my kids earn stickers for doing whatever is the "theme" of the month. (e.g. cleaning up the room, washing hands, changing clothes by themselves, etc.) They get a prize when they earn 10 stickers. I usually use time outs, but when they have done something really bad (like hurting his brother), I take away a sticker from their sticker chart in addition to using time outs. This REALLY upsets them so much more than time outs. It stops their bad behavior right away.

 

my parents were very old fashioned... we got told "no" once... and if we had to be told again, we got the belt. I can only remember a couple times i got spanked pretty good, and for the most part, I was a very well behaved little girl! My twin boys just turned a year old, so I havn't tackled the discipline yet. Good luck!

 

The other day I caught Rachel cutting her personalized book. As a punishment, I made her tell the person who gave it to her what she did. She was mortified so I think it was pretty effective. .