A few weeks ago at school Maggie was walking in the little playground, just 10 feet from me. I thought, “She’s getting near the edge, I’ll go get her soon so she doesn’t fall.” And in one quick moment, she had turned toward the edge, run to it, flipped over it and landed face first on the concrete. Yay! Tears and crying with guilt all around; the result, a scraped up face.
As you can tell, she’s really torn up about it. :)
The day after. Not so bad. Not much left of the forehead. It scabbed on her nose a few days after but we’re all good now (three weeks later) It’s amazing how something so little can get my heart pumping so quickly!
So I’m pretty sure she loves the sound of herself screeching. It’s the one sound Brandon won’t tolerate coming out of our kids. We’ve been working on ways to convince her to stop. She knows we don’t like it. Things she says after she’s done it, “Screeching is a bad choice.” and “What’s the rule with shreeking? Don’t do it.” And my all time favorite, to the song – “If you’re happy and you know it, no more shreeking, no more shreeking.” We’ve been putting her in time out if she goes overboard, which is a good motivator, because she hates it.
I learned from my friend Monica, to make her stand with her hands against a wall. This way she can’t be holding any toys, has to stay standing and for seeing kids, they can’t see what’s going on around them and get distracted. It’s very effective. I heard recently though that you shouldn’t put your children in time out because it’s an unrelated consequence to their action. Sigh. So what is a related consequence to not wanting to go outside or come back inside if she’s out? Or really to any change happening to her situation.
How do you discipline your children?
I'm not the best at discipline, but I don't agree with that method of doing time-outs, especially for little ones. It's like treating them like a criminal for a police pat-down in my opinion. I'll have to chat with you sometime if you're interested because I could go on and on about discipline, what works, what doesn't and what is just plain wrong.
ReplyDeleteWe do time-outs, but we just have her stay in one spot. If she gets out I remind her to go back, or put her back myself if she isn't doing it. I try to let there be natural consequences, but if she bites someone there aren't really any tangible consequences for her. So I warn her, to make it relevant. "If you bite him again then you will go on time-out". That way, she knows that there will be a consequence and she knows what it is. I try to be pretty frugal with time-outs too. I want them to mean something. I don't know that I do it best either, but we all do what feels right to us, which is what you should do too. :D (I'm sure you do).
ReplyDeleteIt's not often we put Keira in time-out, but we do it as well. I think everyone, even adults, need time-outs. Time to not be distracted by things, time to clear the mind and calm down. Plus, this is the main reason why we do time-out, every time she is in time out we tell her she needs think and ponder about the thing(s) she has said and/or done for us to push the "pause" button. After she is done with time out, we always sit with her and talk with her. We ask her if she understands the reason(s) of why she should not have done what she did, then we speak of what she could have done better and ways to try and not make that mistake again. Granted, she is six years old, but we still put her in time out when she was younger as well. When a person (young or old) is aggravated by someone or something, the situation can escalate. Before it gets that far, I think it's good to take them out of the situation and help calm them. I agree there are good ways and bad ways to discipline. You'll hear/read about discipline everywhere and each of them contradicting one another. I'm sure you do this as well, but remember common sense and do what is best for you and your children.
ReplyDeleteThe discipline we use most is loss of privileges (grounding). We, again, talk (always talk with them) about what happened, how to correct it and how to work on preventing it from happening again with her. Once a privilege is lost, she needs earn it back...show us that she deserves it again. We do put a time on the grounding, but we are also teaching her that she needs to earn what she gets, to deserve the extra fun things. I think it helps teach about the consequences of the bad AND good actions. If you're bad, it gets taken away. If you're good, you deserve it. (I'm sure you know this too. lol) Anyway, grounding is our main form of discipline because that works best for us. And if the situation is too heated or if it's out of control, that is when the time-out comes in. :)
Aww, her little face reminded me of my daughter's! She had a similar injury when she tripped and fell. I think her Daddy was more tore up over the boo boo than she was!
ReplyDeleteAmber had a scrape on her nose just like that. Do you remember it, she got it when we were in Utah.
ReplyDeleteI know the conversation is old now but...
As for discipline, I think that you are doing just what you should. I think that time outs have the relavance that you give them, as with what Nielson News said, people sometimes just need time to calm down and regroup. Time-outs shouldn't be too long (the most quoted rule is a min per year of age). and the conversation that follows is important, reviewing why they had a time-out and what they can do differently in the future as well as a hug or some other show of affection. It is important that they know that you love them no matter what but that there are consequences for the choices we make. As for touching the wall, I can see the benefits but sitting seemed to be easier for me to enforce and can be done anywhere, even beside the playground.