We’re opening up the mailbag again, because as I always say, I don’t know everything. Let’s use our collective experience to help out another one of my good friends sort out this discipline dilemma:
I wanna know, when do you start to discipline your child? What’s too young, what’s too late? How do you discipline an infant starting to get into everything or exhibiting behaviors you don’t like?
I’ll kick this one off.
As far as discipline goes, I just started getting semi-tough on my daughter, who is two. I don’t consider what she does to be “bad behavior,” because it’s only bad if someone knows what they’re doing.
For instance, she doesn’t know it’s wrong to hit someone unless I tell her or she feels bad after she does it. Kids are like blank little slates and it’s up to us as parents to fill their heads up with the right/wrong way to do things.
(I’m about to go a little “college professor” on you so be forewarned.)
First, I acknowledge her behavior. “Baby, did you hit your brother?”
She takes ownership of what she did. “Yes.”
I explain the issue. “We don’t hit people. That’s not nice.” (This only works if she comprehends what “not nice” means.)
If she hits him again, THAT’S bad behavior because she knew it was wrong. I just told her.
I don’t think discipline is punishing your kids for doing something bad. Discipline is creating a path of acceptable behaviors for your child to choose from. (Oooh, that’s deep, right?) I like to think of it as a positive behavior, not a negative consequence.
What do you all think? When is the proper time to start disciplining your child?
I think you’ve got the right idea. Children learn by what we tell them (ie. our expectations) and by what they see (the examples we set). So the main thing is be consistant. With my rugrats, I started as soon as I felt they understood what I was saying. This meant that baby couldn’t string together a sentence, but grasped that pulling things off the coffee table is not acceptable. I think the main thing is to start as you mean to go on. A very simplistic way of illustrating this would be, if you know you want a baby to learn to fall asleep by his/herself, then don’t go rocking baby to sleep every night. The next thing you know, you’re complaining that baby will only sleep if rocked, and you can’t handle it anymore cause baby ain’t so little (or light) anymore! PS. I agree that discipline is a positive thing. It should be done out of love and not anger.
With very young children – those who have just started crawling or walking – the best discipline strategy is to say “No” and redirect. So, if Junior is pulling down your Precious Moments statues, say, “No” as you take him into another place, and show him something he CAN play with. Also, it’s essential to put up all the delicate stuff now.
I started doing time outs with my kids right around 15 – 18 months old. It mainly happened when I said no, redirected them to something appropriate, and then they went right back to doing what I told them not to do before. I only made them sit on the bottom step one minute for every year of age. In the beginning I stood there with them. Now they can do it on their own (at 3.5) and mostly on their own (at nearly 2). I’ve written at length about how to do time outs correctly at http://prettybabies.blogspot.com/2007/07/wfmw-how-to-do-time-outs-correctly.html .
Also, the tag “discipline” has some good stuff, too, if I do say so.
Amy
I’ve tried the saying “no” and the redirecting thing. It works with some stuff but not everything. But when you’re feeding an 8 month old who slaps the spoon out of your hand, after you say “no” and redirect, he then keeps on doing it, as well as laughing and thinking it’s funny…then what?
I was raised on spankings but I don’t feel that’s the only way to discipline a child. I want to do things differently than how my mother did with me. However, at this age, you can not reason with him. When I tell him, “no, that’s not nice”, he doesn’t understand that. But after he has knocked the spoonful of food out my hand a few times, my initial instinct is to say “no” as well as pop his hand. He can then associate slapping the food out of mommy’s hand = a slap on my hand…let me not do that anymore. Right?
Kids need to come with an instruction manual complete with a troubleshooting guide. Anyone up for writing a book: “1st time Single Motherhood for Dummies?” :-/
Redirecting and short explanations are good strategies but being consistent and firm are very imortant also. You have to stick with it and you can’t give in. Different discipline tehniques work for different children and unfoutunately there is no magic solution but if you discipline consistently, firmly, and lovingly it will work and the sooner you set boundaries for your children the easier it is to discipline as they get older.
You are all right on track.
Keep it positive, keep it short, keep it consistent – it all pays dividends in the long run. Keep at it.
Courtney, you are right. At 8 months your son is too little to understand what you are trying to teach him. Don’t slap, just be quick. Hold one of his hands, sing a song, open you own mouth wide and laugh – often he’ll copy you – slip a spoon full of food in and the spoon out again so fast he doesn’t even see it coming!
Feeding babies is ALWAYS messy. They grab, they spit, they flick – but they also eat, they learn, and it all gets easier in time!
He may be keen to try feeding himself. Are you ready to let him? Lay some newspaper on the floor around the high chair and let him go for it!! I’ve got a great photo of my daughter at 8 or 9 months covered in mashed pumpkin. It’s one of my favorites. She’s waving the spoon with a big toothless grin – it must have taken ages to clean up, but it was definitely worth it.
If you have a chance, come and leave some comments over at http://www.better-living-ideas.com/parenting-advice.html
@Amanda – Being consistent is sooo important and that’s the thing I struggle with the most.
@Courtney – Yeah, I think you’ll have a little while to go before he understands that you’re serious. Babies don’t get discipline.