Disciplining kids who don't understand..
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Disciplining kids who don't understand..
| Mon, 01-16-2006 - 2:28pm |
My 4 y/o DD is becoming borderline unmanagable. She is fresh and mouthy to me, her Dad, and her little brothers.
How do you discipline the child who doesn't fully understand what she is saying and can't comprehend why she is being disciplined?
Every punishment I've used has not worked. I can only imagine that she is getting this mouthyness from school. There is a certain little boy in her class who is an undisciplined obnoxious little snot. It looks as if


I also have a 4 year old who displays similar, shall we call them "behavioral issues" for lack of a better term. When my son starts with the smart-alec talk I simply call him to me, have him sit on my lap, and start to explain one issue at a time. Like for instance if he hits his sister and yells shut up and starts to meltdown, I ask him to come to me. I have him sit on my lap, take a deep breath and ask him why he hit his sister..maybe an answer, maybe not. I then ask him if he would like Abigail to hit him...no (of course). I tell him that it makes Abigail sad when he hits and that it would make him sad if Abigail hit him, so in order for everyone to be happy we keep our hands to ourselves. I ask if he understands...standard answer of yes, ask him what i said...keep hands to self. On to the next issue..shut up. Is shut up a nice thing to say? No. Then we shouldn't say not nice things should we? No. Let's work on saying nice things ok? ok.
Now..with my daughter, she is a typical child, she is 6. When she starts acting up and being sassy..I call her Veruca (as in Veruca from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). She doesn't like the way Veruca talks or whines, so when I call her Veruca she immediately changes her tone..works wonders.
In a Nutshell..after I have rambled: Try explaining (in the friendliest/reassuring voice)why the behavior is unacceptable.
Hope it helps
Carol
I understand exactly where you're coming from, Kyra... My DD is also 4, also PDD-NOS, and I also struggle with disciplining her. I've tried calmly talking to her and asking her questions, and explaining why she shouldn't do things that she does, and it doesn't work AT ALL. First, she has problems with receptive language -- she often doesn't really understand what I'm saying to her, especially if it's abstract or involves emotions. She also has an underdeveloped sense of empathy, and so she can't put herself in someone else's shoes to figure out what's "nice" and what isn't. So, if I try to "reason" with her, she gets confused and frustrated and immediately flips out, and I get a kicking, screaming, rolling on the floor tantrum.
The mouthiness thing is so hard, because like you said she really has no clue what she's saying. And trying to explain things like "tone of voice" or "talking back" involves really abstract concepts that would be incredibly difficult for her to understand...
Honestly, I do some serious picking and choosing of battles when it comes to stuff like that. If Sylvia says something inappropriate to me, I usually choose to ignore it -- mainly because even disciplining her calls attention to the behavior and makes it more exciting for her. I try to have rules in the house that are all really simple and easy to understand: "No hitting," things like that, that I'm willing to endure a tantrum for when I discipline her. A lot of those other things I'm just setting aside for future discussion, once she gets older and her receptive and expressive language improve. Especially since a lot of it is behavior she's imitating and doesn't really know that it's "bad."
There's a book called "The Explosive Child" which outlines this kind of strategy -- basically, you put all behaviors into baskets: Basket A contains behaviors that you're willing to endure a kicking, screaming tantrum in order to stop. Basket B contains behaviors that you're "saving for later" -- you don't condone the behavior, but at the moment it's not worth a kicking screaming tantrum. And basket C contains behaviors that you just don't care about. What the book says is that at the beginning, the ONLY behaviors in basket A should be those that cause direct, imminent harm to the child or other people (hitting, biting, running into the street, etc.) Most behaviors will be in basket B or C. Gradually you can start putting more and more behaviors into basket A, but it's a process that takes a long time. It's a really good book that I think saved my relationship with my daughter, honestly.
The hardest party about this for me is letting go of what other people must think of my discipline strategy... parents and in-laws included! Just last night MIL was telling me that Sylvia really had me "over a barrell" and that I should expect her to eat whatever the family was eating rather than catering to her. I had to bite my cheeks from telling her, "Okay, why don't we start tonight? Let's make Sylvia, who refuses to eat any meat of any kind, eat the nice beef stew you made. DH and I will go into the living room while you try to force her to do that, okay? Let's see how long you last before giving her the stupid mac and cheeese I brought with me!"
If the talking back is really upsetting to you, though, you might want to talk to the teacher about it... Just to let her know what's going on, you know?
I know I've probably been very little help, but at least you know that there's someone else out there going through exactly what you're going through!
Jennifer :)
I well remember those days. It was a whole lot of awful.
We got a lot of input from the special ed preschool Peter attended, and they were great ... with parents, anyhoo. The only skill Peter acquired there was to roll up his sleeves.
Their advice was to reward good behaviour and try to prevent bad behaviour before it started. It worked to a degree, -actually better than that. I still use many of their methods today, most of which are classics anyway.
OK stop expecting good behaviour. That's an NT thing. Praise or reward any good behaviour, and srt up a regular rewards schedule, maybe every 10 minutes or so. If she was 'good' for 10 minutes, she gets a sticker, a marble or a button in a jar or whatever counter you choose. I print personalized reward charts up from he PC, and I have a book of like 3,000 little dot stickers, so I can give themn out regularly and often (can't remember where I got that book. Maybe Target?).
OK so what does 'good behaviour' mean? For the purposes of this exercise it is one specific behaviour you want to change. It's up to you decide which behaviour you target, but target only ONE. Once that behaviour is under control, you move to the next one, and so on. So say you target the 'nouthiness' fiirst, here's how it might go:
"K. you used such nice words today. No mean words at all since lunchtime. I think you deserve a sticker"
If you ever see her make a concious effort to use nice words -instant sticker
If she starts to use 'not nice' words: Remind her she will fail to gain a sticker. Keep your word if she persists.
You may want to further back this up with a daily (to start) reward. For (say) a full row of stickers she may earn a favorite treat. Make the incremental rewards very attainable and frequent. The point is to allow her to succeed, and feel good about these successes, so start with a low bar. You can raise it gradually over time.
Never take stickers away for bad behaviour.
Peter was a nightmare at that age, and we had similar problems with echolalia and language comprehension. We changed his preschool and that helped his language acquisition a lot (although they were mean to us...)
HTH
-Paula
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com