Creative Discipline

We try to save punishments for really serious behavior that we can't fix any other way. I'm really bad about wanting to just stick a kid in time out or send them to their room to get the behavior out from under my feet, but especially with the younger crowd, if they are misbehaving its probably because something is wrong. The first step when a kid is acting up is to go through the checklist:Tired?Hungry?Too much change without enough notice? Upset about something unrelated (like after a visit)?Most of the time its "Tired". As long as they are not being super destructive, most of the time the best remedy is to send them to their bed for some quiet time. Usually they will cry themselves to sleep for a much needed nap and we can start fresh in 10 minutes or an hour when they wake up.

We try to save punishments for really serious behavior that we can't fix any other way. I'm really bad about wanting to just stick a kid in time out or send them to their room to get the behavior out from under my feet, but especially with the younger crowd, if they are misbehaving its probably because something is wrong. The first step when a kid is acting up is to go through the checklist: Tired? Hungry? Too much change without enough notice? Upset about something unrelated (like after a visit)? Most of the time its "Tired". As long as they are not being super destructive, most of the time the best remedy is to send them to their bed for some quiet time. Usually they will cry themselves to sleep for a much needed nap and we can start fresh in 10 minutes or an hour when they wake up.

Keep in mind that the posters so far are mostly talking about younger kids. With older kids, I find waiting works. Just waiting. "Please set the table." "Nooooooo make Dancer do it." ..... ......... ................. "Fiiiiine, I'll do it grumble grumble grumble." I wait out tantrums too, although not if they're dangerous. I guess it's not "discipline," but it works most of the time and I don't have to do anything. For our little guy, when he's getting overzealous with toys (to a dangerous level) and/or nearly breaking things, we find picking him up and taking him to the other side of the room (so he is interrupted and has to crawl back) annoys him enough he generally settles down.

I have not done this since all of mine are still kind of young, but it heard a friend with older children mention how they had a large pile of rocks or bricks, and a punishment they would have for serious offenses is to move the entire pile to a new location. It was pointless, which I imagine makes it more maddening for the child, but it's physical hard labor that gives them time to think a bout what they did.

I've removed the TV from the living room for several months. The hot water hog earned a super low flow shower head after repeated warnings. Taken all their brand name clothing for acting like a tool. Simply made the teens car "disappear" for 5 months when he broke the rules. I just made it gone one day. (that screwed him up big time!) Shut the power off to their rooms. After a hour warning all items left unattended were trashed or confiscated...I've had their BB guns for 2 years in lock down. Happened once...after that they haul butt to clean their stuff up. Did a junk food cleanse of the house & refused to buy more unless they cleaned...or they could buy their own. The money saved paid for a cleaning woman. Turns out they want pop tarts more than a maid. One of the teens threw a hissy fit about taking the trash bag out...I mean a mega tantrum. Said he'd never touch a bag of trash ever again. Alrighty then! So instead of taking the trash bags outside we "stored" them in his room....lasted 8 hours on his stand off. Never heard another word about trash. Failure to clean their bathroom equaled loss of toilet seat until clean. That worked really fast! You have to get super creative with teenagers.

You've got some great ones!!!! One that I love that my mom did to my sister when she was a teenager. Grounding from electricity. She was amish for a week. So that meant no lights at night. This was horrible if you got grounded it winter when it gets dark at 5pm. No curling iron or hair dryer. This was early 90's when the big poofy bangs were in! ;) Now a days, this means teens can use their cell phones....but guess what?! No charger for the cell phone, so once it is dead, then their phone is gone too! It was bad enough watching my sister have to go through that, that I avoided that punishment all together. :)

The challenge with older kids to find their currency or what they can't live without. The problem is when dealing with kids coming from neglect, they can do without a lot. The place our sib group was removed from did not have electricity or running water. Taking away the tv or internet was useless since they hadn't had it in months. I know I got bashed a lot for this, but before we could use anything as an incentive and then take it away as a punishment, we had to essentially bait them and get them used to it and then it meant something to take away. It took about a month getting Lucy and Linus used to watching Nick Jr that they finally were upset when they couldn't watch it and motivated enough to do something to be able to watch tv.

Yep you absolutely have to get them used to having nice things before these tactics work. Otherwise they just shrug & go about their day.

Since I started the spanking thread, figured I ought to chime in here:) On the suggestion of a poster here (sorry I don't know who to give credit), we made a list of EVERY privilege M has, broken out by the day. This includes everything from electronics time and horseback riding to sleeping in and staying up late to meal choices (if she does not like what we are having) and eating meat (DH and I are vegetarians). Then we made a list of 12 rules (worked up from 7). Every time she breaks a rule and does not change her attitude when we bring it to her attention, she marks off one privilege for one day. That is working great. But this thread is all about creativity, right? Here is one of my favorites: Me: You need to get dressed for bed. It is past bedtime. M: I AM dressed for bed. (Still wearing her rhinestone jeans and glitter top) Me: Well, then your pajama drawer is filled with all the wrong types of clothing. I will throw them out and you will just have to wear what you have on every night to bed until I can find another pair of rhinestone pants and sequin t-shirt! She got dressed in PJs very quickly after that!

With any child, young or old you have to put yourself in a place of authority. I think there are multiple ways of doing this, but for me, I pick my battles and will let things go sometimes but NEVER do I let go a challenge to my authority. And trust me, kids as young as 18 months can challenge your authority. But wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, my kids are required to obey. Even for trivial things. Rule in our house is do what I say, and AFTER that come to me with your concerns and complaints and we can discuss and come to an agreement. When a child disobeys, even for a small thing, they have consequences that depend on their age. For a toddler, who has little sense of time and hates to be alone, being in their room or carseat (for times when we are not home) is the worst. For my 8 year old, he loses all his toys (after warnings), and if he still does not improve he loses books and coloring, and lastly he loses his blankie too. By that time he is ready to reconsider and is able to earn all that back with good behavior.

You need to be very creative disciplining RAD or behaviorally challenging kids. One thing that really works for our passive-aggressive daughter is us 'not caring' about what every other adult in her life has cared about. For instance, when she first came to us she would be very passive aggressive about obeying when it came time to get ready for bed. She would 'forget how' to brush her teeth or open the toothpaste or her toothbrush would be mysteriously 'missing'. So I told her I didn't care if her teeth rotted out of her mouth - it was her mouth. If she didn't brush them within the next five minutes she wasn't allowed to brush them at all. She tested us and didn't brush them then screamed and cried when we told her it was bedtime (and she magically 'remembered' where her toothbrush was hidden) and cried herself to sleep. She never did it again. Sometimes, not caring about a small issue is a way to stun your kids into obedience.Our now adopted son would take off his seatbelt when we were in the car and would flat out refuse to get it back on. I wouldn't pull over. (his thing was control what timeline we did things on and he got great pleasure at making his sister late for school or dance or whatever if I did pull over.) His consequence would be, for every minute he left his seatbelt off, he would sit and practice taking his seatbelt on and off in the car for that amount of minutes during his after school activities (soccer practice etc). Not only would he have to practice, but the car would be turned off and he would have to practice in a sticky, hot, nasty car. He learned very quickly to keep his seatbelt on.Our son also had an issue with any kind of authority figures and would blatantly and disrepectfully disobey them if the authority figure asked them to do or not to do something. For example, our son was asked, by his swim coach, not to jump into the pool during swim practice, so he immediately jumped in anyway. I went over, pulled him aside, and made him practice getting in and out of the pool appropriately twenty times in a row. We do the 'oh, you can't listen when you are asked? Then that shows us you need more practice listening' thing a lot. It totally works.

You need to be very creative disciplining RAD or behaviorally challenging kids. One thing that really works for our passive-aggressive daughter is us 'not caring' about what every other adult in her life has cared about. For instance, when she first came to us she would be very passive aggressive about obeying when it came time to get ready for bed. She would 'forget how' to brush her teeth or open the toothpaste or her toothbrush would be mysteriously 'missing'. So I told her I didn't care if her teeth rotted out of her mouth - it was her mouth. If she didn't brush them within the next five minutes she wasn't allowed to brush them at all. She tested us and didn't brush them then screamed and cried when we told her it was bedtime (and she magically 'remembered' where her toothbrush was hidden) and cried herself to sleep. She never did it again. Sometimes, not caring about a small issue is a way to stun your kids into obedience. Our now adopted son would take off his seatbelt when we were in the car and would flat out refuse to get it back on. I wouldn't pull over. (his thing was control what timeline we did things on and he got great pleasure at making his sister late for school or dance or whatever if I did pull over.) His consequence would be, for every minute he left his seatbelt off, he would sit and practice taking his seatbelt on and off in the car for that amount of minutes during his after school activities (soccer practice etc). Not only would he have to practice, but the car would be turned off and he would have to practice in a sticky, hot, nasty car. He learned very quickly to keep his seatbelt on. Our son also had an issue with any kind of authority figures and would blatantly and disrepectfully disobey them if the authority figure asked them to do or not to do something. For example, our son was asked, by his swim coach, not to jump into the pool during swim practice, so he immediately jumped in anyway. I went over, pulled him aside, and made him practice getting in and out of the pool appropriately twenty times in a row. We do the 'oh, you can't listen when you are asked? Then that shows us you need more practice listening' thing a lot. It totally works.

I do this too! It does work great. My son decided pretty quickly that opening and shutting a door softly 25 times was a LOT more of a pain than shutting it softly the first time! :)

Country, your post made me smile this morning. Guess what two little boys are practicing this morning :)

I don't know how old your niece is, but we learned (the hard way lol) that the trick is to never give them an option that leaves all the power in their hands. Rather than "Go put your shoes on right now so we can leave" its "Do you want to put your shoes on, or do you want me to help you?" Still a choice, but both choices involve action that gets us out the door. For older kids you can modify that to "Do you want to put your shoes on, or do you want to walk to the car barefoot and put your shoes on while we drive?" Once you are talking consequences you can do something like "You can choose to calm down, or you can choose to go to your room for quiet time" "I see that you are choosing not to calm down, so your behavior is telling me that you have chosen to go to your room, would you like to go there by yourself, or should I help you get there?" "Your behavior is telling me that you are choosing to wait for me to help you go to your room... here, let me help" With one of our older kids (who was not a foster kid, but might as well have been... he was 10/11 and hell on wheels) we worked on the cash system. Dollars in the jar for good behavior and good listening, dollars out of the jar for bad behavior. Often times when he was in trouble it was " I asked you to take the trash out, you can choose to take the trash out right now, or you can choose to not take the trash out and loose a dollar from your jar." That way it was not "me taking his money" it was "him choosing to loose a dollar."