Discipline and avoiding battles

Well, we figured out what was behind my daughter's crabbiness (and some of mine too!).  A nice, snotty cold.  With the worst of it behind us (we hope), perhaps her sleeping patterns will improve.

Something needs to improve.  I've noticed lately that my son is going back into his same pattern of disobedience from last summer, easily melting down to a state where "No!" is his default response.  Of course, the reason he was misbehaving last summer was because I was suffering from new baby stress and exhaustion and consequently had very little patience.  I'm going through another spell of short patience / temper.  I said last week that I consider myself a laid-back person, but honestly, you'd never know that watching me lately.

Naturally, there are extenuating circumstances... The afore-mentioned cold, the fact that I'm on a course of antibiotics, the way my daughter has refused to take an afternoon nap all week, so that I've not had my mid-afternoon break-point...  But there comes a point where I have to suck up the extenuating circumstances and deal with them.  I worked hard enough to get my children in the first place; I can go on working to maintain the relationship I want with them.

And I don't want that to be negative; I don't want to be shouting all the time--especially since all evidence suggests that it exacerbates my son's bad behaviour!  I certainly don't want him to have that as his defining image of me.  So I need to pull back a bit, give both of us a break and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Now, I consider myself to be on the stricter side of the parenting spectrum.  I definitely expect a certain standard of behaviour from my son, and it's not my intent to let him get away with (figurative) murder, just because I'm unhappy with how often I'm shouting at him.  One of the most common pieces of advice you find on the internet when it comes to dealing with toddlers is to avoid battles, but it's all very vague as to how.  I'm assuming that doctors and child behaviorists don't actually expect you to cater to their every whim...

I've considered the issue of avoiding battles many times over the past couple of years, but this week I've tried a different angle on it.  What do I consider to be discipline?  My individual answer is: enforcing consequences.  Getting angry does not have to be a part of that.

I've witnessed other parents getting angry without enforcing consequences.  (This isn't to dump on "other parents"... I think one of the best lessons of parenting is observing others and noticing what they do wrong, since it's a lot easier than seeing your own mistakes!  I can guarantee that I am returning the favour in kind.)  And I can sympathise, because you don't realise how hard it is to enforce consequences until you become a parent...  especially if it means denying your child a treat that you've been so eager for them to have.

But what actually happens is that, unwilling to make or carry out threats, the parent makes their disapproval clear by scolding the child, and then carries on that disapproval to the point where they're biting their head off for the most minor infraction.  The child can't get a break, can't fix the situation and ends up angrily defensive. 


I have to be the adult in this relationship

The above is one of my big parenting creeds.  Much as I might want to hold a grudge (and, oh, I'm a champion sulker!), there comes a time when I have to remember that the offending party is three, and I'm the one who needs to be the bigger person and smooth things over.  A huge part of that is to stop being angry.  Decide what the consequence will be, and then be all smiles again.

The flipside of that is that I have to remember my son is too young to be in full control of his emotions.  He might well throw a tantrum when I discipline him, which is bad behaviour in itself, but I've come to the conclusion that at this age there's no point punishing the reaction to the punishment.  That just escalates thing further.  I try to talk him through it or, if that's causing me stress, I ignore it (assuming we're at home so he's not disrupting anybody else--thankfully my son's never been one for tantrums in public).  At some point, that's going to have to change, but that's a whole other issue... and right now, I'm giving myself a break from such complications.

The other thing about enforcing consequences is that it's not necessarily the same thing as punishment.  I.e. the purpose is to make my son take responsibility for his actions, not necessarily to upset him (or even to repent, come to that).  Obviously, the consequence should have some impact on him, otherwise it won't be effective.  But it's not like my target is to make him cry.

All this sounds like I should be suppressing my anger and stamping down on it, which would realistically, make things even worse.  Actually, it's been more about reminding myself that it's OK to let it go.  It all sounds rather new age and hippie, so I should stress that I'm not giving this out as advice, just noting my perspective on it this week.  I don't have to stress over my son's behaviour, so long as I see that there are consequences for it.

Mostly, that's been a huge relief...  I've been tiring myself out with keeping on top of him and just allowing myself to sit down and have a chat with him instead of shouting at him (so he knows he's done wrong) has been restful.  Obviously, there are still days like today when I do get snappy, but most of this week has been much easier for all concerned.

Picking my battles

My own rationale for avoiding battles is that you have to decide what you are ready to deal with now.  One of the problems we had last summer was my son's sudden refusal to stay in bed in the evenings.  We could easily spend two hours putting him back in his bedroom.  We came up with various consequences for his actions, but none of them were a sufficient deterrent.  We were stressed, sleep deprived, and out of emotional resources.  Eventually, we gave up and just locked him in his room.

Clearly, this was effective.  It also taught our son exactly nothing, since every evening he would get up, check the door and then go to sleep.  Honestly, I'm embarrassed that we did it.  But I can't pretend that we didn't, and I don't have particular regrets.  At that point in time, when my daughter hadn't got a settled nap routine and wasn't sleeping through the night, we were struggling to keep up any semblance of parenting equanimity and we needed our downtime.

A few months later, we felt ready to tackle the issue and stopped locking the door.  This time, if he would not stay in his bedroom, he lost his television privileges for the next day.  I admit that I was overly reliant on the television as a toddler-sitter once my daughter was born, so following through was hard, but a perk was that it helped break me of my dependence on the box and start cutting down my son's television viewing in general.

For the issue at hand, no television worked like a charm.  Within a week, my son was staying in his room of his own accord.  I'm not saying he never gets up after light's out, but no longer to the extent that it's a problem.

The moral of the story is that it's OK to have a short-term solution, so long as you go back and instate a long term one later.  For now, I'm going to take things at a slower pace and try not to have too many fixed ideas of what I want to happen.  If I'm going to tackle any problem, it should be my daughter's sleeping not my son's rebelliousness.  Unfortunately, I can't think of a quick-fix for that one....