are the timeouts really helping

Ruby - posted on 01/07/2011

Some parents have belittled other parents on here with name calling and critized their religious beliefs, while others make claims that they would never spank their kid then place in another post that their child has a disorder...really?! why on earth would anyone spake a child with a mental issue (one they were properly diagnosed with by a Dr.) And why can we not show each other the proper respect? Just because you may never believe in anothers technique does not make your way right.
Remember, not every person has "your" type of child, and that's ok, because the fact that we are all on this site means we all mean well. Let's just all remember its ok to talk of our children, not act like them.

Jennifer - posted on 01/07/2011

Dr. Sears has several books out that points out how nutrition, or lack thereof, plays a large role in how children act and think. Think of what kids are often fed these days, we're guilty of it too but we're changing, it's full of sugar and fake colors and few veggies and fruit. That can't be good for a growing body and brain.

BTW, our babysitter does have an ADHD child. He has his moments, I've seen them, but he's never been spanked and overall does well.

Jennifer - posted on 01/07/2011

If you feel spanking is needed, you need to see a good family therapist. Ours has helped so much and showed us spanking is unnecessary. If you worked for me and you did something wrong, I'd be put in jail for hitting you. How is this different? Because it's our child and in most cases no one will do anything about it? I've seen what it can do. We spanked and now have to deal w/ the ramifications of having a 7yo who thinks that's how he deals w/ anger and frustration. It's getting better and he's learning how to deal w/ things appropriately and learning the joys of timeouts.

Joni - posted on 01/04/2011

Spanking is a last resort and my daughter hates it. At 5, I can now ask her "Is this really worth getting a spanking over, or would you rather have a few minutes to get yourself under control?" Normally, she gets it together, does what she is supposed to do, and we move on.
I once had a lady give me an awful look and make a noise of horror when I popped my kid's thigh in wal-mart (she was being absolutely awful!-she was 3). I turned to lady and said, "You think you can do better? Or would you like me to dial DHS for ya!?"
This parenting stuff is hard! And mom guilt makes it worse.

Ruby - posted on 01/04/2011

I am a bit offended that some have compared domestic abuse with discipline. i personally know some that has lost their life to domestic violence and know even more that lost their life to lack of physical discipline. and i am not exaggerating! no I don't have to be as hard on my kids as my mom had to be on me, but I thank god everyday for my mom not being scared to put a belt to my butt especially since we lived in a neighborhood that could careless about your discipline beliefs.
my aunt taught me, "up until the age of 21 my sole purpose is to mold and groom my child to be an independent individual that will be acceptable in society; I then have the rest of their life to be a friend!"

Tracie - posted on 12/20/2010

There is a massive difference between being too lenient and not using corporal punishment. One has zero to do with the other.

Hitting a child is never necessary if you know what you are doing. I have never laid a finger on either of my children and they are extremely well behaved. My older daughter was even awarded "Citizen of the YEAR" at her private school. My younger daughter's teacher tells me weekly that my girl is her favorite because she is so polite and well behaved. My girls learned from their #1 teacher (ME) that hitting anyone for any reason is never acceptable. This goes for all humans and animals, regardless of age.

Your children will learn what you teach them. If you hit them, they learn that they are not 100% safe in your care. All this does is breed fear and resentment. And the moment you are not there to hit them, they will act out because 1. they know they can get away with it and 2. they never had the chance to learn WHY that behavior was not allowed. So so sad for the little ones.

LOVE your children. TEACH your children. (the word "discipline" literally means "teach") Please please please do not hit them. They don't deserve to be treated so badly. They're just little kids trying to figure out the world. Help them, don't hurt them.

For the hitters who like to quote the bible's lovely "spare the rod, spoil the child," I have a few things to say. First, are you hitting your children with rods? If not, then you are not following your own advice. Second, that saying is in the Old Testament, so if you are a Christian, you SHOULD INSTEAD be following Jesus' teachings, which say, among other things, "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me." Are you ok with hitting Jesus? Can you imagine Jesus ever condoning hitting a child? It's ludicrous.

Amanda - posted on 12/20/2010

in our house we do both the punishment fits the "crime" so to speak but no matter which punishment we use when its done we dont just let them go back to playing we talk for instance if they were jumping off the couch and were put into the corner they get a minute for there age and when there time is up we have them come sit by us or we go get on there level so we are not "talkin down'' to them and we ask them what they did wrong and if they know why they shouldnt do it we have our little talk give them a hug and kiss tell them we love them and send on there way... as far as not being able to touch them with out it being illegal i do belive there is a time and place for dissapline and if u r in public take them into a bathroom or out to a car if need be... the worst temper tantrum my daughter ever threw was when she was 3 we were in walmart and she was on the floor throwing a fit cause i wouldnt buy her a doll i tried talking to her and picking her up but nothing was working so finaly i layed down next to her and started acting just like her after about 1 min she got up and got back in the cart looking at me like i was crazy i had a few moms and grandmoms tell me they would have to try that and my daughter has never threw a fit since

Sylvia - posted on 12/18/2010

Ange -- That is a tough situation, for sure. Living in two places is really, really hard on kids, especially if there are two really different sets of expectations, or if one parent tends to trash-talk the other (NOT saying you do this! But it's not unusual -- my father never had a good word to say about my mom after they split up -- and your DD's mom may be doing it, even if your DH doesn't). It definitely can affect their behaviour. My DD, who is 8, has a good friend who lives with her dad but spends alternate weekends and some evenings with her mom; the parents are not nice to each other, and yeah, the kid has issues. (To the point where we have had several conversations with DD about how she needs to cut her friend some slack sometimes, because we know her life is not easy right now.)

Look, I'm sure you are great with her. That may even be part of the problem -- she may *want* to behave better for you, or open up to you about what her deal is, but doesn't feel she can/should because she's worried you won't stick around, or she feels it would be disloyal to her mom, or she's mad at her dad (rightly or wrongly -- kids don't necessarily see these things clearly) for moving on. My older sister (my dad's bio child, not my mom's) and my mom have a great relationship; my older brother (ditto) took a lot longer to warm up to my mom, and none of us have ever really hit it off with my stepmother (my dad's wife #4; my mom was #3. My family is complicated :P). I'm sure my little brother and I were horrible to her on more than one occasion. I love my stepdad very much, and he's actually way better at being a dad to adult kids than my father ever was, but it took me a long time to get to that point.

None of that gives your DD licence to be deliberately obnoxious, of course. (Although with the sleeping? I totally understand how frustrating that is -- I have a night owl, too! -- but you might consider the possibility that she is genuinely having trouble sleeping. She's switching back and forth from house to house, room to room, bed to bed ... that may well be hard for her.) Maybe it would help for both of you to sit her down and just lay it all out: she doesn't have to like you, she's allowed to be sad/angry/whatever about the situation, but she does not get to {list of top 5 or 10 behaviours you want to stop} when she is at your house.

I hesitate to even suggest this, knowing what relationships between divorced parents are often like, but is there any way to, like, collaborate with her mom on setting some common ground rules for both homes? Because one thing that kids with divorced parents get really, really good at is playing one parent against the other, and trust me, this is not a healthy dynamic. (I know, because for a while I was that kid. I'm not proud of it :P)

Amy - posted on 12/18/2010

One thing that can really work to improve kids' behavior is if you spend time playing with them - especially little kids. Let them completely direct the play. Don't answer the phone, or text or watch TV and be half there. All it takes is 15 - 20 minutes of conscious connecting time and they do better. My son would be so much easier if I did this with him consistently, nearly every day.

When kids feel connected, important and like they belong, they do better.

Ange - posted on 12/18/2010

Well here is the situation here My daughter is my step child and she goes to her real mom's every other week for a week so she has two sets of parents... So she has a lot of insecurity going on but that does not excuse her for the attitude or anything at all she gets treated the same for good behavor we let her do what she wants to do but with bad behaviour she gets nothing as sitting her down to talk about the problem which I have tried numorous of times which is the first thing I do with her before punishing her but alls we get from her is "I don't know" or "I forget" or "I didn't hear you" and my personal favorite "I thought you said something else" she simply refuses to talk to me about her problems or what is going on we have no clue what it is she has going on in her head I know she doesn't like to go back and forth every week. and we can't afford to go to court to fight for custody as we are just getting by now and quiet frankly we don't want to go to court as the more likely chance is that we lose her completely so we have to keep it the way it is until she is 12 years old then she has the say to where she wants to stay but until then she is hard to live with.. She eats lots she would eat us out of house and home if we let her she simply refuses to sleep at night she will lay in bed until 11pm and we get her up at 7:30am for school so right now we have no choice to punish her I absolutely hate doing it I do not want to but I can not let her run me either and let her get away with it... Now I have been told that I am good with her but heck I could be doing something wrong I am not sure I am just doing what has to be done in the sack that she doesn't grow up to be a low life person in jail

Sylvia - posted on 12/17/2010

Ange -- I don't consider spanking a particularly useful parenting tool, but I don't know either you or your daughter, so how can I judge? But in that situation I think I'd have wanted to get to the root of the behaviour as well as stopping it, so I'd probably start by trying to get her to talk about it.

This may be just me, but what I've generally found is that punishing my daughter doesn't work beyond the moment, because with punishment the intent is to make the person feel bad, which doesn't really address why they did the wrong thing in the first place. (Kind of like how having the death penalty doesn't actually reduce crime rates at all.) And when DD is really awful, it's almost always because she's sleep-deprived, hungry, or upset about something. (Or occasionally all three :P) I'm not so good at coping with exhaustion and low blood sugar myself, so I can relate. I could take away privileges or send her to time-out or spank her all I wanted, and it wouldn't make any difference -- if she *could* behave better, she would. It's like magic how sometimes this truly horrible kid comes home from school and is just too obnoxious to live, and then you sit her down and make her eat an apple and a couple of pieces of cheese and she turns into a perfectly nice child. Or how every little thing triggers wailing and gnashing of teeth until I finally get her to tell me about the argument she had with her BFF at school, and once she's got that off her chest she can behave like a human being again.

But like I said, every kid is different.

Also, I refuse to spank because I have issues around some of the truly dysfunctional parenting my father subjected us kids to. What might work for another parent is always going to feel like re-enacting childhood trauma to me :(

Ange - posted on 12/17/2010

Sylvia Hunter - I have a 6 year old child who misbehaves all the time... not listening, arguing, disrespectful (to things and people), ignorant, rude, lying, will do what she wants when she wants and how she wants.... and we have tried the time outs, taking things away, and some others... She does not get alot of screen time and she plays outside when ever she can and reads alot too and she is able to play on her own as well as with other children with absolutely no problems... what else could we try with out spanking her buttom or her hand? Nothing seems to work with her she acts like she doesn't care about what she is getting talk to about the problem... and we talk to her about why she is on time out and she does not responed to it but the other day I had to tap her behind for her snotty argumentative attitude to get her attention to stop the attitude she absolutely hated that I have been warning her that I would start to spank her if she doesn't quite with the attitude but it don't faze her one bit... so when I actually followed through on the spanking she got up set about it and realized she was doing something wrong.. a tap on the behind will not hurt them physically but it will give them that shock and she has been good for the last couple of days so I do believe in spankings and that it does help change the attitudes it just has to be used wisely and not to the point of physical abuse...

Erin - posted on 12/17/2010

I do agree that more parents need to be more firm. Does that necessarily mean spanking? Maybe. Maybe not. I really dislike it when my child has a friend over and they are demanding and snotty to me when I was just trying to show them a fun time.
I try to teach my kids to be nice respectful little people. Involvement is key. But in the end, there will always be parents out there who are lazy, who don't know what they're doing, or even had no business reproducing in the first place. What can you do really? Bite your tongue and move on pretty much. They're not your kids, so you really have no say in anything. Although I can imagine it would be satisfying to walk up to people every now and then and shake them, screaming, "WHAT IN THE HECK ARE YOU DOING???" haha. Or maybe not. But you get my drift. I try not to be too judgemental if I can help it. Not always easy.

Erin - posted on 12/16/2010

The only way to teach a child to be respectful is to model respectful behavior. If children are rude and out of hand it's not spanking they need, it's better modeling.
I often wonder what goes through a parent's head when they think spanking a child is acceptable. If it's not okay for a man to hit a woman (because they are smaller and weaker) what justification in the world could there be for an adult to hit a child?
Jerry seinfeld once had an interview wherein he was asked why he didn't use foul language in his monologues. Seinfeld's reply was. "I don't have to. I'm good enough without it". I feel the same about spanking - if you take the time to educate yourself about parenting/child development/child behavior, then there's no reason in the world you'd ever resort to violence. In fact, the thought of it might very well repulse you.

Robin - posted on 12/14/2010

I have to agree with you, Ruchi. I think there is a BIG difference between randomly beating your child and "disciplining". The problem arises when the parent can no longer tell the difference. When you start hitting in anger, it's time to BACK AWAY. Take a deep breath and COOL OFF. I do not enjoy hitting my children...and I don't for the most part, but it's not because I'm afraid to. I have NO PROBLEM with giving my son a good sound spanking...if the situation warrants it. If I think I can get through to him just fine with words/actions...then I do. But, on occassion he can get out of hand and I have been known to give him a good swift swat on the bum with my open palm. It's not super painful, but it GETS THEIR ATTENTION...which is basically what "spanking" should be about. I think parents are very much afraid of something happening or someone finding out, so they just let their kids run wild and walk all over them (and everyone else!) It's disgraceful. So, I agree with you. :)

Luvenia - posted on 12/14/2010

Up to a certain age, I do believe if you spare the rod, you spoil the child (I am paraphrasing the BIBLE) but after they reach the teen years, the spankings should be over. You can legally spank your child though and I don't mean beating them, and if you make the presence known while they are very young, that you may spank them, they will usually remember that and you will really not need to. Try your best to stay a parent and not a friend but to a degree you want then to be able to tell you anything as a friend would. By doing that, you wilol usually avoid built up anger because the child could not express something or the other, or get it out. Now spanking is not always the answer, but I do believe you should instill the fear of a possible hurting if you do wrong.

Ashley - posted on 12/13/2010

Yes I believe in some situation a child does need to be spanked but in most they do not. I was spanked as a child and I am just fine. There is a fine line between spanking and hurting your child and spanking your child to teach them right from wrong. However, each child is different and needs to be treated different. If you told my 2 year old to sit in time out its like the end of the world on the other hand you tell my oldest to and she just sits there and doesn't learn her lesson. We try to talk to our children and explain what they did wrong. If a child doesn't understand why they are being spanked or sitting in time out they wont learn either way.

Sylvia - posted on 12/13/2010

Yes, kids need discipline. No, they don't need to be spanked, smacked, "popped", or any other euphemism for hitting.

I don't really understand why so many people think that lack of spanking is the problem with "kids these days". I live in a large, extremely multicultural city where spanking kids is very unusual (and where the crime rate is very low for a city of this size), and you would think based on the "kids these days are horrible because their parents are lazy and/or are afraid to spank them" argument that we would have nothing but horrible kids here ... but actually we have all kinds of kids, from the polite and considerate and lovely to the out-of-control and dreadful and, it goes without saying, every possible variation in between. This probably has something to do with various families' approaches to discipline (among a bazillion other relevant factors), but it clearly doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the kids are spanked, since almost none of them are.

Has anyone considered that other factors in kids' poor behaviour might be a lack of unstructured, unsupervised play, lack of "down time", lack of exercise, too much test-related stress at an early age, not enough sleep, and too much screen time? All of these things are also differences from how life was when we were kids, yet everyone's always harping on the spanking thing...

Candy - posted on 12/10/2010

AMEN !!! I think parents have just gotten lazy. They dont want jr. to be mad at them. My kids will have friends through life they will only have ONE mom. I would rather raise smart,respectful,and dependable women then the children my Hubby has to work with. I have no problem popping my kids. I do feel there are other ways to correct bad behavior. That is the thing You have to correct it some how.

Amanda - posted on 12/09/2010

I think that yes, children are getting off a lot easier than they used to. At home parents can't really use physical punishment anymore because of CPS. I honestly think that if a parent is going to abuse their child, they'll do it either way and that it doesn't matter what the law is they'll break it anyway. I don't spank unless one of my children is putting themselves or someone else in danger. That doesn't happen a whole lot. I use the hand swat the most with my 2 youngest, who are almost 2 and almost 3. I also do inhome daycare which we use Reward Charts the most for positive behavior, and it's really working with encouraging them to WANT to do good. I think that society is setting themselves up for a lot more people to be inprisoned. With getting away with things at home, the child is more than likely going to do the same wrong things outside the home. It sucks, but I don't know what else we can do! lol...it's considered abuse if the mark is still present after 24 hrs. So I think that your safe to swat your child once for doing something wrong. That to me isn't abuse. But yes I think that society today is going down a very crucial road.

Pebbles - posted on 12/09/2010

i am not a fan of abuse but in a way i agree...drugs, peers, society all are going to be apart of a childs life and if it takes a spank on the hand now rather then they grow up in life thinking it will be ok to do these things i would rather risk spanking my child.

Angie - posted on 12/09/2010

Whoa, Ellen. I never denied that ADHD in a disorder, what I said was that it's become a crutch for poor behavior. No, your child is not bad, that's exactly my point. I truly believe that, unlike your son, a lot of children are given this label to make excuses for being overly energetic or unable to listen to class. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear and that you were upset by my comment. However, I stand by what I said; some parents look for excuses for their children's poor behavior instead of finding solutions...

Candi - posted on 12/09/2010

My brother has ADHD and Tourette Syndrome. My mother had to spank him. There was no choice really with him. It was the only way to get him to mind. My daughter does not respond to time out or taking things away. I have tried both. I gave them both a shot for quite some time and just could not get a positive response from these. I hate that I have to spank my daughter from time to time. It's really rare that I have to, she listens for the most part. But, she does get herself into trouble and there are times that I do spank. I see nothing wrong with that at all. I look at it, that there is a difference between spanking and abusing your child. A parent should not be abusive.

Ellen - posted on 12/09/2010

@Angie Bachicha Kissner...do you have or know a child with ADHD? My child does have ADHD. I don't make excuses for him because of that. Does he have behavorial issues? Yes he does. Does he need a pop every once in a while? Yes he does. I rarely spank, but sometimes It's the only thing that will get get his attention to make him stop misbehaving. I don't make excuses for his behavior, I try to correct them as best as I can. What I can't stand, is the looks and whispers behind my back that I get in a public place when I'm trying to discipline him, or stop him from melting down in public. He's not a bad kid, he just has a more difficult time trying to control himself.

Angie - posted on 12/09/2010

I agree that we've become more lenient but I don't think that spanking or smacking is the only way to change that. It depends on how hard parents want to work on discipline. I don't spank my children and they don't give me any trouble but they know what the consequences for poor choices are and they differ depending on the mistake they make. We try never to vary for swift justice when they require it. We parent with firm love.
Parents these days are always looking for excuses; “my child misbehaves at school so the teacher must be bad or he/she has ADD/ADHD” (not, my child gets everything he wants at home so he thinks he should get the same at school) or “my son is smoking pot, he must be hanging out with the wrong kids” (but I have no clue who they are) or “my child gets bad grades and I don’t understand the answers myself so I’m going to ask to change classrooms” (not, maybe my child needs to ask more questions in class).
I’m sick and tired of all the excuses. Let you children be the best they can be. Have the backbone to discipline your children, in the way that is best for your family, so that they can excel.

Jane - posted on 12/09/2010

spare the rod spoil the child! the choice is individualistic, choose either and face the consequences. these wise saying is tested and proven!