rationalskepticism.org

Mick wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Mick wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:

What does this "snapping them back into reality" and "breaking them" involve, then, Mick? Can you give a specific example?

Let's see who is abusing words here.

Yes, sure.

I once had a single mom ask me for help with a 9 year old boy. The boy wouldn't listen to her pleas for him to stop whatever behavior. Redirection was not working either. She said she tried everything. I told her that he next time he keeps it up, calmly tell him that if he chooses to behave in this manner and not some other manner (insert desired behavior sort), then she will take him to his room and he will watch her collect every toy he had and remove it from his grasp. She was then instructed to keep those toys for at least three days. Each day he was "good", he'd get a portion of his toys back. If he was "good" for 3 days, he'd earn them all back. If "bad" for one, he'd have to start all over again.

Upon telling him this, the boy tested her, likely believing her to be weak and insincere. She did as I asked-his room was bare. She told me he looked flabbergasted. He blew his lid a bit. That was just him trying to regain control. She responded that if he did not choose to calm down in whatever time limit (likely 5 mins or so), then she would remove TV privileges and start to give him chores to do.

He later calmed. He took her seriously and was apologetic. They debriefed the incident. She reaffirmed her place and his. They expressed love. They talked about his behavioral expectations and how he can earn his stuff back. 9 days later, he earned them all back and she tells me that he has been far better now.

If kids erect thrones, you need to tear them down. Otherwise they are in charge, not you. This "breaking" is the breaking of their thrones. It is the correction of their bloated sense of entitlement, authority or whatever else they have learned. It does not come down easy, most of the time.

Oh FFS Mick. What sort of parent allows it to get to this point? By the time a child is nine years old there should already be a measure of respect, on both parts. What the hell was she doing for the nine years while he was learning to control her?

Was she waiting for him to become a teenager on drugs before she was going to establish some control?

You get the lines drawn from the day you bring the infant home. On the first day you establish a routine and you set boundaries. The problem is that parents arrive home thinking they're dealing with the person described in beautifully decorated baby books, and websites. They don't expect to deal with an infant that cries all day and all night, so they just leave it to cry, or pick it up every single time it cries. Take a look inside a hospital children's ward, or the nursery in a maternity department. The babies do not cry all the time. If the baby is warm, fed, dry, and comfortable and cries non-stop, get help from a medical professional.

Once you've established the feeding, bathing, changing, playing routine, from then on, it's easy to maintain the routine. If you don't start establishing routines, and boundaries from the beginning, the problem is not the child. You don't wait nine bloody years for a problem to get out of control before you try to fix it.

I work with what they give me. I don't question much about how they raised the boy in the beginning. That said, she's a single mom of 4, and she works full-time. Her life is a struggle. Your eye roll won't help.