Husband potched 5 year old for hitting

amother

Babypink

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 9:31 am

#BestBubby wrote:

I am basing my belief on nearly 6,000 years of history, where parents were strict (corporal punishment) and the type of behavior described in this thread and other threads was virtually non-existent. That's a fact.

It is only when "modern, enlightened" parenting started that defiant children started being so common.

In 1940s the biggest discipline problem in public schools were:
gum-chewing, talking in class, littering.

In 2019 the biggest discipline problem in public schools are:
school shootings (murder), rape, assaults and robbery

Doesn't look like the no-corporal-punishment philosophy is producing gentler children.
Violence in children is skyrocketing!

Who said it's the change in discipline that is contributing to violence? Maybe it's vaccines Twisted Evil

keym

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 9:32 am

#BestBubby wrote:

Because the ONLY thing that changed from 1940 until 2019 is parenting styles.

No access to TV, no increase in movie Gore, no active participant video games, no 2 parents working, no higher divorce rate and "broken" families, no easily accessible drugs, no easy travel-every teen has a car, planes are cheap.

amother

Bisque

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 9:33 am

#BestBubby wrote:

For thousands of years, such terrible behavior was virtually non-existent. Parents would have "nipped it in the bud" by age 3.

Nah, full grown adults used to challenge each other to duels with actual swords.

keym

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 9:36 am

amother [ Bisque ] wrote:

Nah, full grown adults used to challenge each other to duels with actual swords.

And all boys knew they would be soldiers for someone probably on a battlefield by the time they were an adult.
And those wars touched every little boy in school personally. His daddy or uncle or cousin was fighting.

amother

Yellow

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 9:48 am

OP, much hatzlocha.

From my unprofessional opinion in seems to me that your son is BEGGING for you to show your strength and boundaries. He will keep on testing you until you show him that YOU are strong. A child only feels safe when he knows that he is not the one in control, but has someone much greater, bigger and stronger taking care of him.

Also, you think that you negotiated by allowing him to take up the magnates, by staying up another minute etc. That is not so!! In a child's mind, once you say NO, even if you give in a little bit then the CHILD got his way!!

EG: if you say 'no cookie', he throws a tantrum, so he agrees to a crumb, then THE CHILD got his way. He doesn't care if he got a crumb or a bag of cookies, the child will still feel like they won this fight.

You need lots of guidance. Hatzlocha.

Laiya

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 9:52 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

How do you avoid power struggles and still enforce the rule when all positive attempts to enforce have failed?

Bedtime cannot be negotiable in my house. I have other children, and if one child is allowed to refuse bedtime, they all will. I work at night and need the kids to be sleeping by a certain time. I also desperately need that time and space to myself after a full day of Mommying and working. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, my children need their sleep. If my 5 year old gets less than 11.5 hours of sleep at night, he will be cranky the entire next day.

OP, are you familiar with the 80/20 rule? They say 80% of interactions with your kids should be positive. Even saying something as innocuous as, Did you wash your hands? would fall into the negative category. That's ok though, because you have the 80% positive. But these nightly fights would have to be way more than 20%.

It seems like you and your ds are locked into a pattern and nothing is changing. How much more can you escalate the threats, anyway? Do you want to do that? It sounds like you don't. Do you think that more empathy from you will cause him to change? It hasn't until now.

Since what you've been doing hasn't worked and has only caused escalation, I'm suggesting that you try something radically different. --I just read Keym's and Mommy201's posts and they have good suggestions, which I think are similar to what I'm saying.

I would suggest the same thing any time you're about to have a power struggle with him--for now. Disengage. Hand the responsibility to him. In a matter of fact tone, make a statement that gives information. Ex. We need to wash hands to kill germs before we eat, so we don't get sick. And then turn away--(but do praise if he makes good choices). Power struggles aren't the end of the world once in a while, but it sounds like they are defining your relationship.

Once the relationship becomes positive, you can start enforcing rules but I would speculate that you will no longer have all this drama at that point. But it won't happen overnight.

I very strongly recommend How to talk so kids will listen, if you haven't yet for its approach to rules and punishments.

princessleah

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 10:30 am

I am going to be a little pedantic here about the term "validation." It's something I use in my practice.
And technically the definition is you're showing the other person that what they're feeling is real, important, and/or understandable.

A lot of what is being described on this thread is just reflecting back what the person is doing, but to truly validate, you have to go a step further and do the above. And when you're validating, go ahead and leave out the second part of the sentence... the one that starts with "but."

"Yussi it's bedtime." "But I'm Playing!" "I see that you're playing. It's hard to stop playing when you're having so much fun. This must be really frustrating or annoying that I'm asking you to stop now, when you're on a roll." "It's time for bed."

When you say, "I understand you want it, but you can't have it" not only is this not validating, you go ahead into something else. The feeling is somewhat "I want it" but more "I want it and it's not right/fair that I can't have it and I'm angry." So the validating response would be something like "It must be hard to hear that the answer is no. You're probably pretty upset that you want it and I'm not getting it for you."

It's really about digging into the underlying emotions, and validating those, rather than the surface emotions of "I want to keep playing" or "I want a new toy."

Chayalle

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 10:35 am

#BestBubby wrote:

Lesson Learned: Being a rotten abusive jerk means winning and getting your way.
Way to go, Enlightened Modern Moms.

I guess we see things differently. I think the child will learn flexibility. It's okay for a parent to teach a child that they are willing to tailor their Chinuch to his particular needs. Hopefully B"EH when he grows up, he won't be a rotten abusive jerk of a parent (not my choice of words, but yours.)

keym

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 10:36 am

Chayalle wrote:

I am amazed at your tact and patience.

behappy2

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 10:52 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

This and all the other positive parenting advice sounds so lovely in theory, but just doesn't work at all! Here's what happened when, inspired by all of the advice I got here, I tried a more positive approach tonight and tried to avoid power struggles for as long as I could:

I had been warning about bedtime for 20 minutes. At 7:30pm, I told him it's bedtime, we need to go upstairs for snuggles. He is in the middle of playing with magnatiles and says no he wants to continue building. I try validation and empathy "I know you really want to play now. It's so fun to play with magnatiles. But now it's bedtime and we need to go upstairs." Nothing doing; he's not budging. I try creativity "the bedtime horse (me) is leaving on the count of 3. Get on quickly or she's going to leave! (Neighing sounds)." Count to 3, he doesn't move. Move on to consequences. "Snuggles are only for people who are in bed at bedtime. I'm going to walk upstairs now and if you are not there, you're going to miss out on snuggles." I walk up the stairs and still nothing. I'm trying to avoid power struggles, so I take a deep breath and decide to compromise (though I'm not happy about compromising on boundaries). "Ok, if you want to continue playing, we can bring the magna tiles upstairs and you can choose to either get 5 minutes of snuggles or 5 minutes to continue playing." He agrees to this phew, and I help him bring the magnatiles upstairs. But he spitefully tells me "I don't want snuggles because I hate you. You're the worst Mommy!"

After 5 minutes of playing, I tell him "ok, now it's time to get in bed!" He says no, he's not finished making his building. I try validation and empathy, not working. I offer him options ("Do you want me to put you in bed, or do you want to go yourself?") No response. I take a deep breath and remind myself that I don't want to get in a power struggle. I decide to give brother extra snuggles to reinforce the positive behavior of being in bed.

5 year old continues playing for about 10 minutes. I remind him that he needs to get in bed. He runs out of the room and locks himself in the bathroom. 10 minutes later and I am waiting outside the bathroom door to catch him as he opens it. I grab him and talk to him calmly, empathizing/validating and reiterating that it's late and he needs to go back to bed. He refuses. I compromise again "ok you can finish your building for one more minute and then you need to get in bed." He agrees, and actually gets into bed after one minute. I breathe a sigh of relief and start writing my victory post in my head. It is 9pm, but I managed to get him in without a fight.

Unfortunately the night is still young. "I'm hungry," he whines as he walks out of bed again and begins playing with the magnatiles. "I want to go downstairs and eat." Again I try empathizing ("I know you're hungry... but we don't eat after bedtime. You need to get in bed now."). I'm starting to lose it and I threaten "you will not stay up for the Shabbos seudah tomorrow night if you don't get in bed nicely"); he still doesn't listen.

At my wits end, I pick him and he starts kicking and scratching me. I put him in bed and he gets more violent. I tell him I will have to close the door until he is laying in bed nicely. I have brother leave and I close the door. Quiet for a minute. I peek in and see he has turned on the lamp and is playing on the floor. I come in to remove lamp and he starts throwing magna tiles at me. I pick him up and put him in his bed. He starts attacking me and I tell him that if he's going to hurt me and not listen, I'll have to hold him down. I sit on his legs and hold his arms down. He starts crying and screaming "shut up!! shut your mouth!!" Trying to scratch and kick me and repeatedly screaming "shut up!". I calmly repeat over and over "I will let go when you have calmed down and are not hurting Mommy." This goes on for 10 minutes, he's screaming "Get out of here, I hate you! Let me go!"

I tell him I will leave, but the door will only stay open as long as he's in bed. As I'm leaving, he's kicking and scratching me. I close the door, he's trying to open it. He screams that he's in bed. I open the door, he screams "you have to come in here!" I come in and he throws a book at me. I say "If you're going to hurt me, I need to leave." He says "I want to hurt you!!" I leave. This repeats itself 3 times until finally he loses the wind in his sails and lays down (on condition that I stay in his room until he falls asleep).

So please, positive parenters, tell me what you would have done in this situation. All the empathy/validation and calmness accomplished was him being able to drag out bedtime for an extra hour and a half, and it ended in a huge power struggle anyways. (How much longer could I have gone on for?)

I should mention that I made an extra effort today to give him a ton of affection.

Your kid doesn't know what to expect because thou keep changing the rules and" compromising" that's very confusing for kids. And he knows he can keep pushing you. Bedtime rules for my three year old eat at supper, drink right before bed, bathroom etc.., and once in you don't come out. I don't follow this all the time because often I don't have the spine to. But I know it and see my chiilds (mis) behavior. You have to be clear about your expectations and enforce them. Also I think there is too much empathy and validation.

mommy201

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 12:06 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

I can answer everything but don’t really have the time or patience to dispute everything you say and it doesn’t seem to matter anyway to you.

I just have 1 question. If it’s been working for 6000 years and the biggest problems were gum chewing, then why oh why did ppl think to fix/switch something that has been working so well?

Is it possible that there were other issues stemming from old style parenting - like emotional issues which actually lead to all those terrible behaviors. And we all know that murder, rape, assault were happening years ago as well, it was just more swept under the rug then it is today. There’s more awareness.

And the ppl committing these crimes today or in Olden days were usually ppl from dysfunctional families or foster homes where they got abused, yelled at and received no connection.

mommy201

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 12:15 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

I actually just googled homicide rate per 100,000 ppl and it was the practically the same in 1950 and in 2014. (A drop less is 2014)
The increase was actually in the 70s and 80s which wasn’t really “modern parenting” then.

And according to the FBI violent crime dropped over 49 percent from 1993 - 2017. Exactly at the time when ppl started doing “modern parenting”

So at least part of your research where I don’t know where you get it from (seems like assumptions to me) is debunked.

#BestBubby

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 12:22 pm

mommy201 wrote:

It started reasonably, with government outlawing real child abuse - severe beatings, broken bones, burns, starving.

There has been a lot of advances in technology and that caused people to worship science (even though inventors are not scientists). Schools also encouraged this worship of science - to replaced old-fashioned religion.

Then the "experts" started saying that all spanking, even just one smack, is abuse and detrimental. And the "experts" had all these "studies" to back them up.

But studies can be FAKED. The Proof? There has never been a study paid for by an organization/industry that was negative to what the one paying for it wanted. Coincidence, right?

So parents, wanting to do the best for their children, threw out 6,000 years of wisdom and followed the modern enlightened parenting. And those who didn't want to get on the bandwagon are threatened by CPS - so everyone is COERCED to follow this style of parenting.

And a result of this modern enlightened parenting is a lot of out of control children.
But don't worry - the Pharmaceutical Industry will give you dangerous drugs to control your children's behavior.

Because it is much kinder to give dangerous drugs to your children, than give them a smack, Right?

Last edited by #BestBubby on Fri, Sep 13 2019, 1:46 pm; edited 2 times in total

#BestBubby

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 1:43 pm

mommy201 wrote:

The war on corporal punishment started in early 1960s (if not earlier) with
Dr. Spock (whose son committed suicide).

Violent crime dropped dramatically when the 1993 Crime Bill Law gave long prison sentences for criminals, removing dangerous criminals from society. Mayor Guiliani
gave harsh punishment for "minor" crime - and the murder/rape fell sharply. Guiliani said the petty criminals were also the violent criminals so lock them up - and he was right. Under Guiliani murder rate fell from over 2,000 murders to less than half that!

But Democrats want to reverse all that - because criminals are another voting bloc for Democrats.

behappy2

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 1:46 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

I loved your post until I read the last line Smile

#BestBubby

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 2:05 pm

behappy2 wrote:

I loved your post until I read the last line Smile

Look up how Democrats attack the "racist" 1993 crime bill. If Democrats get in power, expect violent crime to skyrocket.

behappy2

Fri, Sep 13 2019, 2:38 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

Look up how Democrats attack the "racist" 1993 crime bill. If Democrats get in power, expect violent crime to skyrocket.

You are assuming things for the worst and only on the other side of your beliefs. Pm me if you want. Don't want to mess up this thread.

JoyInTheMorning

Sat, Sep 14 2019, 10:18 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

WRONG again, #BestBubby. Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. His grandson (Peter, son of Dr. Spock's son Michael) committed suicide. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1.....0921/ . It took me all of two minutes to Google this. Why do you keep posting things that are false? You have no credibility at this point.

It's also really cruel to suggest that a child's suicide has anything to do with the way his parents raised him. Peter Spock, for example, had schizophrenia. Unfortunately, mental illness happens.

JoyInTheMorning

Sat, Sep 14 2019, 10:39 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

Only a small percentage of the drop in crime rate is attributed to the 1993 Crime Bill Law. Other countries, like Canada and New Zealand, saw similar drops with no increase in incarceration rates. A number of other theories have been suggested, including a reduction in blood levels of lead in children (due to the environment being cleaned up), improving economic conditions, and increase in availability of birth control and abortion, which led to fewer children being born to parents who were not capable of being parents. (I am not arguing for or against abortion here, merely pointing out that unwanted children are less likely to grow up to be happy and productive citizens.)

JoyInTheMorning

Sat, Sep 14 2019, 11:07 pm

Anyway, these tangents about the downfall of modern society are hardly helpful to OP.

OP, the first thing you need to do is to put this in perspective. Your child is five. He'll learn to put himself to sleep eventually. He will not grow up to be a criminal because things are a struggle now. You will figure out a method that will work for you all. Hang in there.