Feb 12 2009

Discipline and a Two Year Old

Posted by Shen-Li in 2-5 years, Discipline, Gavin, Parenting
1 Comment

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When it comes to discipline for Gavin, I have three simple rules:

1. Don’t do anything dangerous to yourself
2. Don’t do anything that would hurt someone
3. Don’t damage property

These are my three unconditional rules that warrant a serious talking to and immediate corrective action. Everything else is taken on a case by case basis and corrected or let off based on the value of its importance to me and what I believe to be age-appropriate for my son. For instance, I’m not particularly fussed too much about it if my son doesn’t want to sit down to a meal (he is only two years old after all) although I know it gets the goat of my hubby and his family who are typically used to “family meals” where everyone sits down together to eat. When he’s older, he’ll learn to sit down at the table without fussing.

When my son throws tantrums because things don’t turn out the way he wants them to or when he’s made to do something before he’s ready, I don’t really take it too seriously. Like I said, he’s only two. He’s pushing boundaries and testing our limits. He’s trying to gain autonomy and make decisions for himself. It is all a part of the learning process while growing up. It is annoying and I’ll readily admit to heaving an inward sigh and rolling my eyes upwards whenever it happens at an inappropriate time, but I take it for what it is – part of the growing up process.

What gets my knickers in a knot is when I’m told I really should start disciplining my son because of his tantrums and “unreasonable requests”. Oh, hello? What do you think I’ve been doing all this time? Sitting idly by while he wrecks havoc with his environment, slaps people and tries to stick his fingers into power sockets? Yes, he makes unreasonable requests (like: “Mummy can’t go to the toilet!” because Mummy has to carry him) and we all give a wry smile whenever we hear it. And when we don’t comply with his unreasonable requests, he melts down in frustration. He’s just learning the lesson that he isn’t always going to get what he wants – that’s big deal to a two year old. And whenever he has a melt down, I discipline – I explain why he doesn’t get what he wants and help him to manage his strong emotions.

Yes, he screams and he cries and he has tantrums, sometimes for obvious reasons and sometimes we cannot fathom why. But such tantrums and cries aren’t going to stop overnight just because I discipline him once. He’s a toddler, it takes time for the messages to sink in. He needs a collective of examples to put everything together.

The fact that I have been told to “start disciplining” my son leads me to believe that my idea of discipline does not mesh with the disciplinary methods of others. From which I can only assume that I am expected to scold, punish and possibly smack in order to get the messages across. Well, we all know how I feel about smacking. Besides, I think orDover makes a good point with:

Parents remember that hitting put a stop to the tantrum, but forget that the tantrum surfaced again a few hours later. It’s a temporary solution, it’s immediate gratification. Never mind what meticulously controlled, peer reviewed scientific studies have to say about the practice. If parents think it is working, they are going to keep doing it based on nothing but false confidence in their own observational skills and experience, despite the fact that psychological research has show, as Kazdin puts it, “that we frequently misperceive our own experience,” and that “memory is an extremely unreliable guide in judging the efficacy of punishment”.

I, for one, can think of a number of people who were smacked as children but continued to get up to all sorts of mischief for which they were continually smacked. Clearly, smacking didn’t achieve its purpose with them. As for scolding and punishment – I deal those out only when I believe it fits the crime, that is, when any of my my three rules are deliberately and intentionally broken.

However, in the case of tantrums, telling Gavin off for crying and screaming isn’t going to help. In fact, from experience, it makes it worse. I know, because I’ve “lost it” before and snapped at him (although that was not my intention – but hey, I’m human). I find it best to try and get inside his head to understand why he’s feeling the way he is and to help him deal with his emotions. In such cases, the voice of reason usually prevails and funnily, I get my apologies out of him a lot more readily when I help him work through the emotions compared to when I respond with threats (which I realise isn’t really positive discipline but something I’ve regressed to from my own childhood experiences).

That’s the other thing I’ve also realised – when an apology arrives, I need to learn to accept it gracefully. That was something I struggled with initially because I felt wronged that he could take so long to come around to an apology and I was supposed to just accept it immediately after he said he was sorry? But that’s just it – the reason why we find it hard to say sorry (and that goes for adults, too) is because of our pride. So when we offer our apologies – which is already a huge humbling step forward, it helps to have the other party accept it rather than snub us for our waving of the white flag, which is a further humiliation that could raise resentment.

I believe that if you want to teach your child to apologise, you need to be gracious with your acceptance of that apology. He already feels bad about it and it is a big step forward that he wants to make it right again. Especially when you have a child that is as proud as my son is, sorry really is the hardest word, so the least you can do is facilitate the apology by accepting it readily.

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