Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How do you discipline a PG 6 year old???

I am scrambling in the dark here trying to figure out how to best discipline our 6 year old PG boy. You always read that parenting a child like this is different, and I agree with that. I am then assuming the "standard" discipline tactics are not the most productive with these children.

BUT WHAT DO YOU DO THEN??

Are the regular tactics actually counter productive and harmful??

What do you do with your kids? We are dealing with a lot of "teenage type" defiance and argumentative situations. I am at a loss at what to do....

Thanks!

The definition of "regular tactics" vary from parent to parent, and their effectiveness varies from kid to kid, and sometimes even from moment to moment with the same kid, so you really haven't given us much to go on.

The only real difference that has struck me as more or less universal with HG+ kids is that an appeal to their rationality (when they are calm, that is) seems to be an approach that works. This is much more true than it (seemingly) is with more NT children.

Other than that, ITA with Dude-- it's a moving target.

I can't peg down my DS8 more than HG+, but the concepts are similar. I think modern management philosophy is more useful than parenting methodologies when dealing with a really smart kid. You aren't going to manipulate, scream, threaten, time out them into compliance. Trust, positive feedback loops, open communication, etc.

If you make it a game about your ego, they will play that game, too, enjoy it, and win often enough. Positive modeling is always relevant.

When DS was less tractable and wanted a debate for everything, then we will go through phases where he needs to debate for basics like what food is available, what gets watched on TV, whether we go anywhere on the weekend, etc. We've also learned to lowball options, because he'll want to debate for more.

Though posted a few times, I found the biggest influence with DS has been undivided attention. He wants that, and knows that if he makes a day awkward, then he loses out on that. With a guaranteed playtime each night that is all about what he wants to do, it is a useful bargaining chip.

Totally agree with this. Of course it doesn't make it easier. I am learning to let go of my asian behavior expectations that I was brought up with..absolutely no back talk negotiations allowed.
Everyday I am shocked as to how effectively my HG DD6 can outsmart me when we are having our struggles. The last word from her is often leaves me thinking..well she has a point, or how on earth did she remember that??

"Regular Tactics", well, time outs, losing a toy,losing a fun activity, give a warning before applying discipline. The stuff you read about in parenting books, magazines etc. The tactics my friends talk about. It doesn't work. Seems he really could care less if a toy is taken away,sitting in time out doesn't bother him one bit, even taking away fun things to do doesn't seem to matter. He really just smirks when this type of discipline is applied...complete and utter disrespect.

"You aren't going to manipulate, scream, threaten, time out them into compliance.", been there, done that, and you are right Zen Scanner, it does NOTHING.

We talk to him when he is rational but even then, he will show disrespect at times. Roll his eyes etc. The other day I told him he needs to try to listen better. His response: "What is listen? What do you listen with? Your eyes? Some other body part?", said with a smirk.

I feel there is a fight over control between us. And it is a horrible feeling when it seems he is the one controlling the situation. He is that good. Sounds ridiculous, he is 6...but it is what it is, but I am not going to tolerate it. I just keep thinking, how will the dynamic be when he is 10, 14???

We have to put a stop to this.

Zen Scanner, he also has undivided attention every night which he loves. What do you have him do on the days he lost out on it due to unacceptable behavior?

He was supposed to get to go on an overnight trip today with his dad. The condition was for him to behave the past few days. He hasn't. This morning he asked "Did I earn it?" I asked him if he thought he did. He responded "No, not really" I said we agreed. So at least he KNOWS when the behavior is not good.

It sounds like you are on the path. We've always had it run in phases of different lengths.

For the fixed playtime, it's simple. Bedtime at 9, playtime at 8:30. If he's lost 5 minutes of playtime, then 8:35 playtime and 9 bedtime.

Actually, I'm using present tense above, but it's very rare anymore that he needs a small shock like losing playtime to get his attention. It seems like they need to understand how the whole ball of wax works together (ethics, morality) before they can use it (almost a perfectionism thingy.) Typically, we only have to provide specific feedback tied to some ethic, and he'll adjust his behavior. If it was something he knew better, he'll be more upset with his own self than anything I could say or do.

1. Knowing that this is normal for gifted kids makes it better. It is part of raising a gifted child.
2. Know that our asynchronous development can really benefit us later. When adolescents are feeling their angst, the gifted child, who has already gone through that stage, may be more focused on their short and long-term goals and are already working very hard on them.
3. Try to remember how you felt at this age. It helps to remember and relate. If the child's gifts are inherited from someone else in the family, talk to them or the people who knew them well. Putting the behavior in a family context makes it more manageable. Those parents of ancestors got through it and you can, too.
4. Redirect the child for short-time sanity. Gifted kids have strong interests, so you can change and control the situation by introducing some book, toy or activity that will engage them.
5. After the upset, figure out the trigger, the issue, the cause, etc., and try to talk about it in detail. Gifted kids are often highly intuitive, insightful, and may want to discuss it in detail. (For example, our child will feel outraged or indignant at some perceived injustice that other children will not even detect.)
6. Make sure you feel rested, so that your patience is strong.
Good luck and give yourself credit for your hard work.

Our use of timeouts is a bit different than how it's used in most families. They're not a punishment, though DD9 still needs some convincing on that. We send her to her room to deal with emotional overload. She's free to do whatever she wants in there, and she's free to come out as soon as she's ready. If she comes out and starts yelling at us again, she's sent back in.

Punishments in our home are the loss of some privilege. This is the part that can change from moment to moment. The key here is to get inside your child's head and see what they value. If they don't care about losing it, it's not an effective punishment. When my DD was 2, the go-to punishment was bedtime stories, and then one day it stopped being effective. She's shrug, and go back to whatever she was doing. I had to try a few other things, and was quite surprised when she reacted in outrage when I proposed to cut her off from chocolate milk. That became the new go-to for a while. These days, friends coming over is our favorite go-to, because she is highly social.

No matter what the punishment, though, any decisions have to be final, so she experiences real consequences, and that we mean what we say. The natural reaction is for her to protest, which means she stands to lose even more privileges. She never has to lose more than 2 before she realizes the better part of valor.

As for controlling, we have a zen-like approach, because honestly... she's 9. We're older, bigger, and smarter. We have all the money, and we control her entire environment. There's nothing she can do about any of it. Knowing that she can't be a threat and she can't take away control (unless we let her) makes it pretty easy to blow off her tirades without responding in anger... and let's just say that I'm not the kind of person normally associated with zen.

As for showing disrespect, I think it's important to identify those situations immediately, demand the behaviors change immediately, and offer consequences if they don't. But even more important, I think, is to show children the kind of respect that they deserve. I have a tendency to take it pretty far, as I'm far more prone to address a child as "sir" or "ma'am" than I am another adult. It's listening to them, and responding in ways that show you were paying attention. It's respecting their ideas, because sometimes they'll surprise you (if they're PG, you can expect them to). It's honoring your commitments to them, "Yes, I told you I could play with you later, it's later, let's play." And it's also giving them a locus of control... picking clothes, activities, including them in decisions on what to have for dinner, etc.

I find that all of that tends to short-circuit the disrespect before it even happens.


The problem with this scenario is he's shooting for a vague, undefined target. Instead, I would have approached it by giving him permission up front, but letting him know he could lose that opportunity for misbehavior. Then, if he's acting up in a way that needs immediate correction, I'd warn him that continued behavior would mean the end of the trip. If he stops, fine. If not, trip canceled, no negotiations.

Yup.

You're living with the 6yo version of my now-14yo DD.

I have done "conventional" punishment/discipline with her-- and taken to EXTREMES, even... and it's absolutely useless.

As discipline, I mean.

I will also say here that my personal belief on this subject is quite old-school and a little bit non-PC... but...

we're her parents, we DO have life experience and the judgment that comes with it, and we'll flex as much muscle as necessary in order to FORCE some measure of compliance with that authority. Period.


I do think that my hypothesis there has paid some dividends in that my DD has very very little interest in being a "bad" teen, and is very very open in her communication about teen issues and her autonomy with us at 14.

But 6 through 8 years old was just about the nadir of my entire life, honestly. I can distinctly recall having my then 7yo sit on our living room hearth-- with NOTHING to do, no talking to her, etc-- for two days straight. I brought her food, she got bathroom breaks, and she was sent to bed on time each evening. It sounds cruel... but my DH and I were up against-- well, Cool Hand Luke.

What we've got, here... is failure... to communicate...




Hang in there.

I have NEVER figured out what my daughter's "triggers" really were/are-- she's too cagey and too manipulative to give us the ammunition... and she also has proven to be equally slippery re: "currency" to leverage HER. Her response to the reinstatement/removal of privileges has always been "Yeah-- whatever... you do your thing, and it's nothing to do with me,K?" (Maddening.)

I have found that about the ONLY thing that gets my daughter's attention is physical correction. Obviously, I don't recommend that approach with most kids, but all in all, in my own well-considered opinion ONLY-- a well-timed swat to a clothed backside was far, far less cruel than some of the more "gentle" behavioral tools like removal of privileges. Again, this is circumstance-specific, but it is because there IS no way to leverage her by removing privileges, other than through VERY extreme measures, which are frankly cruel. You can take her all the way down to bare legally obligatory subsistence-- dry, minimally clothed and fed... and she's still not giving so much as an inch. She knows that she's got us-- that there's a point that we can't go past. She'll wait, thank you very much. The only way around it is to TRULY get rid of her favorite possessions. I wasn't willing to go there, and she knew it-- so while I might take them from her, she knew she'd be getting them back eventually. {sigh}

Our major method of punishment now is removal of autonomy (with a clear message that it's happening because she has "demonstrated an inability to use sufficiently good judgment on her own," ergo, we are stepping in to DO IT FOR HER), and controlling her free reading.

Don't expect to get satisfaction, even so, however-- I have NEVER gotten that from her, and I expect that I mostly will not. She is NEVER going to give me contrition or repentant body language/expression.

You are right, I think, to consider this a power struggle. That is precisely the case with my DD. I decided when she was about four years old that I was in it to win it. The reason? Because it is in HER best interests to learn to submit to authority, of course, but also because it was in her emotional best interests to feel that SHE wasn't the one "in charge" and that there was an authority in control of things in her life. If I had let her win, she would not have felt secure or safe as a young child in a non-PG world. Even at 4, it bothered her to see adults blithely doing such obviously stupid things-- scary place, if a PG child feels like NO responsible adults are in charge, YK?


So DD has a safe zone with me; primarily established because I never let her "win" her ongoing power struggle with me. I've gotten to loosen up things over the years as her maturity and judgment have improved. It's not that I want the autonomy that belongs to her. It's that I'm not giving her MORE than she's ready for-- even if she insists.

Her dad is another story-- she has regularly rolled over him-- but she also doesn't TRUST him as much as she does me. Why? because he doesn't enforce rigid boundaries with her, IMO. He lets her soften the behavioral standard beyond where he really should... but then snaps back when she pushes too far, and gets really ANGRY with her. I don't really do that. Oh, sure-- sometimes she will inadvertently go too far with me, too-- but mostly she KNOWS where the bounds are. Knowing, she doesn't push them. Anymore, I mean.

I do not put up with major disrespect for adults. Us included. It's simply not an acceptable means of demonstrating disagreement. It's bratty.

I guess what I'm saying is that she is a MUCH better teenaged girl than she was a 5-8yo child, but I credit the hard, hard work when she was that age and it was so difficult. I made her write apologies to me, to her dad, to a teacher, and to anyone else that she was nasty to. If I'd let her roll me, she'd be a hellion now. I believe it. (I was, and so was my BIL-- and DD is eerily like us both.)




I've mentioned The Manipulative Child here before-- many times, in fact... but I can't recommend that book enough for this kind of child. FORGET what parenting guidelines tell you children are capable of at particular ages. You're parenting a world-class, hardened criminal defense attorney with acting skills that ought to result in an Oscar nomination. Oh-- but with all of the judgment and impulsivity of a 6yo.

Cheers. Just know that you're not alone, and that if you hang in there, it does get better.

I've never figured out a way to punish HER without punishing anyone else, incidentally. I wanted to go with her and a friend of hers to the local art museum on Sunday, but then had to tell her "NO WAY" rather abruptly on Friday afternoon because of some stunt she pulled-- er, or tried to, anyway. Point being, I got "punished" as well, when I punished HER. That's the way it is, though.