Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy What would you do differently? LONG

In my house, right or wrong doesn't matter anywhere near as much as respect does. I spend lots of time refusing to debate because of the tone of voice. "If you can't speak respectfully, don't speak at all." If he continues I send him to his room for not following direction. As far as the bat goes, I would have taken it away...period. I would have told him that he has shown by his actions that he is not old enough or responsible enough to use a bat for it's intended purpose. Put it in a closet somewhere and forgot about it for a month. Repeated as needed.

I allow all of my kids to have an opinion and debate anything they don't agree with but it must be done in a respectful manner and with a valid point. In the case of the little lord, I would just tell him he needs to be respectful and refuse to speak to him until he is. If this causes him to be disruptive, I'd send him to his room to get a handle on himself.

A concept I'm already introducing to my 2 year old is "pushing the limit." It's not a serious problem yet but I'm trying to nip it in the bud by pointing it out to her, so that she a) starts to develop a concept of what I mean by that and b) knows that I'm on to her, and gets a reality check about the transparency of her "sneakiness." The next step is making it clear to her that "pushing the limit" is itself a behavior that is not acceptable.

Depending on the age and comprehension level of the child, my inclination is to deal with the arguing (e.g. about not being able to take the bat through the livingroom) by getting quiet and serious, and asking, "Do you really not understand the difference? Because I can explain it to you. Or are you just wanting to argue?"

This is actually a technique I picked up from teaching undergraduates! If you have something to say that they don't want to hear, don't just start saying it. First you have to get their buy-in to listen to you, or else they have to admit that they aren't interested in listening to you.

I agree completely. We've had this problem, too. It gets better after a while when the child finally realizes that there's no point in arguing. It doesn't go away, but it gets better.

I think that a willingness to challenge authority is a wonderful trait to have, provided a person learns when to challenge something and when to leave it alone. But for a four year old in the situations you've described, "Because I said so" seems appropriate.

I'm still learning, but I'm getting better.


Val

Hi Floridama! I'm so glad you've gotten such great advice and sympathy. My son was this way, and it sent me into a tizzy trying to figure out what could be so very wrong that he would act like this. Sure, having him spend many hours a day with agemates in daycare wasn't helping, but I've come to the realization that 'that just how some of our kids are.'

Sure, they need to learn like other kids need food. Sure they are 'shamed' by the various indignities of being a young child, but in the end, I wish I had 'woken up' to the reality of my son's personality a lot sooner.

I can tell you that if he keeps up that behavior in school, you will catch a lot of blame, and you do not deserve that. You are being completely reasonable in your parenting - you just happen to have an intense child who needs 'extra-super' parenting.

I think the book Transforming the Difficult Child, has helped me tremendously. http://difficultchild.com/

It starts with the parents getting really intense about verbally praising what the child is doing well. Anytime the child uses a non-obnoxious tone of voice - praise his respectful tone. Anytime the child shows any drop of flexibility - specifically praise that moment of flexibility. Challenge yourself to see how often you can notice him being kind, respectful, or obedient. Verbalize those feelings if it doesn't cause too much of an uproar, or just beam at him.

The idea is that at this moment your son is addicted to the negative energy that he gets from pushing your buttons. This means that the first step is to provide lots of opportunities for him to get nourishing positive energy from the good behavior he is already doing. Then keep the rules 'clean and simple.' No more 'Please don't swing' - just 'BAT, MINE, NOW' in a calm but firm voice. No more asking what he means by 'you aren't feeding me,' - Just ignore any words he says that use a bossy tone and move on. Look around for something, anything positive in the room that you can praise. It's ok not to share how he makes you feel when he uses that tone - do the worlds best acting job to project 'Yes - children make mistakes - looking to start a squabble by using disrespectful tones is just another mistake that children make.' No more explaining the reasons for your rules. You are the adult here, and for some kids, sadly, giving explanations communicates that your authority alone isn't enough. Practice looking shocked when he says 'But WHY!?!' and 'That's not fair!?!' Practice saying: I am older and I know better. and 'of course you don't understand - you are a child, and children don't understand lots of adult things.'

It seems so unfair that parents who are ready to parent in a cool 'power-sharing' way sometimes get kids who just can not handle that kind of openess. I wish someone had explained this to me when my son was 4. I thought the answer was to just do more power-sharing and be every more scrupulous. Sadly, there just are some very concrete gifted kids in this world who need charismatic leaders and ultraclear boundries.

If he wakes up every day with a mission to prove every day that other are wrong accept that, for today, that is just who he is. How would you react if you weren't worried about what that might mean is wrong in his world, or how he will be when he grows up, or enters school. Just wake up determined every day to prove to him that he gets more juicy interaction and rich relationship from good behavior than bad behavior.

At a moment when things are going well, you might have a little family meeting about how weak people like to focus on what is wrong, but strong people like to focus on what is right, so from now on there will be a rule about 'no children correcting people ever' from now on, and when you trust your son to handle his strong feelings about other people's mistakes, he will eventually do just that.

Even at age 4, during happy moments, you might try explaining about the inside face and the outside face, so that he knows that it's ok, normal, important, to spend some time figuring out what the situation requires and putting on an 'outside face' to show the world when he is away from home. We used to practice social lying - when Grandma asks 'how do you like my new hairstyle' then it might be time to put on the outside face and squeeze out a smile and a social lie.

What about how he reacts to your discipline interventions? He will probably not like being told that he doesn't understand everything, or that life isn't fair, or that you've changed your mind, and he will express those feelings if your family norm is that it's ok for him to show his inside face to you. You can praise him for expressing how he feels about it, and then let it go. You may have to 'fake it until you make it' for quite a while, but there are some places he will go emotionally where you just can not follow him. Putting attention on it just gives him hope that he can get more of your attention by hyping his inner face. You have to figure out a way to reassure yourself that you are the boss, and that you are doing him a tremendous favor by acting like it.

I hope this helps and doesn't make you feel worse. It isn't your fault in any way that your son is like this. Fairness is giving each child what they need, not what you needed, not what their sibling needs, not what you want them to need. Getting DH involved in this way will go miles and miles toward improvement. At age 13, my DH has finally come around to seeing that he must play a role with DS that if very counter to everything he would like to believe about the world, and DH has taken over all the routines and much of the discipline. Do I sexistly believe that a female can't provide this level of athority? No, my mom was pack leader, no questions asked. But me, the female that I happen to be, would much rather be soft and loving and interested in every little thing sort of parent. Having 2 parents who are willing to 'umpire' our DS has really helped. I've really grown a lot!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Oh, big hugs to you! And kudos at being as patient as you have been thus far!! I struggle with my patience on a daily basis, and my kids are not helping.

I do not have any advice to offer. Just lots of sympathy.

What a lot of great advice you all have... some excellent ideas to help me with my own mouthy, argumentative 6 y.o. At first I tried explaining my reasons thinking that was what he wanted, but it made things worse. I think it did convey to him that my authority wasn't enough (thanks, Grinity). Now I've started to say, "I've made my decision - end of conversation" and then just stop talking. He doesn't like it, but I do think it may be working.

Also, we've started enforcing a time-out for yelling or using a rude tone -- not put in a corner with nothing to do, but in his room with a book or pen & paper or something else to redirect his thoughts. This helps him calm down pretty fast and he is ready to be nice again after a few minutes alone. My theory is that rather than punishment, he needs strategies to help himself deal with frustration. And if nothing else, it allows *me* some space to calm down myself... the constant challenging and arguing can be exhausting and maddening!

We're with you too. DD7 was so obnoxious at age 3/4 that I didn't think she'd live to see age 7 (heeheehee) However, a phrase that is my mantra is "it is just a phase and this too will pass"

We also had the issue that she was worse with me than with DH, but would correct any and everyone. When we would give her an example of how she sounded to other people (in otherwords, spoke to her in a tone of voice like she was using to us or others) she would get extremely upset and at how rude it really was, then she would back off being argumentative for a while.

I do think it is an age thing, we have very few times where it is a problem any more. However, DD2 is rapidly approaching that stage.....

I'm sorry if this is repetative as I haven't had a chance to go through all the posts. Your child acts and sounds very much like... a hypothetical person who looks and acts just like me. I'm, er, I mean 'she' is much better now, but this simple approach was very effective, along with one or two sharp consequences for not following the spirit of the rule. No claims that I, er, she didn't know were accepted because it should be obvious.

The other thing that jumps to mind is specifically talking about how certain scenarios are not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about moving forward in a functional, useful way and spending time looking backward to examine who is at fault is a waste of time. We spend very very little time at my house looking at who is at fault or wrong, except jokingly when we blame an imaginary friend we have kept around for that precise purpose.

I scanned the replies rather quickly, so sorry if I am repeating what someone else said, but... My dd3 is not "one of those", but she certainly has her moments. And we (DH and I) want to walk close to the edge of what's socially acceptable, because we think it's great that she's analytical and detail-oriented, that she can articulate her reasoning, and that she is willing to question authority. But, of course, there are limits. And like you mentioned, TONE is a big one. And dd3 has got that concept down. Most of the time, if she's rude -- but right -- all I have to say is "Tone" or "Try again" or just give her "the look" and she'll say "Sorry," and then make her point in a polite way.

What I did was repeat what she would say -- HOW she would say it -- and then model the correct way to say thing. And explain to her about mutual respect, being kind, etc, etc. (And, of course, we do a bunch of stuff with tone when we read books; she got the concept that there are different types of tone down long before we did this -- but then she got the concept of rude vs. polite)

Like I said, dd isn't like your ds, so I don't know how helpful my experience is, but -- to reply to one aspect of your original post -- yup, a li'l one can get the point of tone. HTH...

Wanted to elaborate on what I said earlier.

DS7 has been argumentative for as long as I remember. Nothing pushes my buttons faster than "the tone", so I've had to learn to handle it calmly. In recent years, the behaviour has morphed into sarcasm and biting humour wrapped in a cheeky grin, which I take as his way of moulding it into something more acceptable. 'Tis good! (A lot of you must have seen this condition, no?)

Last weekend we went to a cafe that, from the outside, seemed unlikely that they would serve a full scale breakfast. In an effort to be polite (and I agree what I said was redundant!), I asked the greeting staff, "Do you serve breakfast?" From below me, a voice said in a nasally twang, "Whaddya think they're eating? Dinner?"