Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy What do you do about disrespect?

Oh goodness, my 5 year old does this! You mean it's going to get worse.



If anyone needs me I'll be hiding under the bed.....

The best method I have found is twofold based on the age of the child. Have you seen the movie "ground hog day?" It involves doing the same thing over and over with small tweaks and adjustment until you get it right.

What we do is this. With a younger child we take them to their room, explain to them what they did that was inappropriate and then offer up a "do over" For a do over to work it must truly seem that the first time never happened. For a child that is 7-9ish I send them to their room, ask them to think about what they did wrong and offer up a do over.

For the teenage years, I have only found one way to make this work. First, NEVER send a teenager to their room. They will gladly lay on their bed for hours content in the knowledge that they are not doing whatever it is you wanted. They've won! Instead, we use manual labor..... I give them some sort of menial labor, like pulling weeds to do while they contemplate what they did wrong and how to correct it. They have to come to me with their reasoning and if I truly believe that they put some thought in and want to correct their error, I will give them the almighty do over. If I think it's smoke and mirrors, back to the weeds! There is nothing in the world that teenagers hate worse that manual labor. I've been a foster parent for almost 10 years and i've had 82 children. I have seen every conceivable attitude and this works.

Never, ever put any emotion into this! It must be done in a very matter of fact, it is what it is sort of way. It will take a few times but once they realize you are serious and that they can't push your buttons, you'll be surprised how quickly they begin to turn around.

Very sage advice indeed!

Thanks for bringing back the memory of a few years ago when my two teenager kids were pulling weeds and bickering after being sent outside to work off an argument. The neighbor looked over the fence and said, "Your Mom's garden is sure looking nice this summer. I'd have thought you'd have figured out how to get along, but maybe you all just like pulling weeds...". He chuckled and walked off. When the kids told me about it later, they both wondered how our neighbor knew that was why they were out there. I assured them it was an age-old solution to tempers.

I want to try the labor idea but need a little more help with the concept. I'm hesitant to make work into punishment because don't chores should feel good that you are helping. Is it the work, just helps them work thru the problem? I feel more confident implimenting something if I feel very right about it. Please clarify with more reasoning. How could I explain this to a child?

A friend of mine would make her son either hold a squat against the wall, or stand holding a phone book out in front of him. He's most polite teenager you'll ever meet now!

Have you ever tried these? They're extremely painful. At least a swat on the bum only smarts for a few seconds... this is sustained pain infliction.

OTGmom,

It needs to be a chore that doesn't involve any thought. You can pull weeds without thinking which leaves your brain free to think about the problem at hand. It's not enough to determine what the issue was, they need to come up with a solution. The weeds just give them a reason to actively think about what's going on.

If you send them to their room they will sleep or listen to music instead of working toward a solution. During the winter they stack firewood. If the problem involves schoolwork or grades, it makes the subtle point that manual labor waits for those that don't use their heads. I can't stress enough the importance of leaving the emotion out of this. If they refuse to weed, all privlege goes away...all of it. No TV, computer, ipod. No friends, phone or fun. Don't get mad about it...remember "It is what it is". Want your fun back? There's the weeds...

If a child is clear that there WILL be a consequence, it becomes easier to comply. Teenagers are lazy, they will take the easiest path.

We don't use labor directly here, for the reason onthegomom asked about. We want work to feel positive.

A little complicated, but here is what we are doing now:

DS9 has a point system. Do something good, earn a point (categories of pointworthy items specified by me, and changing over time, including respectful behavior, thinking of others, accepting consequences gracefully, etc.).

Do something disrespectful, and you lose 1, 3, 5, 10, or 30 points, sequentially. (First you lose 1, then IF it continues you lose 3, then 5, 10, 30 as you escalate in disrespect or fail to turn it around.)

You lose faster than you gain, so to earn points back, you have to do far more good than wrong. Chores above and beyond the usual requirements can be used to dig your way out of a hole (hence, they feel positive in this system). DS has been known to do laundry in desperation if he's down to -30.

If you're above 0, you have full privileges (including screen time). Between -30 and 0, partial privileges (not severe, but not ideal). If you're in partial privileges status, it resets the next morning. Below -30, no privileges until you're back up at 0 again, with no reset the next morning, which means if you're awful, you're looking at more than a week with no privileges.

Complicated, but effective. DS keeps a tally sheet in his pocket and is responsible for keeping track.

DeeDee

For us the physical labor was about two things - removing them from the immediate environment that was provoking the inappropriate response and about providing an outlet for the anger that was both appropriate and, as BWBShari mentioned, allowed them time to think out the problem.

For me there is a difference between feeling good about helping out and being responsible even when it doesn't feel good. Both are important. There are times in the workplace where you have to suck it up and do things that you resent, that you don't want to do, but that if you don't, the consequences will be severe. Teaching kids - especially teens - to have the self control to choose to do things they don't want to but that they need to do is just as important as making sure there are other experiences that allow for feeling good for contributing to the good of the family.

And one of the best reasons to use physical labor to deal with anger in a child is that physical labor almost always produces an immediate finished product that creates a sense of pride. A completely weeded garden, a shoveled driveway, etc. all create something immediately that they can be proud that they did. It replaces the inappropriate behavior with a positive outcome not only for the change in attitude but the sense of pride (whether they'll admit it or not) in what they improved physically.

I don't have any advice what to do, but perhaps how to think about it.

I've read, and I believe, that this kind of outburst is actually the child talking about themselves.

When they say "I hate you!" it is more often than not telling you that your child is unhappy with his/herself. Thinking back on my own teenager-hood, this holds true for me.

These are the things I tell myself. It helps me keep on an even keel.