Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Does "Love and Logic" work with gifted children

My dd 7 is almost completely unbribable, has no particular interest in 'things' and so loss of them or money just doesn't provide any motivation for her. However it is very important to her that she have reading time at night, that she can watch her favourite TV show, that she can have friends over. So we have a house hold contract that we all came up with together. It specifies what chores we all do, how we will discipline her and a range of consequences we might choose. It gives her a right of reply and explains that if we reject it, we will explain why. We have a clause that states that there will be times when providing an explanation on the spot will not be appropriate (safety issues, where someone might be made to feel embarrassed by an explaination in front of others, on occasions when time matters and something just has to be done). We have a code phrase to indicate it is one of those moments and if dd does not cooperate with the request then there will be consequences. But we always follow through with an explaination later.

This probably sounds convoluted but it has worked really well. Dd has never accepted dicipline without explaination so this has just put some structure around it and her involvement in making up the rules has given us a fall back justification when she has refused to do things. Because the consequences are so specifically targeted at the few things that really matter to her, she genuinely hates to loose those priviliages.

Oh, and the contract has stopped dh suddenly announcing punishments along the lines of 'if you don't clean up your room you will never, ever be able to have a friend over again' ... This more than anything has lead to more peace in the house!!

@Howler Karma I love "Little Gandhi."
Mine tends more toward righteous indignation than passive resistance. I still have a two page treatise that she wrote in second grade about how I was a cruel dictator and how she longed for freedom from my oppressive tyranny (her words).

At one point, (I think she was 6 at the time) we put everything except DD's books and clothes into trashbags because she would not pick up her room or do anything else we asked her to do around the house. We really thought this would do the trick. Well she showed us...we had those trashbags in our front room just waiting on her to comply for over 3 months. She would talk her sister into playing with her just so she would have some toys to play with and I honestly don't think she really missed anything we took. When I told her she had 3 days to get it together or everything was going to a garage sale she still didn't seem to care. I finally ended up getting rid of most of her stuff and sticking some of the good stuff (things I couldn't part with) in a storage tub for a later date. I remember thinking as I put the things in the tub that neither of our daughters truly treasure a lot of the material things we (and grandparents) have bought for them, so maybe we need to re-evaluate what really matters.

My kids are 8 and 10 now and are freaking me out a little (lol) because they're so well behaved. Mind you we've been through the wringer and back, and since I'm a CONSISTENT, CONSEQUENCE-WIELDING CONTROL FREAK, I think they've just figured out that life is easier for everyone if they JUST LISTEN.

(ahhhh.... )

I have no idea what adolescence has in store though. Heaven help us all...

Oh, I'm a total control freak, too.

It's just that DD is more than a match for even me. I finally gave up after one too many incidents like frugalmom's "toy hostages" (which we also tried, by the way-- note to self, make sure that any toys thus stored are in SQUIRREL-PROOF containers when placed into storage shed in future, as we lost some of her favorite baby things that way... UGH) and

"sitting on the stairs until you can comply with my instructions" which turned into 8 or 9 HOURS each day on consecutive days.

(No, really not kidding. This was my then-eight-year-old, and yes, she was completely capable of doing what she'd been asked, which in one instance was writing a paragraph. She just CHOSE not to do it, and was going to show me that I couldn't MAKE her do it.)

Some kids really can't be motivated extrinsically by anything less than actual life-or-death situations or basic needs. Obviously those are not disciplinary tools, because withholding them or making them conditional is abusive.

DD isn't a bad kid (lucky for us), but she does require different handling than what I hear works for other parents. She's pretty reasonable if you explain things to her and they are rational, logical, or realistic somehow. So she understands that she has bedtime because she needs adequate sleep, for example. Reward systems tend to backfire badly because she's resentful of anything that smacks of operant conditioning, and also because she is SO keenly attuned to "this isn't fair" or "I don't like that you're judging me here" when we either reward/withhold rewards.

Love and logic's 2 choices worked for us last year. Shortly before turning 2, he started rejecting both choices and explaining what he wanted instead. Sometimes he acts like a 2 year old and sometimes it seems like he is around 8... No help here. He also isn't motivated by stuff. I am definitely open to suggestions ...

I think that the best book I have read on parenting is Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline by Becky Baily, not currency involved. But lots of quite explicit instructions on what to work on from each chapter (a lot of it on yourself not the child). I found it extremely useful with my children - when I could keep myself together enough to make it work. But the careful thoughtful use of language (and thinking through the problems before speaking) are in truth more than I have been able to maintain when dealing with years of sleep deprivation, eldest with AS, middle child HG+/ADHD and a very intense toddler. I am too caught up in putting out fires to manage what I know is an effective management/preventative approach. Also, I found when I was doing it well and it was working well it broke my heart to see the difference between how I was working with the kids and everyone else (DH particularly) was speaking to them AND it was clearly making the kids relationship with their dad more unstable as things being better with me made them more aware of the differences with their dad.

Like HowlerKarma I am the one that is ontop of things usually and has less issues as a result, DH swings more between super fun and completely frustrated. Me using this approach lead to things when I was in charge being calmer, me seeming like less of the bad cop and DH seeming less fun and more cranky...

MumofThree: I can relate to the problems with one parent working really hard at something, and the other parent not being as intentional. Also the problem of watching DS try to cope with a babysitter/group childcare after a spate of me "doing a good job." I wind up genuinely wondering if I'm ruining his life by getting him used to a way of being that works for him... which is to say, I get taken by the "you're spoiling him" daemons.

It's s confusing, because I know he has to learn to cope with other situations, but it really doesn't seem like doing the parent thing too well should be a problem!

ug.

A wise person gave me this advice about parenting inflexible children: sabotage. Run out of their favorite brand of bread or flavor of juice, so they have to make do with a non-preferred item. Drive a different way to the store until it doesn't make them nervous. Keep bending their routines. This is much, much harder in the short run (SO MUCH harder, in the case of a child who freaks out or melts down with changes in routine)-- but it yields the best outcome in the long run, as the child learns that they can cope.

As Mum3 points out, though, the parental effort is the limiting factor. You do survival-level stuff first, and work on the nuances when things are manageable. (Should that ever come to pass.)

DeeDee

For us it's not so much brands of juice as willingness to really listen to him, at length, constantly. His kindergarten teachers are *not* going to listen to him. In his view, they will probably not listen to him *at all, ever.*

I've come up with a key phrase now that means, approximately "shut up, listening that hard to you while we X will create a dangerous situation..." it works, maybe, oh, 20% of the time...

We can totally take a different way to the store, as long as I'm willing to engage in a complex consideration of the space-time continuum, local geography in the context of the passage of seasons and movement compared to the solar system, and so on. If we take the normal route, we can just talk about dinosaur evolution and compare/contrast bird to reptile eggs instead, and he's happy with that.