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I was just going to look for this thread today. My son is currently on a discipline measure called "tomato staking". It's a gentle discipline "time in" where instead of being sent to solitary time-out he is tethered to me. If I go to the other room for coffee and back he follows me. I'm assuming it's a reference to the book "raising Godly tomatoes", which I am not interested in reading material that contains religion at all. But browsing the forums and putting 2 + 2 togeather I can assume that's the book the phrase came from.

This thread's op dealt specifically with school discipline so I hope I'm not straying too far OT by bringing up home discipline issues. I guess I'll start a new thread and reference this one. http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....orming_the_Difficult_Chi.html#Post133553

My thing now is jealousy. My daughter gets jealous of my attention to her brother and interrupts any way possible. My son has several times over the last two days made my daughter cry if I go to the other room. I told him, "I don't know what you're doing but it's going to stop.". Now he's on "tomato staking" for a day or two he gets to go wherever I go.

My husband hurt my feelings. I told him what happened and while he admires the solution he gave me the cliched line "you need to give them both equal attention". My kids get plenty of attention and it's not something I'm doing wrong they're just being normal kids. This wouldn't be an issue if they were in daycare.

I know how you feel about the hurt feelings. I'm also a SAHM, and although my husband is for the most part wonderful, respectful and supportive of me, there is the odd time he'll make a comment that makes me want to say: "YOU try, and see if you could do better!!" or "You're not the one with them all day so you don't see everything that happens."

Yes, your kids are just being normal kids He doesn't understand that the same way you do though, because you're the child rearing specialist, not him (not that he wouldn't do a good job, it's just that you've spent more time doing it).

Sometimes I find it easier to change the way I react to my husband's comments rather than trying to change his opinion... lol

Re: tomato staking - I'm curious to see if it works. I'd never do it with my two kids - it sounds to me like it's more of a reward than a punishment, lol. Who knows though - you never know until you try.

I honestly think your husband has a point that needs to be considered. As good intentioned as this discipline tactic may be, it does set up other siblings to see that the badly behaved kid gets to be with mom all the time and gets all of her intention. Thus, it isn't far-fetched that a child would conclude that the way to get equal attention from mom is to be just as badly behaved or worse in order to qualify for tethering privileges.

What may help alleviate some of that is if your son is required to sit in the same room with you while you are doing a positive activity with your daughter. Then he gets to see that while not being banished to his room is better, it still is a bummer not to get fun time with mom. It will also give your daughter a reminder that whether brother is attached to you or not, she still gets positive time with you without becoming a difficulty.

The only other thought I have is this - if your kids are not physically hurting each other or bullying each other, let them settle their own squabbles. I am reminded of when my youngest was in a car seat and would cry and blame it on his older brother who usually sat behind him in the van. Except one day he goofed and did it when his brother wasn't even in the van. I knew then I'd been duped into getting after the wrong kid because I couldn't see what was going on. After that the rule was, "No blood? No intervention.". Now that's an exaggeration, of course, but I worked really hard to let them settle their own arguments after that. And when they discovered that mom wouldn't jump into the middle of it, they quit fighting as much as a way to get attention from me.

Just a thought - take what makes sense and ignore the rest.

+1 to both of ABQMom's points. Your son is getting extra attention for bad behavior... what kind of attention? Because it's all too possible that you're inadvertently rewarding bad behavior. That's clearly the impression your daughter is getting. If he's tethered to you, it should not be fun for him.

The other plus is about non-intervention, because it seems by now your DD has figured out she can get DS in trouble simply by crying, leaving you to try to figure out what's legit and what isn't.

As for your DH... be patient. Remember, his picture of what goes on is very different from yours, not only because of a different perspective, but also because the whole dynamic changes just because he's there.

For instance, just last night I started getting exasperated with my DD over her apparent neglect of the dog, because I'd seen a pattern all weekend of having to remind her to feed him. DW quickly pointed out that DD has been automatic on it every morning, letting him loose from his crate, taking him outside to potty, and then feeding him without being asked. When I'm home I get up first, so I let the dog loose, take him outside, and throw off her entire routine. The pattern DW sees and the pattern I saw were two very different patterns.

The problem was, "I've been pushing her because she wants to be near me and I don't always want her to be near me", so says he.  Ah- ha.  

The tether's not fun.  It just means he has to stop in the middle of eating his breakfast to follow me to the kitchen to refill my coffee because I'm not going to leave him alone with his sister if he might hurt her.  

If she's just crying because he's pushing her off when she's crawling over top of him well then yeah they're just going to have to take time and outgrow that because they climb all over each other (and me) all the time and yeah, sometimes it is annoying.

I jumped to the wrong conclusions looking for deeper meanings  because every time my son's in my lap my daughter runs over.  I know he gets up when she came over.  I try to hold them both but he gets up.  But the problem wasn't rivalry the problem was little kids can be pests.  I guess 4 yr olds are pretty straight forward.  And, yeah, I guess the hubby sees me trying to get a little "me" time when he gets home.  Good point.

I looked up Tomato Staking and the author's website (Raising Godly Tomatoes). She says her approach stemmed from her raising 10 kids. I understand her thought to spend more time with an acting out child...especially when a child is battling with many others for attention. But I would argue that this child intensive approach is not nearly so necessary in a small family. What really disturbs me is that she advocates that parents use spanking and corner time as forms of punishment. I am a realist, I get that parents resort to spanking when nothing else works - but the idea of any other parenting intervention I've ever studied is how to help parents move PAST spanking. It makes me question the value of her practices in general.

Had to split my post:

Maybe you could trade who 'gets' to go with Mommy when you leave the room. As with ABQmom, I see this approach as potentially causing more jealousy in an already adversarial relationship. No doubt your kids have rivalry...they have such little stand in the world at large that they're not about to give away their foothold in the family. My kids are similar in age to yours...I also don't give them a lot unsupervised time because my DD2 is, understandably, impulsive and yet my DS5 lacks the maturity to understand this. There is daily smacking, shoving and tears ...and they do really love each other!

LOL. Our kids are the same age.

We finally figured out that the Womb Raider was throwing Mr W under the bus. My MIL was taking her side no matter what yet it was usually when she wanted something her brother had...

The new rule is that if neither of us saw it, its her fault. After a week of this, she has nearly stopped the boo-hoo-woe-is-me act.

Mr W cannot lie and the WR is virtually indestructible physically. (At 18 mos she likes to jump off the diving board...)

They will play together for hours with Mr W occasionally coming to us to tell us she has climbed up the drapes or something like it...

Yes the babies are crafty! If we don't see it (and even if we do and it's pretty much a fair fight) I 'count' them both (we use 123 Magic). This works almost every time...almost. The 2 year old still enjoys to push it...but we make a BIG deal about her time-outs (not because she cares, but b/c we want big brother to know we'll handle it).

The book "Mom, Jason's Breathing on Me" by Anthony Wolf really helped us! It sounds like you have a lot to balance there.