How do you avoid MURDERING your SPAWN?

did you try time-outs? Kids HATE time-outs and quickly learn that the only way to end them is to stay quiet and calm down. 4 minute time-outs would be perfect for that girl, and it resets if she screams or makes noise. i would especially target the aggression. The rest you should ignore as much as possible.

She sleeps in her own bed? It's ok if mommy is beside her to fall asleep, but make sure it's her own bed.

Mix the time-outs with rewards for good behavior and it'll show results in a week or two.

The threats are super important cuz they need to understand that certain behaviours have logical consequences. They need to make that link. Just make sure you follow through on the threats or they're meaningless. Start to pick your battles, I started only really punishing for 3 things: aggression, lying and stealing. The rest I ignored as much as i could and it would eventually go away.

just advice, you can throw it in the garbage if you want. this is what worked for me and i honestly have the best kid ever

NO JURY WOULD CONVICT ME

My youngest was a white hot velocirapting bitch at that age. We dealt with it with M&M's and Disney.

I grew up in a reasonably happy home and always assumed that I would get married and have kids, but life didn't work out that way. Kids are still a theoretical possibility, but I'm at an age where I need to be saving more for retirement and my girlfriend hasn't stabilized her career yet though she is in her mid-30s. However, I did a lot of babysitting when I was a teenager (along with a paper route, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and various other low-paying gigs that paid for much of my college tuition), so I have a fair amount of experience with dealing with kids. But that was a long time ago.

So it's interesting for me to notice the absence of references here to paddling or any other corporal punishment. As a babysitter, I never felt like that was an option for me, but it was certainly common back then for parents to swat their kids. Mine did. I know that the cultural mainstream has shifted enough that corporal punishment is considered shameful, to the point where one star player for the Minnesota Vikings nearly lost his job for publicly disclosing that he smacked his young son with a stick.

unless you're Tom Cruise, then it's the overwhelming "scientific" (behavioural psychology) studies that shows that corporal punishment isn't necessary. I got spanked the shit out of as a kid too. I haven't laid a hand on Emily nor would I want to.

and yeah as a babysitter, you can't be hitting the kids. If you feel tempted to do so, time to change part-time jobs for something that requires less patience.

The only time I have spanked was when he hit his sister. That one was deserved and feel no remorse over swatting him on the butt three times. He wants to learn karate, and I refuse to allow it until he no longer believes being a bully is the way to get his way.

Consequences should be commensurate to the action. But if resorting to spanking is the default response, then the terrorists have won. Not gonna happen on my watch.

Colorcrayons wrote: He wants to learn karate, and I refuse to allow it until he no longer believes being a bully is the way to get his way.

Good wisdom!

Colorcrayons wrote: The only time I have spanked was when he hit his sister. That one was deserved and feel no remorse over swatting him on the butt three times. He wants to learn karate, and I refuse to allow it until he no longer believes being a bully is the way to get his way.

Consequences should be commensurate to the action. But if resorting to spanking is the default response, then the terrorists have won. Not gonna happen on my watch.

Isn't karate all about learning discipline? It might not be a bad idea, not sure I've ever met a bully who has actually taken martial arts lessons. Well I mean there's these guys, but they must be the exception to the rule:



but yeah, then Barnes' kid is using moves against him, so what do I know?

I'm embarrassed to admit I've spanked my son in retaliation for hitting me or my wife. Earlier this year he went through a terrible time fighting bed time. Like literally fighting it. He'd yell, scream, kick, hit, lay on the floor throwing a fit. It was awful. He's always had a hard time falling asleep and he'd be up till like midnight throwing tantrums while we were also dealing with his baby sister who didn't start sleeping through the night until about 5 months ago (she's 20 months old now). All that lack of sleep and stress and living with the in-laws at the time while we were house shopping was rough. But resorting to his levels of yelling and spanking led to no where. We had to "surrender" a little in order to regain control of bedtime. Read him a ton of stories, be patient, lay with him while he fell asleep and then we started giving him melatonin. Now bedtime is a 30-minute affair. Get the gummy melatonin, read some books, sing a song, say a prayer, turn out the lights. If he's being bad, we threaten him with no stories, which usually works. But if he keeps up the bad behavior then we follow through. I saw it mentioned above and I'll repeat, do not make idle punishment threats. If you say you're going to do something, follow through or they know they can get away with it.

In those dark hours of the night when I had very little sleep and my daughter would be awake crying and I'd have to rock her for an hour before she fell back asleep I had very, very dark thoughts go through my head. I also developed the bad habit of biting my knuckles when I was really seething, I'm trying to kick that one. Walking away is good advice, giving yourself a moment to cool off is a good idea.

Jeez, this thread has me contemplating a vasectomy.

Shellhead wrote: Jeez, this thread has me contemplating a vasectomy.

Thankfully our relationship has healed. Today my wife told me yesterday while I was at work they came home and my daughter must have said something about me not being there and my son walked into his room and kissed a picture of us at the zoo he has framed on his book shelf and said "I love Dad." Stuff like that, and their cuddles, their smiles and the look on their faces when they saw our Christmas tree in the living room for the first time make it all worth it.

Yeah, kids are truly the best. I'm sure we could fill a thread with twice as much information about how much they rock... just last night my kid begged me to play a boardgame with him before bed. He's only five and yet this sentence "Dad, I removed my tiles, took my three actions and rolled the creature die... it's your turn." which made me immeasurably happy. He says the sweetest things, he loves me more than I love myself which helps me become a better person as I attempt to live up to his image of me. I know that image is horribly distorted, I know because I remember being disenchanted with my own parents as I grew older. At first they were heroes and by my teenage years they were losers and once I was an adult I slowly started to see that they were just humans. Hopefully my kid can see something similar in me one day but I'm certainly a better human than I would be thanks to them. I've gotten back in touch with who I was thanks to him... not in some cheap nostalgia way like someone walking out of a new Star Wars movie who feels like they've re-captured their youth... but something infinitely more potent than that.

Despite any complaining I do I love my kids more than anything and even though I miss the time with my friends I gladly give it up because the time spent with my kids is actually better.

I have a girl aged almost 8, a son aged 4, and another son who is 9 months old. It's amazing. Seriously, it really is. And while I can really get pissed at my kids when they take forever to get ready, when they whine, when they fight (not argue, but actual fisticuffs), or when they plain ignore me, I find that remembering the amazing part is really important.

But I think the best way to not murder the is to never get pissed at them. When I don't raise my voice, when I remain calm, when I remember to use eye contact and touch rather than just yelling across the room, things work the best. I don't always do this, obviously, because I'm not a fucking saint, but every now and then reminding myself that I can be strict if need be without being angry can make a difference. And it also help that we - their mother and I - allow each other to intervene if one of us is being unfair towards or overly angry at the kids, and getting a time out can also help a lot.

Also, this is a thread I would really love to se Sag reply to. Why o why did he leave us (sadface).

I have a girl, 2 years, 8 months. And last night my heart was broken when she cried on top of her lung. Why? I refused to play Skyrim with her. Fucking Skyrim. I love the game. She *loves* watching me playing on my lap (she loves chickens, fish and cows; but her favorite is when I decapitate people in slow motion--she ALWAYS laughs uncontrollably on that). But my wife and I had committed on no video games except on weekends (even then, limited). She even pulled a chair twice her height (she's small, like 85 cm--2 feet 9 inches) from the dining table to my laptop table. Finally she stopped crying when I showed him google picture search of Skyrim scenery...

My wife's the one with seething cauldron of rage, I'm the more controlled one. Time-outs simply doesn't work because she doesn't understand the concept. I know it doesn't work because once we (both of us) put her back in the time out spot for more than 30 times. She doesn't take no, except when distracted. And her voice is *really* loud. I mean, the whole neighborhood *will* know it when I take her for a walk around the house (she loves singing).

I do pinch ear, roughly touch her face and once even did a measured slap on her when she hit me on the head once (she's very rough and would start being aggressive when denied of something). The good thing is I never felt really hurt, insulted or anything. My wife does though, and it's very hard on her sometimes (probably because she's the one who's with her ALL the time).

I think the key is not to take it personal. When she doesn't want to eat, it's because she simply don't want to eat, not because she's trying to hurt my feelings, etc. I always think that we take things for granted. Even with adults, we always think a lot of things that other people SHOULD know just because WE know it. I mean, if there are people in 50s with funny gaps of knowledge in a lot of common stuff, surely a kid would take some time to understand the concepts that we know by heart.

Having another family member helping helps a lot especially if we're both tired.

These tales of pain and suffering warm my heart.

A note on melatonin dosage: news.mit.edu/2001/melatonin-1017