Over my 18 years of parenting, I have used different methods. I raised all my children as a single parent until only recently. There have been alot of changes with me since I started parenting at 16. Although both my boys have been spanked occasionally, never my daughter, I have no idea why, but with her I just had to give her a hard stern look and she would hate me for hours, lol...
The BEST method I found for my kids was 1,2,3 Magic. It is the count to three, take 5. (or ten minutes ,depending on the age of the child. 5 minutes is more than adequate when they are very young). AFTER the time out, THEN it's time to talk about it if discussion needs to happen. Kids need to learn, "as they are told WHEN they are told" mainly out of safety for them. We as their parents as a general rule have their best interest at heart and they need to trust in that. Certain repeat negative behaviours or incidents result in loss of priviledges. If my youngest skips homework to go on the computer, he loses computer priviledges. If he does not get off video games immediately when it is time, then he loses those privileges the next day. For each extra minute it takes him to get to bed one night, that's is an extra minute he goes to bed EARLY the next night.
I can honestly say that in my house of an almost 18, a 14 and a 12, that things for the most part are pretty serene. No one is abusive to one another, I have never heard them swear, not even my oldest. And my oldest is graduating this year and I am SO darn proud!
None of them have ever gone somewhere without permission nor have they broken a curfew, in fact, they seem to REALLY like hanging out with me.... which is nice....but I know when I was a teen I wanted to be as far away from my parents as possible, lol. I keep thinking that any day they are going to suddenly turn into the teenage monsters that I was.
I am a strong believer in time outs. I dont think I damaged my boy's psyches when I did spank them, but it just got to a point where spanking seemed kind of ridiculous and took alot of negative energy. Even to this day, my youngest would MUCH prefer a spanking than a time-out. As Kim says, they HATE being taken away from what they like, I give timeouts an a+.
I think the only time they dont work is when the time outs are inconsistent, or are not enforced. As a single mom I often found I needed to have the voice of two people, LOL so when I started counting, let me tell you, they ALL heard it.
After a period of time, we got to the point where we are, where I just need to say "ONE" and that's it.
How to discipline children?
