Comments on Taking the Lid off the Sun: Discipline Myths, Hitting, and Non-Coercive Parent...

Alexis, great post. Breaking through these myths w...

2009-09-28T10:28:05.861-07:00

Alexis, great post. Breaking through these myths was a big step for me too. Because I teach meditation, people often say things to me like, ‘oh, you meditate, your kids must be so peaceful and calm…’ Ha! What a joke. They each have their own temperaments and issues, and the natural stages of ego development bring different ‘experiments’ on their part as well.
Hitting has been an issue in our house, especially with three so close together. And it’s not just a ‘boy thing’ in our house either, the girls did it just as much. It really seems to be the default response at a certain age, when something doesn’t go their way. Personally, I think it says more about how the ego develops than parenting style. But I think how we deal with it helps determine how they will approach conflict going forward, so I like this post from that perspective.
I think I have ended up in a similar place to you. In general, I am not big on punishments and rewards, and I tried to approach the hitting from the perspective of how it makes the other person feel, i.e. a chance to develop empathy. But at a certain point we had to get stricter about it, and we did use time-outs, i.e. time spent away from the other kids ‘calming down’ whenever someone hit. To mix it up a bit I had my eldest daughter make up a ‘calm down’ dance, because she gets so riled up (she is very high-strung energetically.) So she would do her calm-down dance when she needed to. And eventually she would try to do it when she felt like hitting someone, before it happened.
Now this stage is mostly past, they rarely hit. I think the time-outs were effective for helping them learn self-control. We haven’t needed to use them in awhile, and I know they get a lot of bad press in some circles, but I think if it is really handled as a time-out, i.e. time to calm down, with a discussion afterwards as to what occurred and how to learn from it, it can really be helpful and not simply punitive. Just my 2 cents!

Thanks so much, Mel! I appreciate the book recomm...

2009-09-26T07:43:59.305-07:00

Thanks so much, Mel! I appreciate the book recommendation. I'll check it out from our library right away!

I'm glad you found some common ground and reassurance with this post. The more we share, the more we find out how much we have in common.

Cheers!

Just wandered over from Mon's place... There&...

2009-09-26T04:50:42.337-07:00

Just wandered over from Mon's place...

There's a really great book that I read to my daughter when she was in the thwarted-frustrated phase..When Sophie Gets Angry..can't remember the author right now. It was great for opening up the discussion about alternatives and how to handle frustration and anger..not sure if your little man is ready for that, but it's an option...

My son is very definitely a crystal child (or whatever)...he also didn't speak until he was 3 and even now isn't terribly verbal --- he recently started hitting which shocked me because he never has (I bought into the seeing other people hit myth -- my sis hits her kids and her kids hit etc. etc.) but this post reminds me that it's just another expression of frustration..he has a fairly large sense of entitlement that has his sister bemoaning the fact that he thinks he's the 'kind of the world'...:)

Lovely space you have here...

~blessings~

Mon ~ I was just thinking about the very same thin...

2009-09-25T14:37:19.627-07:00

Mon ~ I was just thinking about the very same thing as far as hitting a pillow or something else physical as an alternative. I haven't tried it yet, but now that you've provided some confirmation for the idea, maybe I'll give it a whirl. Although, since the guitar discussion, it hasn't been an issue. We'll see. Cheers!

Yep, I'm with you on all those myths. I'm...

2009-09-24T08:16:44.581-07:00

Yep, I'm with you on all those myths.

I'm a gentle discipline, etc, parent, and here I have a 17mth old girl who hits out and has a furious temper if thwarted. We do seem to have the hitting of others down, and she usually only does it with me anyway. I do appeciate that I am her safe place so that she can thrash out with me, but still, I do say we don't hit. Or throw hard objects too. sigh lol

She's physical and she's determined, it's bound to happen. I think the best we can do is be gentle and calm ourselves, and give them alternatives to hitting, etc. Because they need to get their anger/stress out physically, as we can see. Perhaps hitting a pillow? Mine isn't old enough yet for alternatives. Although I'm considering offering them.