No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems
Having only read part of the article and having gone through toddler years with 2 kids having ADHD and ODD my only insights are:<p>Get good at child psychology the art of manipulation. You&#x27;re a team against the kids - keep up a united front, regardless of your marital situation. If you don&#x27;t learn to manipulate those kids into doing what you want, they will very quickly learn to manipulate you into doing what they want. If you don&#x27;t consistently maintain a united front, they will play one of you off against the other, every. single. time. and one of you will become the enemy they hate and the other their best friend. This isn&#x27;t fair to the parent that ends up the enemy and is detrimental to their relationship.<p>Some kids are easy going laid back and compliant. Most of them have their own free will and will largely do what they want, regardless of what you want them to. Get used to not having complete control at all times, because if you try and maintain control at all times, one thing I can guarantee is that your kids will feel powerless and ultimately begin to despise you.<p>Give them compassion and understanding and try to give them enough rope to run without hanging themselves. YouTube has plenty enough videos to scare the crap out of them from doing stupid shit that will hurt or kill them. It&#x27;s also got a great many videos that will inspire and educate them. It&#x27;s a great tool. Use it as liberally as you need.<p>I can count on one hand the number of times my kids have been spanked. They&#x27;re now 8 and almost 7. Those spankings yielded almost zero result and reflects more on my inability to maintain control of myself under the stress they put me under than their behaviour. All it did was exacerbate already intolerable behaviour. Did they deserve it? Yes. Did it yield the result I wanted? No. Should I have held my temper? Probably. The fact that it didn&#x27;t yield the result I wanted says it was a futile exercise. It didn&#x27;t teach them anything, they didn&#x27;t respect me for it, they feared me for it. Do I want my kids to fear me? Absolutely not. Plus, they were some age less than 8 and 6. They&#x27;re expected to act out. They&#x27;re kids. I&#x27;m an adult, I should be able to control myself better - and I largely do.<p>No amount of framing decisions to stimulate cooperation work. No amount of forcing them to comply works. Neither one of them seem to have any sense of guilt unless they think they&#x27;ve really hurt you and you show them real honest vulnerability... and you can&#x27;t show that card too often or they&#x27;ll just think you&#x27;re unable to stand up for yourself and then they&#x27;ll never learn to respect you.<p>Okay, so there&#x27;s not so much advice there. But I&#x27;ll tell you, every kid is different. Some tools work on some and have counter effects on others. You need an arsenal of techniques and you need to pick and choose them for each situation, like a Marine, you don&#x27;t take the same tools into every operation, you pick the best tool in your arsenal to complete your mission.<p>Sometimes spanking will work on some kids, other times it will just make the situation ten times worse. Sometimes timeout will work, other times it&#x27;ll just drag out the torture for both of you. Sometimes shutting down the argument and dictating how things are going to happen is the only way. Other times, you just have to pick your battles and say to yourself - does the outcome of this situation even really matter? Why do I feel the need to argue and enforce my will here? If you&#x27;re worried about how they dress reflects on you, let them watch shows like &quot;What not to wear&quot; so they learn a sense of style. But honestly, they&#x27;re kids, does it really matter? Their friends will tell them if they look like an idiot. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.<p>Sometimes the easiest path is just relinquishing control of everything inconsequential and only controlling the things that really matter: Don&#x27;t let them hurt or kill themselves or anyone else and don&#x27;t let them damage or destroy anything that doesn&#x27;t belong to them.