Does anyone else ever feel like this about their toddler?

[lsm1066]

All I can say is praise be to any gods listening for my mother in law, who gave me £100 so that I could put the boys in school holiday club a couple of days of the last couple of weeks. The local leisure centre runs a sports camp for the kids during the summer and easter hols and it's been a life saver. Certainly better than having them on the computers all day. Plus they're meeting new people and running themselves ragged.

[jim]

Dear npsmama,

Perectly natural, I've been teaching for 37 years and you are not the only parent feeling as you do.

With the "naughty" behaviour I'd suggest trying to ignore it, or, if it's really getting under your skin have an agreed "time out" area for No 1 son (or YOU) to go to until he feels more inclined to be sociable. Better even than this, don't catch him being naughty, catch him being good and lavish praise and affection to reinforce it.

As for the speech and language development, all children progress at their own rate. However, you can assist this by CONSTANTLY talking with him. "Where's the hoover? Oh there we are!" sort of thing.

Relax, they all grow through their phases!

Love and Peace
Jim

[npsmama]

Well , just to update that, thanks to forcing myself to be more organised and especially forcing myself ( and everyone else) to bed earlier, I feel more human now.
Although DS2 is screaming his head off at the moment so I'd better stop typing...!

[Rod in Japan]

Anyone care to join me in admitting to smacking their toddler when more pacific and time-consuming methods failed?

[jim]

Dear Rod,

Much to my regret ... yeh.

Oh, and sometimes I have fantasies involving certain classes and a sharp axe .......... Me doing a Berserk Viking act with it of course ....

Love and Peace
Jim

[Milims]

Anyone care to join me in admitting to smacking their toddler when more pacific and time-consuming methods failed?

I confess but here's what happened - judge for yourself.
My son had a nast habit of throwing toys from the upstairs landing, over the bannister and down into the hall - on many occasions just missing people ie me, below. Clearly a dangerous practice. He was warned and ignored it. He was told off and ignored it. He had toys taken away - he found different ones to throw. He was taken to play elsewhere, but he snuck back and caught me unaware, and so it went on - you know the score. He was finaly treatened with smacking and one day he threw a very large (about 2ft long) fire engine over the top - it missed me by milimeters. The final straw. I swallowed my shock and anger and told him that I was going to give him 4 smacks and tell him what each one was for and so he had to go to his room, take his trousers off and wait for me. I took a couple of minutes to ensure that I was perfectly calm and to give him time to quake. I walked slowly and deliberately up the stairs, making sure he heard every step. I went into his room and slowly and deliberately took off my rings (I wore quite a few then) and carefully and loudly put them on the side. I sat on the bed and told him to bend himself over my knee. I carefully cupped my hand - the way you do to make that loud popping kind of clap, and brought it into contact with his buttock - enough to make a noise and about a seconds worth of slight sting and told him what this "smack" was for - repeated 4 times as promised. The thing is the actual "smacking" was almost incidental - it was the build up that actually got the message across. The "smacking" was simply an emphasis and end to the occasion. The slow and deliberate moves gave him the time to think, for the gravity of his crime to sink in, time for me to make sure I was perfectly calm and for him to feel the same kind of stressful fear that I felt each time I walked thru my hallway - the anticipation of something aweful happening. Evil I know but I truly believe that punishment to fit the crime works far better than purely punitive measures. After all how does simply causing pain to someone else let them know how their behaviour affects other people?

[citizentwiglet]

Yep, I will fess up too....Ellis got a smacked bottom yesterday. He was in his horrors, throwing himself down on the wet ground because he wanted to walk a different way (i.e. anywhere but home), and it had taken 90 minutes of patiently trying to 'stand him off' by ignoring the bad behaviour in the absolute pouring rain (the whole walk only takes about 7 mins). I was in tears, he was screeching....final straw came when he decided to throw himself down in the middle of the pelican crossing, then do the 'dead weight' and head-butted me very hard in my pregnant stomach when I tried to lift him. So yes, he got a smack on the nappy, got dragged home and got papped into his bed with no lunch.
And boy, did I feel rotten about it.

I don't think it worked though, because he tried the same trick today. But at least today he did it on a field (albeit a very muddy field), but there was no traffic around so I could safely walk off and leave him to strop whilst being able to keep an eye on him. He came soon enough when he thought I was going to disappear from view.

Honestly, I could have throttled him. It's getting very, very taxing indeed. Getting to the point where I don't want to take him anywhere because I can't handle the meltdowns.

He then started playing up in Toddler Group, refusing to share a toy and generally being a pain in the backside (trying to escape through the fire exit, which he HAS managed to do in the past); so we left early....to much howling and sobbing. (And that was just me....).

Valium sandwich, anyone?

[lsm1066]

Likewise, only he's 9, not a toddler. Here's what happened.

Kit was getting ready for school. Every day his taxi arrived to pick him up at 8:15 and every day we'd been having trouble getting him in the car because he didn't want to go to school. On this particular day he had kicked me in the stomach twice, taken all his clothes off, hidden under the table and threatened me with a knife (ok so it was a table knife but even so), all because he didn't want to go to school because he was being bullied and the school was doing nothing about it. I slapped his leg.

For this, I got reported to Social Services and two social workers appeared on my doorstep about half an hour after he came home from school. I wouldn't mind, but it was about the 4th time in his whole life that I'd laid a finger on him! I have the patience of a fool. ;) Happily though, they didn't bring the police with them (although they could have) and told us afterwards that we were obviously under a lot of stress (no s*** Sherlock!) and that they would be telling the police there was nothing to investigate!

The irony is that it was the school who reported us, but when I asked the social workers to investigate the school after he came home with bruises on his face and spent a weekend passing blood after being punched in the stomach at school, they said I had to take it up with the school!

Lynne

[Milims]

OMG - that's an aweful situation. It just goest to show that there is one rule for one and another for another! I've had something similar myself - I've had social services sitting on my sofa accusing me of not loving my children because I won't let them behave in an anti social manner eg I won't let them play out in the street after dark, throw things at passers by, vandalise cars on the street, swear, be verbaly abusive to other people - things that other kids round here do etc and because I feel it is my duty as a parent to teach them the skills that they will need to function efficiently and effectively in society when they grow up eg good manners, self care skills, social skills, self discipline, work ethic, obaying the law etc etc etc The sad thing is it was my mother who bad mouthed me to them. I haven't spoken to her since although I did visit my dad in hospital recently, only to be given a tirade about what had taken place. My answer was that I knew what I did about parenting from the way that I had been parented and if they couldn't trust themselves enough to feel that they had done a good job then they had a problem not me! I also told him that I felt that I had grown up to be a caring, respectful, considerate, hard working person who had never intentionally caused anyone any trouble and that quite frankly I like me even if they don't!
I don't want to cause any offence but I do think that social services get completely the wrong end of the stick sometimes, over-react when they shouldn't and take no action when they should!

[citizentwiglet]

Argh, now THAT makes me hopping mad. Shame you can't get the social workers onto the school for perpetrating (by not acting on) bullying and intimidating behaviour leading to violence.

I was approached by an elderly lady after I gave Ellis a smack-on-the-nappy yesterday. I thought 'Uh-huh, here we go....'rotten mother', 'child-abuser' etc etc etc', but she just squeezed my shoulder (in a nice way) and said to Ellis 'You deserved that, you naughty boy. Now stop acting up for your mother!'

I could have kissed her, to be honest.

[lsm1066]

I've had something similar myself - I've had social services sitting on my sofa accusing me of not loving my children because I won't let them behave in an anti social manner eg I won't let them play out in the street after dark, throw things at passers by, vandalise cars on the street, swear, be verbaly abusive to other people - things that other kids round here do etc and because I feel it is my duty as a parent to teach them the skills that they will need to function efficiently and effectively in society when they grow up eg good manners, self care skills, social skills, self discipline, work ethic, obaying the law etc etc etc

Well, hilariously enough, Kit went off to the park on his bike all by himself after acting up like crazy for them. Bless him I can always trust him to misbehave when it really counts To put this in context, we live in a village of about 50 houses where everyone knows everyone. Kit's in and out of other people's houses all the time and we've met people because of him, not the other way round. And of course, the little b...........undle of joy is always well behaved and polite for everyone else (so at least we don't have to worry about him causing trouble around the village and not being welcome anywhere). The park is about 200 yards along the road and all the kids go there by themselves sometimes. If there's not an adult about who they know, they come home. They gave my husband a lecture about paedophiles and not allowing him out on his own! I ask you!

Lynne

ps. He's gone off to his grandparents for a week today. Since they live in Kent we met up in a service area, midway between theirs and ours. He got into their car and, as he disappeared into the distance, I leaped in the air, clicked my heels together, punched the air and shouted "Yes! Yes! Yes!" at the top of my voice. For some inexplicable reason, I got a lot of funny looks. Yes, if you were at Birchanger Services around midday, that was me.

[MrsD'ville mkII]

Is this what I have to look forward to with a son?!! Very interesting about the build up to the light smack, I can see me employing some similar pyschological approach WHEN things get too much, not if. I sadly am blessed with not an iota of patience, and I struggle to make that my problem rather than anone else's but frequently fail.

Regarding other people's views of our parenting, DH and I were stunned to be told by SD's then headmaster in Year 6 that other parents had reported their concerns that we let her cycle to school along a moderately busy road - !! Surely it is up to us to decide whether she had the judgement and skill to be able to do that? I was tempted to make the remark that other parents shouldn't judge us by their own children's abilities or lack of them but knew that wouldn't win me any points. Yes it's an A road, but it's about 1 mile and half from school to home and in the countryside so just the one lane of traffic and very few turn-offs but several lorries would have passed her. We knew she was more than capable of managing it and she proved us right. Ironically, it came up because she had received abuse from some of the cretins for cycling to school - how on earth does that work? What makes these parents think they're in a position to criticise anyone else when their own children are sufficiently anti-social to bully another child for something as innocent as cycling to school for F's sake? Really drives me up the wall when other parents choose to make a snap judgement about one's entire parenting approach because of one instance that they happen to disagree with. On that basis the mother who allows her child sweets after school every day and puts them in badly fitting shoes is clearly guilty of child abuse. I get particularly wound up about it because we very deliberately don't wrap ours up in cotton wool, we do expect the teenagers to face the consequences of their own actions/inactions even if that means cycling 8 miles in the pi**ing rain because they couldn't get out of bed in time to catch the bus or not going out with their friends because they chose to spend their money on chips and cake rather than saving it to pay for the planned event - this is how people learn, not by being cossetted. Snarl.

[Milims]

You are a woman after my own heart Mrs D! Surely childhood is the time to learn and test out adult skills with the safety net of a loving family? Is it not more abusive to prevent a child from learning how to live in the real world? To not teach it and give it the space to practice the skills it will need as an adult? Are we simply to throw them out of the door at 16 to face what ever sh@t life can throws at them (and we all know it can and does frequently) with no hope or understanding of how to handle it? Are we to treat our children like delicate objects and wrap them in cotton wool and not let them see the less than pleasant stuff that life can bring - including experiencing mummy reaching the end of her tether? If so then I'm glad my kids sing "what's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? No it's my mother!" I'd rather be a monster this way than the sweet sugary over protective kind!

[Rod in Japan]

I come from a long line of smackers and smacked, and we've always been reasonably well-disciplined, sociable, cheerful people. Just as I forgave my parents for smacking me, even unjustly sometimes, I believe my son has forgiven me. As a child, I certainly would have preferred to be smacked than hated and resented, even temporarily.

Looking back at my own career as a smacker, I would have preferred to have taken the route my parents took of threatening, then denying 'treats' for the day (no pudding, no jam). But I couldn't get the missus to cooperate on that one, and unfortunately we didn't take the time to work out an alternative. I certainly felt bad about smacking sometimes, but to be denied that option would have been an intolerable intrusion in our family life.

Still, it's good that Social Services are providing such sterling services these days. If I was in the UK instead of a country where certain freedoms still exist, instead of smacking my child, I could threaten to hand them in to Social Services anytime they felt like throwing a fit. Or I could threaten to send them to the Kiddie Cadets or whatever the fast track is to Iraq and Afghanistan. If the government wants to teach children that violence is not a good option, they could set a better example by cutting it out of its foreign policy (Just a thought.)

[Graye]

I've been reading this thread from general interest as I have no toddlers to contend with these days.
I must admit that I was smacked as a child. I lived mainly with grandparents who saw this as a very legitimate way of teaching children right from wrong. My own son was also smacked occasionally as a child but he was a very stubborn little boy who would never be seen to be defeated so eventually we dealt with him by denying treats (and sticking rigidly to our guns too). Having just been visited by my son (now a hefty 30 year old) his girlfriend and their five year old daughter I was impressed to see their total "no smacking" policy at work. I must admit I found it exhausting - her negotiating skills in finding a punishment she feels should fit the crime were amazing. I was all for signing her up for a UN post by the end of the visit! Obviously she isn't a toddler now and was apparently much more easily subdued at that age.
One thing does strike me here. My son was "diagnosed" as an early ADHD sufferer, scoring extremely highly on the tests. I was never very happy with this handle and after a few disastrous weeks suffering from the effects of Ritalin we decided to completely cut out E numbers from his diet and try harder to control his terrible temper fits, also finding him lots of competitive sports to burn his energy off with. This was very successful and he either "grew out of" ADHD or was wrongly diagnosed in the first place. I'm not saying ADHD does not exist but I still believe it is too often diagnosed when the child is actually being poisoned by additives and is a stubborn/wilful individual in the first place.
Children actually thrive on having boundaries that they know and understand. I suspect fairness doesn't really come into this, they know how far they can go and the consequences if they overstep the line, whether the consequences involves a light smack, taking away treats or some other form of punishment. I think every parent should be allowed to deal with their child's behaviour as they see fit. However I love the slow build up approach to the controlled smacking. Did the "dread factor" actually work? Also, I suspect I see more boys than girls being particularly difficult as toddlers. Is this likely?