Locking up a child

In My Humble Opinion
41

When I was a teen, my primary source of income was Georgie. The little boy next door. (and then the arrival of a little sister, plus a handful of rangy mutts that I adored.) Georgie threw screaming tantrums all the time. I had permission from his parents to lock him in his room, using a cloth diaper to close in the doorway to wedge the door shut. He would bang on the door until he eventuall passed out from the outrage of being excluded from WHATEVER IT WAS GOING ON OUT THERE THAT HE WAS BEING EXCLUDED FROM. CURSE YOU VILE ADULT!!! He was STEWIE, too say the least.

He hated nap time. He hated bed time. He hated meal time. He was a bit of a tyrant. He was two and the poster child for being TWO. But, after I sat him long enough, I didn’t like sitting in the hallway across from the door listening to his rants and pounding. I was just shy of 12ish when I started sitting him, by the time I turned 13, it bugged me.

Looking back on it all, with adult eyes, the kid had gone through a move into a foreign house, new neighbors, some new babysitter that WASN’T GRANDMA!!!111!!! and to top it off, THERE WAS THIS NEW HUMAN OCCUPYING THE CRIB THAT USE TO BE HIS…and this new lifeform GOT ALL THE ATTENTION!!!11!!!

Of course the kid went nuts. It was all too overwhelming.

However, telling a teenage girl all this I would have rolled my eyes and gone, " Uh huh. whateeevuuuur." gag me.

I think I tossed Georgie in his room with every little insurrection for a couple of months, until I realized it was too easy.

I was making, what, $2 or $3 an hour (plus cable TV!!! Which we never had.) to toss him in his room when he got unruly and then crank up the babyswing for the other one and then pet the dogs and watch MtV when it use to actually show music stuff. It was all too easy. I wasn’t earning my money at all. I curse my parental units and their drive to give me integrity.

So, somewhere along the way, I asked the little guy to take a breather in a tantrum and probably gave him the option of: In Your Room or Sitting With Me watching MTV as long as you behave

Guess which option he took.

After that, the tantrums gradually disappeared and I went on to make assloads of money circa early 80’s. off his parents, who continued to have problems with him until Georgie was old enough to say something like, " What are my other options. Shirley always gives me options." or - because his dad was a lawyer, " I don’t like that option." and then the tantrums stopped for them. One of the Grandparents was a Pediatrician and he told them ( after the ‘options’ line from their son) that " They could learn a few things about parenting from a teenage girl." Which they told my mom, and then she told me.

When you expect bad behavior, you are rewarded with bad behavior.

What I’ve learned, and take this FWIW, is that you should comment ( not gush or fawn) over GOOD behavior and not rise to the bait of JESUS CHRIST KID DO YOU HAVE TO THROW ALL YOUR MACARONI OFF THE HIGH CHAIR AT THE DOG!!! Clean up the mess ( or let the dog clean up what they can.) saying, " Next meal, no dog. You need the food, not Fido." And stick too it. And when Jr. eats without flinging, " You are eating so nicely. Very good." kinda comments stick better than, " JESUS CHRIST! WERE YOU RAISED IN THE MONKEY HOUSE!!!111!!"

42

Hit enter too soon.

Here is food for thought: How you yes you!! scream at your children will be how your children scream at your grand children.

But first, they scream at their siblings on like you scream at them. GOOD TIMES!

43

I think they need to make a hockey-style penalty box for kids. In fact, I’m going to invent one and make a bajillion dollars!

That or maybe one of those 1960s game show sound proof booths.

44

Penalty Box…I Like it!

45

Shirley, I love the way you put that. You are absolutely right.

Every kid’s different, every family is different, BUT generally speaking the best way to get kids to behave better is to help them do it. Not just push them away.

If I didn’t have twins I wouldn’t have learned that. I’ve had to teach these two how to get along. Not just tell them to do it.

Because I don’t have to wait for grandchildren to witness them using my techniques - they do it to each other. Immediately!
To pontificate for a minute, meeting force with force, anger with anger, doesn’t work well, in my experience. It’s a Zen thing - deflect their power, bounce it away, defuse it. Don’t try to overcome.

Of course there are states of mind and emotion where you absolutely can’t reach them. No point in trying to introduce a teaching moment when someone’s hysterical or furious (or I am). THAT is where the “timeout” is so helpful (for both of us), whether it’s in a corner or their bedroom.

I think that people get too caught up in punishments sometimes, as though if they could find something awful enough it would extinguish the behavior immediately and they won’t have to deal with it anymore. I empathize with that because this parenting job is an assload of work – but I’ve found it very difficult to accomplish anything with mine in a single try. It always requires repetition.

So I have to keep finding things I can tolerate repeating - how do I want to spend MY life?

Positive rewards, positive talk (never label them according to their bad behavior), and natural consequences (i.e. “Do you think Santa will want to bring you MORE toys if he sees that you leave the ones he gave you LAST year laying all over the floor?”). Those are my allies. And an occasional swat on the ass when my kids were younger.

Of course I’m saying this NOW during a period of relative calm and only 4 years into this journey - I’m sure I’ll be throwing my hands up in frustration again in the future.

/sorry for babbling

46

My mother locked my younger brother into his room every single night until he was 18.

He was a sleepwalker - and he never did restrict himself to his own bedroom. He’d leave the house. Unlock and open the door, go wandering around until either he woke up and paniced or someone found him and returned him to my parents. Which happened precisely once before my mother freaked out and installed a lock on his door and used it with religious regularity. She slept with one eye open when we weren’t at home.

When he got to the teenage years and was busily being the biggest shithead he could manage (on purpose, he admitted later in life), she slapped locks on his windows, too. In fact, I recall the argument that was touched off by her installation of those locks. It happened the morning after the night my brother stole my mother’s car, went to a raging party, got completely shitfaced, and was busted (by my mother - who heard her car being stolen, did a quick bedcheck and proceeded to start locating the party by process of elimination - took her about an hour and a half) this far away from actually managing to consummate a bout of unprotected sex with a 14-year-old. Granted, he was 14 himself, but still.

My mother was massively unamused. The window-locks went in the next day. Of course, that same evening, she packed all the drunk miscreants into my dad’s truck and drove them all home - waking up their parents at 3am and presenting each set of parents with one drunk teenager and an explanation of where she had located that teenager. Such was the force of her personality (and the knowledge that my mother knew who they were and where they lived) that not one of the little suckers tried to make a break for it. It was a goodly while before my brother was even invited to another party. Which was my mom’s intention.

She was aware of the danger from fire, but frankly, her judgment was that he was in more danger from aimlessly wandering around via sleepwalking (in his younger years) or from his own profound lack of good judgment (when he was a teenager) than he was in from fire and a locked door. Besides, they weren’t very hardcore doors - he could easily have kicked it down once he got older than 10. Hollow-core, cheap wooden interior doors. He did exactly that once in a fit of temper tantrum when he was 13. The door went back up less than an hour later - complete with lock.

47

We used one for our daughter, and now the high school isn’t there anymore.

48

Well, that is rather beyond the scope of my question. I’m not asking if you think raising a borderline feral child is OK. Just locking them in for an hour.

And Bosda, some teens won’t come out of the closet, so locking them in is hardly a punishment.

49

My son is 1, and we put him in a playpen with no toys, and a stern “NO!” when he tried to climb onto the television stand and pull the wires out.

He can’t physically get out of the playpen, and I wouldn’t say that’s any different from locking him in his room. It can work, sometimes, and I definitely don’t think that locks are inherently abuse. If it works for your daughter, by all means do it.

50

Make a YouTube account (free, easy) and save it to your favorites is the best way. You can make folders to keep the various videos in as well, so you can have a music folder and a funny folder so you can better find the video you want.

51

Exactly. The best advice I ever heard about teaching/classroom management was to keep my punishments small, because if they are small you won’t mind being consistent and consistancy matters more than severity. If you threaten to bring the hammer down, you risk then finding yourself in a gray area with no way out–they broke the rules but there is some sort of extenuating circumstances and you hate to ground them for a month/sell their car/send them to alternative school all things considered, so you give in and lose credibility. If it’s a reasonable thing you are less hampered: “Yes I understand and believe you only broke curfew because your best friend was crying and needed a shoulder and I admire that you were willing to (small punishment) in order to be a good friend”.

52

My mother had a similar plan - sending me to my room didn’t work; flopping down on the bed with a book was my idea of a good time. So I had to sit in the living room and work on a 8x12 foot latch hook rug we were making for my grandfather. Boooooring!

53

This is most awesome. I shall try it on my husband first :slight_smile:

54

Bet you got crucified for that.

55

If it’s a teenager, remove the door for a week. :eek:

56

How to save any video from YouTube:

  1. Select the word “youtube” in your browser’s URL bar.

  2. Replace “youtube” (and only “youtube”) with “voobys”, like so:

becomes

http://www.voobys.com/watch?v=RWcNcJuTHVo

  1. Hit <enter>

  2. On the new page that loads, click the “Download Video” button, rename the file as appropriate, and save it.

If you have a Mac with OS X, you can use this program:

57

Phase42, thank you!

58

I found those instructions on another video site - don’t remember which one. I don’t usually use the voobys method, since yFlicks does a good job for me (and is easier). But from time to time YouTube changes things around and yFlicks stops working until the author can figure out the new system and release a new version. So in the interim I use voobys.com.

59

Shirley Ujest,thanks for #41.First smile of the day.

60

WELL SAID! Blanket rules and blanket punishments are just asking for trouble. Children are small people who are constantly learning, about the good stuff and the bad. Your reaction is as important as their behaviour.