My son only tried that once, and it was for some small thing I don’t even remember (ice cream or something?) What I do remember is the shitstorm that followed, when he found out that he would no longer be allowed to ask only one of us for permission for a month - if he wanted so much as a peanut butter sandwich, he had to wait until both of us were in the room to say yes at the same time. Which essentially meant he couldn’t do jack shit other than homework until Mom got home from work - no TV, no going outside, no calling friends… Inconvenienced his sorry little ass far more than a bowl of ice cream was worth, lemme tell ya! But he learned that we parent as a unit, and playing the one of us off the other just isn’t worth it.
Now if only we could master the shower issue. My fondness for natural consequences is coming up short on this one. I expected that by his age being smelly and gross would get him the kind of anti-attention from girls that would make him change his ways. Apparently not. :rolleyes: He’ll take a shower when ordered, unlike lezler’s stepdaughter (thank goodness!), but he will not take the initiative to do it on his own, or to brush his teeth daily, or use his acne meds, or to actually rinse all the shampoo out of his hair when he *does *shower. Ugh. Still, given the kind of kid in the OP or my hygienically impaired sweetheart, I’ll take the dirty kid, thanks!
While I agree the daughter seems to be in need of some tough love, this is one step I would not take. Barring the window, prison-style, would create a fire hazard. You’ll need an alternate solution.
**Philosophr ** - seems like most posters are on the same page, and I am right there with them. Bottom line is that - with the exception of truly troubled kids who have physical/psycho-chemical issues - if you show me a troubled kid, I will show you poor parenting. There is no problem that can’t be solved with the right amount of time, love, patience and creativity. That is what parents do.
If you look at your friends and are using their example as a rationale for not having kids, I would suggest that it appears to be more of a rationale for not doing what they do.
Before you go calling the police to report your child as a runaway, etc. please remember that should your child end up in the family court system, you lose all control of the situation. Family court (from my experience) is mainly there to make their own jobs as easy as possible. Once they decide that you (the parent) are not making things easy for them by letting your child run amok, they will turn on you. This comes from the unfortunate experience of wanting the authorities to hold a 14 year old accountable for his actions. They did - and sent me a bill for $33,000 for their “services”. In Michigan, they enforce collection of this under the category of “child support” and will put you in jail for refusing to pay.
The parents who are my friends, are very worried about this. If they choose to call the cops and the girl lands in Juvi, then the court system takes over, and the relationship is permanently tarnished between parent and child. They know they dropped the ball many years ago in terms of being consistent with their kids, and they would routinely break the cardinal rule of agreeing with one another when it came to making serious decisions. Dad would crack and mom would be the disciplinarian.
I think they are trying the best they can to pick up the pieces and make sure they aren’t raising a future crack-head or criminal.
I will say the girl does like some of the nicer things in life and the parents should take her cell phone away and any though of her getting a car when she comes of age. I still think she is young enough to turn her life around.
I plan on going farther if it turns out to be necessary. We start with taking away the privileges. With any luck, the child will straighten up when his/her friends start to see him/her as a “dead weight” who never has any money. It’s never fun to cart around someone who keeps sponging off you.
After that, it’s on to decoration. Posters on the wall, gone. Fancy bedding, gone. Comfortable furniture, gone. The child will have a bed with an adequate pillow and blanket, a chair, and a desk with a lamp for homework.
Then, it’s jewelry. After that, makeup, then all clothes will be seized. The child will be issued the ugliest, drabbest clothes I can find. By this stage, the prospect of appearing in public wearing a parent-approved wardrobe should be so heinous that the child will be scared straight.
What do you say to the cops when you call them? Something like “We’re having a serious disagreement with our son/daughter and he/she has threatened to call you and accuse us of abuse. Will you send someone over?”
I’m generally against violence against children, or really anyone, but I can recall the few times I was spanked when I was little, and damn, did I deserve it at that point. One time I got a spanking because I was pummeling my little sister, and one time I got backhanded (lightly - nothing got broken or was even bleeding) because I was literally HYSTERICAL and unable to stop freaking out. It was either hit me or give me a very strong sedative, and my parents just, frankly, didn’t have the right amount of moonshine laying around.
Mostly, though, those instances taught me one thing - my parents are reserved about violence, but a LOT of the world IS NOT - and acting like an immature brat will, in the Real World, get the shit beat out of me more often than not. The pain went away, and I still adored my parents, but the lesson was learned. To put it into perspective, if this girl were to run away and perhaps tried to act like this to a boss at a fast food joint, one that had a slightly psychotic bent, she’d probably wind up dead. She needs to learn that in the Real World, shit like this DOES NOT FLY. Or else she is going to wind up a lot more hurt (or possibly dead) than is really necessary.
Bad parenting doesn’t just make for fuckups - it can kill. Sweetheart needs to learn how to be a responsible human being, or she’s going to wind up paying the consequences for it in the future.
That’s a really interesting observation, and probably a key element in their dilemma.
It’s interesting how parenthood makes us face ourselves. I doubt that hitting v. not hitting this child is really the issue. I’d bet that they need to get rid of their illusions about themselves and get real about setting boundaries (with consequences) for the child they actually have, versus the one they imagine they’re supposed to have.
It’s also not surprising that the discipline that worked for her older brother didn’t work for her - that’s quite common, and is another clue that they’re not tuned in to this girl.
I hope they decide to get some therapy. It would be interesting to know why that father couldn’t grow a spine. lezler, yes, of course, I agree with you, it’s going to get much, much worse.
I already decided I have no business having kids. This discussion just confirms me in that decision.
A world that has to break you before you can be a constructive citizen is not the world I want to bring anybody into. Hell, I’m 40 and not even broken myself.
I think the responses here ARE really harsh, but it’s because this is an out of control situation that MUST be stopped.
The whole parent/child dynamic doesn’t HAVE to be this way, not at all. Little kids start out WANTING to please their parents, they’re programmed that way. And they’re cute as hell, tons of fun.
Some people, though, forget to pay attention early on, and don’t teach their kids how to be close to them, how to “win”. Even with 2-yr-olds, there’s an opportunity to develop friendship, to play on their level, enjoy a laugh, share an adventure.
And yes, you CAN spank them at that age (sometimes it’s even a good idea), but that had better not be the only way a parent establishes order. Even toddlers need to be respected and valued. They are then more likely to respond in kind.
That’s the theory, anyway; I’ll let you know in 10 years if it’s done me & mine any good.
I agree with fessie. If you play your cards right, there’s no “breaking” involved at all. The problem here is the kid is already “broken”. She’s been broken because she knows her parents won’t protect her, she knows they don’t know what they’re doing (as parents), she has no respect for them as people, and she hasn’t learned the simple joy of making other people happy. Selfish people just aren’t happy, and I say that as a woman who’s gone through some incredibly selfish periods in my life. This is a girl who thinks she’s not going to get anyone to love or care about her unless she gets high with them or spreads her legs for them. (I have no fundamental problem with either drugs or sex, but that’s a bad reason to do them, in my book.)
The situation now is that they have a 14 year old body with the impulse control of a 2 year old and the (rightfully) pained soul of a teenager. She’s absolutely right that they don’t give a shit about her. If they did, they would have stuck together and done what was best for her as a kid, nevermind what the neighbors think about bars on her windows. Now, if they wake up, they have to start over. Unfortunately, they can’t literally start over. So it’s up to the experts to help her heal. But to get her to do that, the parents have to treat her 2 year old part like the 2 year old it is - which means physically confining her to a space in which they can make sure she’s safe.
I can’t let my toddler go outside without me or another adult, because she has no understanding of the dangers in the world, and no ability to control her impulses, even if she did. It’s up to me to confine her to an area where she can only make teeny tiny mistakes to learn what that’s like and how to handle it. Only when she’s learned how to make tiny mistakes do I open up her world a little more to let her make bigger mistakes and learn from those. It’s not a matter of “breaking her spirit” (which I assume you meant), but teaching her to make choices with a eye to their effects. That means she trusts me not to let her get in over her head. She knows, even at call-it-18 months, that Mama won’t let anything REALLY bad happen. So she has the freedom to throw herself backwards off my lap, knowing I’ll catch her. When she tries it from her little plush chair, she falls on her butt - not hard enough to injure, but hard enough to hurt. So now she knows something valuable about the world - gravity works and don’t throw yourself off a chair if no one is around to catch you. Ok, check! Next lesson, please!
Unfortunately, the parents didn’t do what parents should do first and foremost: convince this girl that she’s a valuable human being who they love and will protect from the big bad world until she’s ready to face the choices it contains. That’s a horrible thing to realize as a kid, so what many decide, rather than face that reality, is that the world isn’t really so big and bad, and that they can “handle” it. To admit otherwise is to admit your parents care more about other stuff than about protecting you.
Before it got to that I’d show the child some brochures on military schools for troubled teenagers. Thanks to the internet that can be done in real-time.
Though I wasn’t in any way a troubled child, my parents telling me they would send me to military school wouldn’t have helped me with anything. It would have been tantamount to saying “We don’t love you enough to keep trying so we are sending you someplace where someone is paid to pay attention to you.” I am not saying that military school can’t help some children, but stepping up to call their bluff and call the police for them or putting bars on their window or something would be the better option.
I have a friend right now that is counting down the days til she graduates so she can get the hell out of her mom’s house. She hates it there, her mother beats her and tells her she is fat and stupid, but she stays because it is her only option. (I have offered to let her come and live with me, but she is allergic to cats and can’t do that.) She would much prefer to go to military school where she would be treated with respect. At this point her mother realizes that she is getting ready to bolt and has started trying to be a better parent. She let her get a job, which up until a few months ago was prohibited. She is letting her take drivers ed now that she is almost 19. These steps are too little and are coming too late though, because when she thinks about her mom she doesn’t think, “Wow, she is really letting me have some freedom now.” She thinks, “Stupid bitch. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.” while she looks at the bruises on her ribs. Bad parenting can be turned around if you catch it early enough, but it takes a lot of effort on the part of the parents and military school might just be proof enough for the kid that their parent doesn’t love them after all. It should be a last resort.
Disclipline is contingent on your ability to control the situation.
Here’s the problem, though: as a parent, you flatly can’t control someone who does not let themselves be controlled. All you can do is apply greater and greater consequences.
Threats can be met with return threats, or with the teen simply taking a swing at you. Or (even worse from a control situation) your teen can simply call your bluff, and see if you’ll follow through.
If you attempt to lock a teen in their room and take away their various items of property, you better make sure that you’re living in a jail and not a home. Because a determined teenager can break down most inner house doors without too much trouble, and there is nothing stopping your teen from responding to your removal of her belongings by simply taking what she wants to have (or doesn’t want you to have).
The problem is that although involving the cops and family court is pretty much an unambiguous loss for the parents. I would say that most troubled teens know this. Most troubled teens also know that, if they are willing, they can escalate the situation such that the parents are forced to involve the cops and family court. As long as what the teen is doing is less troublesome than the process of going through family court, and the teen remains convinced that their parents will not respect their wishes, then the teen is behaving perfectly rationally.
If there is a good solution to this problem, it lies in treating your teen like a rational adult, and hoping like hell that they respond in kind. Applying negative incentive will only cause your teen to step up their own negative incentive plan. Besides, if you posit that your teen isn’t able to consider how to act in their own best interest, how can you expect to meaningfully punish them at all?
That’s good in theory, but what happens when the kid disobeys? You don’t punish rational adults.
/Father of a 12 year old who thinks she’s 25 and sometimes acts 2.
Which is why as a parent you never EVER bluff. Don’t ever make threaten consequences that you aren’t willing to carry out.
I’ve seen more parents threaten their young children with consequences, then give up because it was too much trouble just to get out of their chair. If you’re not willing to stand up and I mean, literally just stand up and walk over to your kid and control them, then threatening them with harm is going to ring pretty hollow. So they yell and nag at their kid all day long and the kid ignores them all day long.
If my teenager threatened to call the cops on me, I’d hand her the phone and tell her to go ahead. Anything else and you might as well give up. You’d be better off moving out of the house one day while the kid is at school and not leave a forwarding address, because you’re worthless as a parent and your kid will be better off living on the streets.