Parenting Forums

Posted: 23 April 2008 at 9:15am | IP Logged

My DP is a stay at home dad & he gets the majority of DDs bad behaviour now. I returned to studying last Sept but June 07 we mentioned it to the HV who replied "it's because she's soo bright" but that was little consoliation at the time.

It is important that you DH does not undermine you in front of her. If she's told she's naughty all the time she will give up trying to be good for DH. This becomes a vicious circle.

To give you an example of our DDs bad behaviour she will bite althtough she's only ever bitten me once & no-one else apart from DP who gets bitten usually twice a week. I really feel for him especially as it has bruised badly several times. Throw her toys & yesterday whilst I was out ripped our dictionary in pieces. She gets so worked up at times with frustration she just cannot calm down. DP has to restrain her & put her safely in her room to thrash it out  although he checks regularly. Saying that he's stricter than me when it comes to verbally telling her off (it hurts me to see her cry).

The point I'm making is it is not you who's a bad parent. Kids are all unique the best solution I found was either the naught chair/step or time out for two minutes in a safe place.

Posted: 23 April 2008 at 2:40pm | IP Logged

Hun i had typed a reply yesterday but for some reason i lost it and was too frustrated to try again but i've chilled out a bit now.

You are a great parent and you are doing fine. Kids are kids and their job in life is to test us. Being a sahm/d is a difficult and often thankless task. Handing out the disapline is a hard job and i too have days where you feel like it's all negatives which is why you need to keep going be consistant and over time there will become more time for play, fun and games.

I've been there hunny and it's hard work but she is going to test you and the boundaries you have in place..... I use a 3 count system.... you take the emotion and talk out of the disapline which gives them nothing to feed off.

You just say thats one....(if it's the first time say throwing a ball, say we don't throw balls thats 1, then 5 seconds, thats 2 if they are still doing it thats 3 and take 5 for the behaviour or language etc.) if they do something like hit etc you of course don't want to be giving them a count system as you don't want to be hit again and again! you go straight to thats 3 and time out.

It's hard but thats the system i use and it seems to be working... it's very very similar to the supernanny technique just with less talking and emotion.

Good luck hun you'll be fine and you can come out the otherside.... never doubt yourself hun.... you and your dh will work though this together and it's hard to have realistic expectations all the time..... good luck