Comments on: Zoo to you http://homelywife.com/2008/zoo-to-you/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zoo-to-you ... a Homely Wife Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:20:31 +0000 hourly 1 By: Madeleine http://homelywife.com/2008/zoo-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-19 Madeleine Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:17:47 +0000 http://homelywife.com/2008/zoo-to-you/#comment-19 Consistent discipline is very difficult to provide. Especially if a child spends time under the care of different care-givers whose expectations, explanations of the rules and follow-through vary, (school is an obvious example). We have a troublesome younger child who is a really determined, boundary pusher and as such, somewhat predictably, other people find him very difficult to care for. These other people come to us and complain about his behaviour, and rightly so, he behaves very badly at times. However, when we observe how they set out the rules and follow through we are not surprised that our son plays up for them. Obviously our son needs to learn to behave even when the message is inconsistent and the consequences are not there but equally adults need to learn the art of being consistently clear about the expectations and if they make a threat about what will happen in the event of non-compliance they need to follow through because our son, now the tender age of 7, worked out some time ago that very few adults who interact with him do this and this is something he delights in exploiting. School has become so bad, in that we feel like we have to spend as much time teaching the teachers as well as our son how to manage boundaries, that we are currently contemplating going back to homeschooling until we can get this ruly child to behave even when the adults are clueless! One example from his teacher who reported an incident of misbehaviour to us on his part was to suggest, in October, that we give him one less Christmas present as a punishment. He was just 6 at the time! As if he would two months later understand why he was getting one less Christmas present! The suggestion missed on so many levels it was all I could do to not let something impolite out in response. Consistent discipline is very difficult to provide. Especially if a child spends time under the care of different care-givers whose expectations, explanations of the rules and follow-through vary, (school is an obvious example).

We have a troublesome younger child who is a really determined, boundary pusher and as such, somewhat predictably, other people find him very difficult to care for. These other people come to us and complain about his behaviour, and rightly so, he behaves very badly at times. However, when we observe how they set out the rules and follow through we are not surprised that our son plays up for them.

Obviously our son needs to learn to behave even when the message is inconsistent and the consequences are not there but equally adults need to learn the art of being consistently clear about the expectations and if they make a threat about what will happen in the event of non-compliance they need to follow through because our son, now the tender age of 7, worked out some time ago that very few adults who interact with him do this and this is something he delights in exploiting.

School has become so bad, in that we feel like we have to spend as much time teaching the teachers as well as our son how to manage boundaries, that we are currently contemplating going back to homeschooling until we can get this ruly child to behave even when the adults are clueless!

One example from his teacher who reported an incident of misbehaviour to us on his part was to suggest, in October, that we give him one less Christmas present as a punishment. He was just 6 at the time! As if he would two months later understand why he was getting one less Christmas present! The suggestion missed on so many levels it was all I could do to not let something impolite out in response.

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