Visit With Son: Experimental Form Of Discipline

I have to finish filling in details of my last visit. I forgot to mention something that I tried which i felt worked out well. I didn't know for sure, and I won't say it is maybe good all the time, or for every child, but I tried out a totally different form of trying to correct "bad behavior" with my son and I thought I'd throw it out there and see if it gives anyone ideas or if someone wants to share their own experiences. When I did it, I thought about it first. I considered the pros and cons and the fact that the visitation monitor was there and what she might think, when it wasn't traditional. But, it seemed to work, at least for that moment.

It was when my son put one of those Hi-Ho cherries in his mouth and he knew he wasn't supposed to. He kept looking at me and grinning beligerantly and refused to spit it out. He wouldn't spit it out into my hand, but only gave it back when I offered the monkey's hand. So then he spit it out and it just crossed my mind to try something that was exactly counter to what one might do.

I know something about positive and negative reinforcement. You know, when to encourage or discourage certain behaviors (at least in children because I'm apparently lousy with adults most of the time! lol). Also, I know that sometimes children act out to "test" authority or other times, to get attention.

It crossed my mind that I might send the wrong message, if I just hugged my son after he was disobeying me, because I thought, it might be a positive reinforcement of undesired behavior. But then I thought, sometimes kids just act out for increased attention. Even though he'd had my full attention...But I tried it and it worked.

I said to him, after he spit the cherry out into the monkey's hand, I said, "Oliver, you just need a lot of hugs don't you? You have all of Mama's attention and..." I can't remember exactly what I said, but he looked surprised when I just gave him big hugs.

After that, instead of testing me more, he was an angel. He suddenly wanted to do things to please me. Maybe he felt "guilty" about disobeying, I don't know. But he was then trying to nurture me and feed me food.

So I'm thinking about this now, and have been mulling it over.

The idea is to curb the desire to disobey, and I don't want to send the wrong message, but maybe there's a form of prevention to most bad behaviors, even if it's human nature to try the patience of others. I don't know.

I can't do this with judges and lawyers and state workers unfortunately. They don't want "big hugs". haha.

But I am thinking, with children, they're so smart and I think they would most often want to please their parents and those they love. I think I was trying to send a message of unconditional love. I didn't say I approved of what he did, but I expressed my love and respect for him and perhaps this is one of the best ways to prevent the desire to rebel in the first place.

I believe in time outs and taking away privileges, but wonder if there is a very fine balance.

They say, for example, that kids who fight are acting out of jealousy over the other. So it's that sometimes a parent or others are showing favoritism to one more than the other and this causes some competition and resentment. But when the parents encourage them to help eachother and try to express love equally, in equal distribution, there is less sibling rivalry, because well, the idea that they are rivals is diminished.

I wasn't encouraging bad behavior. I was actively, I felt, preventing the desire to disobey to begin with and using reverse psychology I guess. I wouldn't do this for everything, but with some kids, it's probably good to try.
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I guess I'll just go ahead and write about the other details of our visit. The other thing he did which I forgot to write about, was that he wanted to pick at an apple. As long as there is a napkin down, I don't mind his playing with food to some small degree. He is young and learning how textures with his hands and how to take things apart, and he wanted to take that apple apart. So he was poking at it and peeling the peel off with his finger. I kept asking him if he wanted me to cut it up for him and he said no, so he made a huge mess. Then, he wanted to cut it and there was only a fork so I was cutting it but he loves to cut things up now and he asked to do it. I had to explain to him to keep his fingers away and not underneath whatever he is trying to cut. So he cut it with a fork and wanted to see the seeds. Then we threw it away. Maybe it looked like playing with food, but sometimes I feel this is appropriate. If you're sitting at a table, I expect table manners, but when we're in playing mode, if he wants to experiment with an apple I think this is good for creativity and learning.

Ummm, what else. There was more but I'll remember later. Oh! he's been skipping. I showed him how to skip at a visit a few months ago but he prefered to do one leg at a time, and I noticed a few weeks ago that he was skipping alternating feet.