A Gentle Hand...

I like to think that E and I are rather balanced in our approach towards disciplining the kids - I believe in being firm, but not harsh, though there were still times when I did things that I am not proud of and had to apologise to them later. Overall, I believe in using words to discipline rather than actions and anything to do with hitting them is a strict no-no. When I look at Marcus, I am convinced that our disciplinary methods so far have been effective enough to produce a well-behaved boy who has a reasonable amount of self-control for his age and very impressive manners at most times.

Over the years, we have tried many different disciplinary tactics which we deemed suitable at different stages of Marcus' development. I have resisted 'time-out' and 'thinking chair' so far as I wasn't convinced of the effectiveness for young children until they can understand the significance and we can reason with them. There are 2 habits of Marcus which I simply couldn't discourage - nail biting and t-shirt biting. 

So yesterday out of exasperation, I carried Marcus and put him on the sofa bed and told him that from then on, that would be his 'thinking chair' and whenever he bites his t-shirt, a behaviour which is undesirable, and I explained why, he would have to sit there for 5 min. He fussed and protested at first, and tried to get off once. I put him straight back and insisted that he stay, without playing any toys, no eating or drinking and no reading either and absolutely no talking too, in that 5 min. Surprisingly, he stayed there for a few more minutes and asked me once 'mama, can I come down now?', and when the time was up, I went to him and gently explained why he had to sit there, reaffirmed that I love him lots and he is a really good boy, but why we don't like that behaviour of his. He seemed to understand and promised not to do it again. Surprisingly and I am so proud to say that for the whole of today, he didn't even bite his t-shirt once, when usually we have to tell him off at least every ten minutes. I asked him this morning after school if he still remembers why he was at the thinking chair and he could relate the whole incident eloquently. Wow!  I am so impressed! 

He used to throw big tantrums and have major meltdowns every evening at bath time. It is not that he hates baths, quite the contrary really. But I think he views the interruptions to his play time as annoying and frustrating and just couldn't express appropriately. Once he gets into the baths, we would have trouble getting him out of it, so it was always twice the drama everyday.

One day, I told him that in order to stay and play for a long time in the bath, he needed to show me more enthusiasm whenever I said it is bath time and I demonstrated the behaviour I wanted - a smiling boy with an enthusiastic 'Yeahhhh! It's bath time!'. From that day onwards, he did that almost every evening with a grin, to earn himself the extra time in the tub. Without fail, he did it again earlier and spent 25 min in the tub playing with his toys - pretending that the shark was eating a seal and was going to eat the people in the yacht... He narrated his story well, completing it with sound effects and insisting that his audience watch the drama unfold.

PS: It has been 3 days since I started the Thinking Chair and impressively, Marcus has totally stopped biting his t-shirt! It is amazing how easy this all goes and how odd that a "punishment" like being placed on a comfortable, familiar chair for mere 5 min can be so effective. To think that we had to suffer immensely in our childhood through the harsh and painful punishment our parents used on us when the alternatives are so much more peace loving and easy to administer is a true irony.