Category: Behaviors

When I left my job as a teacher, I was cleaning up my room & a student of mine lamented that I was packing my classroom timer to take with me. He said, “Not my baby!” as I put it into my box of things. I guess one could say that he loves timers almost as much as I do. And the reason that he did lament it’s going was because of how much it was used and respected in my classroom.

Come into the room, sign in on the daily attendance sheet and take your seat. Once the bell rings, the timer is immediately set for 7 minutes; time enough for them to finish the introduction problem posted for the day. When the timer rings, there is no arguing about what comes next. It’s time to check the “do now.”

Timers are a most wonderful invention. Not only to make sure you boil the egg for long enough, but also for empowering your kids to follow directions and to learn self-monitoring skills. They can be used for timing a time out. They can be used to indicate that it’s time to go to bed, eat supper, get dressed; you name it! They can also be used to give kids a feeling of control. My favorite trick currently is to promote “start” behaviors with a little bit of timer.

When faced with the (seemingly) inevitable, “But I don’t want to take a bath (or fill in the blank) !!,” you give them the feeling of choice by introducing the timer into it.

You: “Well my friend, the choice is this…I can set the timer for 5 minutes and you can take your bath when it rings, or you can go up now.”

Kid: “I choose neither!”

You: “If you choose neither, then I make the choice for you and my choice will be now.”

Kid: (Almost invariably) “5 minutes please.”

Once the timer rings, I try not to say anything as much as possible. I will take the still ringing timer to wherever the child is and let it ring until it gets their attention. Since the timer is telling them that it’s time for their bath and not me, they can’t argue with it! Magic! And my results have been smooth. Kids can police themselves and follow rules that are set out for them without adults yelling at them to do so. I’ve seen it firsthand.

Another thing that I love about timers is their ability to comfort controlling or anxious children. I have also recently been using a timer with a friend of mine who sometimes has trouble leaving the house. He feels comfortable at the house and isn’t always a great sport about going elsewhere, especially if that elsewhere isn’t going to be someplace fun for him. So I give him warnings as to upcoming changes. I tell him how long it will be before he has to leave, usually only mentioning it if it’s getting to be about the 30 minute mark (he’s school aged, so I’ve taken his maturity level into account; with younger kids, I would do a shorter amount of time) . As with many kids, once he’s engaged in an activity he is not so keen on being disrupted, so knowing that a disruption is inevitable is a little way to help him deal with it. On more than one occasion, I have told him that he’ll have to leave in about 30 minutes and then have asked him if he would like me to set the timer for him. He has always answered yes. And on our last timed afternoon, he carried the timer with him, informing me how much more time he had to play or color. With about 2 more minutes left on the timer, he knew the end was near, so he got ready to head out of his own accord. I didn’t have to nag him about getting his shoes on or getting ready. He did it himself because he had a tool to help him.

Timers can help bring peace, even despite a little relentless beeping. And if that’s not a reason to love them, then I don’t know what is.

1-2-3 Magic  is officially in the bag. I read the entirety of it and have taken copious notes to add to my personal knowledge.

I really liked the book and it made me feel a tad more secure in things that I’ve already been doing, but could be construed as a little mean (i.e. ignoring temper tantrums and other negative behaviors). One of the most important points of the book is that parents tend to talk too much and have too much emotion when disciplining their kids. Parents get angry or want to reason with their kids, thinking that this will help their kids become reasonable people. While both of these reactions are very normal when dealing with a child whose behavior is irking you, neither of them helps the situation get resolved.

Talking too much lets kids know that if they keep asking questions or arguing, then they may never have any consequences. I have seen kids wear their parents down after naughty behavior so that no consequences are doled out. I have also seen parents practically forget about naughty behavior because too much time has elapsed since the incident and the child has had plenty of conversation to calm themselves down. This makes parents sometimes doubt the point of giving a consequence because the child will have little connection to the problem and is logical again (which is all the parents wanted in the first place). Another problem with talking to much is that it can lead to more frustration on the parent’s part, which can lead to anger, yelling and even hitting. Many wordy explanations of “no nos” also go right over kids’ heads. “Well they still don’t get it, maybe I should draw them a diagram…” Or maybe you should stop talking. Silence can often get the message across much more than words can.

Switching gears a bit, I spent time with extended family this weekend and they were all curious to hear about my ideas for child raising, since a few of them are parents of young children and many of them are parents of grown children. The old argument for some sort of spanking was brought up by one family member. He was not necessarily advocating spanking, but like many adults, had been spanked as a child and thought that it did the trick in scaring him away from disappointing his parents. While it’s hard to argue against what was “perfectly good for me,” I did tell him that parents are the model of adulthood and grown up living for their children. If they lash out, get angry, or use violence, then their kids are more likely to do so as well. Shaping the type of people they become isn’t only a matter of getting them not to do certain things. In fact, it’s more important that you get them to do certain things (hence the Start behaviors described in the post Parenting Books).

So if you’re in the market for a new frame of reference or are worried about any negative behaviors that you might be contributing to, take a look. It’s in a book.

Kicking, hitting, screaming, mouthing off and other large scale disruptive behaviors are the ones most often seen on TV as needed to be corrected by the Supernanny. It’s so, isn’t it? Yes. Most often there is a family struggling to control their young children who essentially run all over them, disregarding any imaginary rules or boundaries in their paths. This makes for good television and is easy for other parents and people to watch because the children that they have or know aren’t nearly so poorly behaved.

But thinking about it tonight, I came to the conclusion, at least for now, that kicking, hitting and the like are sometimes the easiest things to discipline. When your child is punching you in the face, even if you are unsure of where to start, you at least are usually aware that this is unacceptable behavior and that you’d like it to stop. That means that dealing with an aggressive child is not an easy way of beginning to implement discipline, but it is very straightforward. “I am putting you on the step (naughty corner, time-out, etc.) because you were hitting. Hitting is not acceptable and if you do it, you will sit on the step.” Straightforward.

When you have a child who is more prone to passive aggressive behaviors, or whining, or tantruming because he or she hasn’t gotten what they wanted, then sometimes there seems to be a fuzzy line when it comes to discipline. The truth is that not every situation that involves these three things listed (minus the other in-between situations that parents are faced with) calls for a time-out or some sort of response from the parent. And that can lead to a whole other problem. Instead of not knowing how to respond, not needing to respond, but responding anyway. I think that will be saved for another day though.

So while it’s easy to see misbehaving children and thank your lucky stars that your children are better behaved, it isn’t always so easy to deal with behaviors that are more under the surface. It takes more creativity, more finesse and often more thoughtfulness. In the meantime, no hitting please.