{"id":1589,"date":"2013-10-29T21:36:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T21:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theparentsocial.com\/?p=1589"},"modified":"2022-04-03T18:15:53","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T18:15:53","slug":"discipline-and-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparentsocial.com\/discipline-and-children\/","title":{"rendered":"When the 123 Method, the Naughty Step and Bribery Don’t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Rob has a two-year-old daughter and has just become a dad for the second time. Here\u2019s his great guest post on his epiphany regarding his eldest and her refusal to listen to him or his wife. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

I have been meaning to write another blog post for a few weeks now. My wife and I just spawned for a second time (once again of the female variety) and Fran<\/a> thought it might be interesting to get a Dad’s perspective on having multiple daughters; whether I had any worries beforehand and if the reality is different to the expectation.<\/p>\n

Well, that was some weeks ago now and I still haven’t managed to get around to it. Instead I’ve been trying to deal with a toddler who finds her new sister fascinating. This is trickier than it sounds.<\/p>\n

No matter what we say or do, our eldest refuses to listen to us. The girl clearly has no discipline. I don’t mean discipline in the Victorian sense of: “you must do this absurdly stringent thing else you will be beaten to within an inch of your life,” I mean it in more of a: “please stop trying to pull your sister’s head off” sort of a way, with the actual result being that head pulling ceases.<\/p>\n

\"Victorian<\/a>

Not this kind of discipline<\/p><\/div>\n

We have tried pretty much everything. Doing the 1, 2, 3 method<\/a>, the \u2018Naughty Step\u2019, going to bed early, bribery\u2026 everything. All we get are bemused looks and a continuation of the behaviour.<\/p>\n

But then I had an epiphany!<\/p>\n

As I said above, I’ve been meaning to write a blog post for Fran for a number of weeks, but always put it off. Shock! Horror! It turns out that I don’t have any discipline either!<\/p>\n

How the hell can I be expected to imbue a sense of self-control and discipline on my daughter when clearly I don’t have any myself? She doesn’t see any discipline from me, so why would she practice it herself (granted, I may be reading too much into this, but run with me on this one)?<\/p>\n

Kids are like sponges, soaking up everything they see and hear. If my eldest doesn’t see me doing what I said I would do, or what her mum has asked me to do, then why should she? Before I can persuade my daughter to stop trying to wake her sister up so they can go dancing, I need to instil into myself a sense of the discipline we require from her.<\/p>\n

Clearly then the objective is to foster discipline within myself. But how to go about it? I realised I have tried pretty much everything: to do lists, kanban<\/a>, Getting Things Done<\/a>, Remember the Milk<\/a>, HabitRPG<\/a>, reminders on my phone, post-its on the wall; everything except the Naughty Step. They all last for a few days, but then slowly I drift away.<\/p>\n

The problem is that in order to garner a sense of discipline, time and effort is needed. In fact exactly the same type of time and effort you need discipline to achieve – horrible catch 22 scenario.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, discipline is not an all or nothing thing. If you can practice a little bit of it, you can build it up into more; sort of like exercising: the more you do, the better you become.<\/p>\n

From my point of view, I have started to try and wake up earlier so I can get about an hour’s worth of work in before the rest of the house wakes up. I\u2019ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now and it\u2019s going pretty well. I am roughly sticking to it – I don’t get up immediately some days, but mostly I am up before everyone else. In that hour or so I have, I am able to power through some tasks. I quickly leaned that the night before I needed to leave a list of things to do, else my comatose self would just sit there staring at a blank screen. With this list I am still comatose, but at least I have instructions as to what to do.<\/p>\n

Once I have mastered this, then I’ll be onto other things. And once I have fully mastered my own discipline, then I’ll be in a better position to help with my daughter’s.<\/p>\n

\"And<\/a>

And when she’s older…?<\/p><\/div>\n

Check out Rob\u2019s The Realities of Fatherhood post<\/a>.<\/p>\n