There are times when our children get really out of hand, on our nerves or exhibiting continous misbehaviours.  Sometimes, no amount of nagging, lecturing or reminders seem to help.

Even older children fail to listen to parents’ advice or warnings. It would be worse for younger children who seem to understand little of every good advice that comes out of the parents’ mouths OR seem to have memory problem in remembering what has been advised.

My two children, similarly, can get really out of control sometimes and are constantly pushing the boundaries as they grow older. Just when I thought that it would be more difficult to get my message across to our 6-year old Darren, it is even harder to get the message across to our 10-year old Brendan.

When I was younger, my mom used to own a little cane. That cane was more for “threatening effect” because it hardly landed on my body or perhaps I was an obedient girl then and did not require much discipline *lol*. So when I became a mom, naturally, I have been taught to also own a little cane at home. I believe some parents here also own a little cane like this *wink*.

However, just like my mom, the cane has hardly been used on Brendan since he was young and in fact never on Darren.  Not that my sons give me no problem …. in fact they give me such “challenging and fuming moments at time” <especially when they are together>….but because I never find it effective to get the kids to behave just by leaving some cane marks on their legs or hands. Of course, we do use our hands to spank their buttocks, hands or legs when they get really extreme.

So we do agree that children need to be disciplined to stamp out those ill-behaviours which would otherwise follow them into their teens or adulthood.

I remember there were several occasions when the boys got really outrageous and we brought out the cane. Before we realised, the boys were so fast to speed off <yes, fleeing for their lives> and I realised that today’s generation is really different. During my time, we would get so fearful when we saw the cane and stayed rooted to be caned. Today’s kids flee for their lives!  Sometimes, even when we beat Brendan lightly with our hands, he would get into this very temperamental mood and wail or grumble non-stop and I realised that beating does not solve the problem…..In fact, it makes him very disgruntled. 

For Darren, I remember one occasion when we beat him with the hands and he started giggling. OMG!  Today’s children are really unbelievable. I realised that there is really no point beating our children if the message is not transmitted across and it might end up leaving them even more defiant. So then, what can parents do?

I believe different parents have your own approach of disciplining kids. Like for Papa Ed, he will lecture the kids with commanding tone.  It instils fear in the kids for a while but I am not sure whether the messages are registered in their minds. For me, having tried out the different methods on the boys, I definitely agree that different kids need different methods of discipline. Like for Brendan, he can throw tantrum which is worse off than Darren and I also noted that he gets really stubborn even when being disciplined. So the best way is for the whole incident to cool down and reason out with him or giving him a little fear of something that he dreads. At other times, I will get so angry that I just go off for a while to cool down and the boy will usually also cool down to think of his own mistakes. Yes…mommy gets her fair share of frustration in disciplining kids too and there are also moments that mommy could lose her COOL. It is only human right ? (especially when our patience is pushed to the extreme!) So mommy needs her little space too, to cool down before having her clear mind to bring the message across effective to the kids. For Darren, usually, the best way is to let him repeat his understandings of what has been warned to him. He gets really persistent at times to repeat his mistakes but he does not get angry when mommy nags, at least *sigh*.

I guess kids being kids…they seem to have super short memory over warnings by parents and tend to repeat the next cycle again…So it is Déjà vu, huh? This is also one of the challenging part of parenthood, right?

As parents, how do you discipline your kids? Which is the most effective method? When your kids tend to repeat their mistakes or get argumentative, what do you do? You are most welcomed to share:)

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