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April 19, 2008, 1:06 pm PDT
Keeping sanity
Quote From: mommy_helpi am a mother of four children. 3-boy,7-girl,7-boy,and a 8-girl. we are a blended family my problem is i have a very stressful job long hours but good money for not having much of an education but my family is a disaster. my 3 year old is out of control.always getting into everything making messes everywhere! my 7 yr old girl has developed an additude and is always getting in trouble in school for being disobeniant. my 7 year old boy is always just doing what ever he wants to do. he calls his great grandmother bad names and acts in violent manners agianst the other kids. everything just feels out of control. i have been trying different methods of diciplining my children but it doesnt seem to work and it kind of makes me feel like the bad guy all the time because i have to be the reinforcer. my husband does the playing with the kids and stuff like that. even though he has been trying to help more lately it seems that he doesnt have the patients to deal with them a lot of the time. i just need some advise on how to get this under control.to make my kids behave in a manner that is appropriate and keep my sanity at the same time. help help please. Your husband should not have the choice to not enforcing rules/boundaries with the children. He needs to understand that by allowing their bad behavior to continue, he is setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment and troubles. If your children learn at home that there are specific rules/boundaries in life, they will go out into the world knowing what to expect. If they do not learn about rules and boundaries at home, they will go out into the world, expecting to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to, and that is where the disappointment will begin.
You and your husband are the strongest role models that your kids will ever have. They are looking to you to teach them what “normal” is. Right now, you are teaching them that it is ‘normal’ to allow their behavior.
You said that you’ve tried different ways of disciplining, and none seem to work. You’ve got to choose ONE method and be 100% consistent with it for at least one week before you will know if it truly works or not. Just trying a method here and there isn’t a good indicator of what works. Dr. Phil says ‘hit ‘em where it hurts,’ meaning take away what they like the most. (this method works the best with my own children. When I say, ‘you have three minutes to get your dirty dishes out of here, if you aren’t done in three minutes you’ll lose your DS for 3 days…’ they really get to moving.) All kids are different, so you’ve got to figure out what their currency is for each.
I wish you the best!
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