discipline

I get tired of disciplining Princess P. Don't get me wrong, she is a well behaved child... except at home. To alleviate both my frustration and her own, I've decided to take a page out of Survivor's book.

In the Simple Father household, there will now be daily immunity challenges. I haven't come up with a huge list of challenges yet, but the first one will be tying her shoes. If she completes the challenge, she will be given immunity from punishment for the remainder of the day.

Right now this sounds slanted in her favor because if she fails, it's just business as usual. However, that's where exile island comes into play. If she fails to complete the challenge, she'll be sent packing. Princess P will have to spend the remainder of the day in her room without any toys or books.

When children are resistant to rules and guidelines, parent's often tell them something like "as long as you live under my roof, you obey my rules!" Or, "as soon as you start paying rent, you can start making some decisions around here!"

What about when other people's children misbehave? They are like transients who pop in just long enough to make their impact felt, and then poof, they disappear like a fart in the wind. So what do you do when the transient children start misbehaving?

My House, My Rules!

There are many reasons to be consistent in enforcing the house rules. The following are five reasons that rank toward the top.

1. Your child will notice if you crack under pressure - If you let another kid get away with breaking your house rules, it shows your child that there may be a chink in your armor. Granted, your kid will probably make the association that since little Johnny was a guest, you went easy on him. However, the seed has been planted! Now there's a chance, no matter how small, that your child may think they can get away with bad behavior. Like my good friend Lloyd says, "So you're telling me there's a chance."
2. Kids will realize it's a privilege to come to your house, or they'll stop coming over... win win in my book
3. It May minimize the bad habits your child picks up - No matter how good your child is, it rarely seems to rub off on the behaviorally challenged child. Usually, it's the other way around. If there's one thing that's hard to do, it's spending a couple weeks deprogramming your kid because they learned that throwing a fit is a cool way to express themselves.
4. It Makes you feel powerful and boosts self esteem - There's nothing quite like knowing you strike fear into the hearts of small children. That kind of knowledge will let you sleep peacefully on the couch because you know that when you wake up, all of your tools and gadgets will be right where you left them.
5. Stuff won't get broken - One day, I'm sure everyone wouldn't mind if there were a few nice things around the house. When that time comes, you wouldn't want them to get broken.

Be sure to visit the other fine dad (and mom) bloggers for fatherhood friday at dad-blogs.com.

photo courtesy of crypto

The world of computer programming can teach us many things on how to raise children. This may come as a surprise to many; after all, children don't understand the difference between bits and bytes. Even if you issue the child a simple command like "GOTO ROOM" the child will often resist, and catastrophic parenting failure occurs.

That's where the switch statement comes in. In the context of disciplining a child, perhaps a more appropriate name is the "go cut me a switch" statement. Below I have written a sample piece of code, followed by an explanation.

As a programmer by trade, I often have to solve logic and mathematical problems. Since kids are pretty rational, logical beings, I figure this type of thinking transfers over. Therefore, I've come up with something I like to call the 'Discipline Wave.' On a side note, don't even think of stealing the term or my lawyers will contact you and make you help pay my kids college tuition… or not, but if I were you I wouldn't want to find out.

The Discipline Wave looks very much like a sine wave, where the amplitude (think peaks and valleys) ranges from 1 to -1, and the wavelength (distance between peaks and valleys) is relatively stable. This can best be illustrated by graph 1.1 below.

As you can see, the level of discipline fluctuates over time. Starting out, kids are just learning to test their boundaries, but require a minimal amount of discipline. Then, as time goes by, the child pushes back a bit harder and soon reaches 1 full unit of discipline. However, soon the child learns the error of his or her ways, and begins to require less discipline… perhaps even to the point of volunteering to pick up toys and staying calm and collected at all times. This is the ideal, and the point on the graph where the Discipline Wave is at -1.

But, as any parent knows, eventually the Discipline Wave must swing back into the positive. The key is to maximize the time between the peaks and valleys (preferably measured in months instead of days). It's at this time that I admit I have relatively no idea how to accomplish the goal of lengthening time from peak to peak. If I did, I wouldn't be writing this blog. Instead I would be making millions of dollars teaching parents how to discipline their children.

The one thing I do know is that consistency is key. It helps to stabilize the situation, and has good medium term results. However, kids are complex little creatures, and always manage to throw another variable into the mix!

Be sure to check out other great writers at dad blogs. As always they help give me a different perspective on parenthood and help provide inspiration for my posts.

photo courtesy of pbo31

People close to me claim that I rarely become angry. I can say without a doubt that this observation is untrue. There are plenty of things that set me off, and for reasons unknown to me, children have a way of finding those things quickly. One thing that gets me going is whining and crying and tugging on my leg (which will henceforth be referred to as Wac-A-Toml). Fortunately my wife has finally stopped doing this when I crush her dreams of a new wardrobe. Unfortunately, the three year old is just getting started.

Recently Wac-A-Toml has been the tactic of choice. What angers me even more is that it is simply her attempt at manipulating the situation to achieve her desired outcome. If the three year old had any amount of true emotion behind her feelings, I may be a little more sympathetic, but that is not the case. How do I know there is no emotion? Well… after realizing she's been found out, the waterworks immediately stop. This is where the insanity comes in (stay with me… I promise this will might make sense soon).

As Albert Einstein once said, Insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So is my daughter insane? Yes. I think my psychology minor gives me the expertise to say without a doubt that she is insane. There has been no precedent set for her to think that Wac-A-Toml will in fact get her what she wants. Usually the results are quite the opposite, and she ends up spending some quality time in the naughty chair. So how do I get her to stop Wac-A-Toml? At this point perseverance and consistency is the only option that comes to mind, because I have no experience treating this kind of mental illness.

However, it could be that she is really a genius, who is training me for something that I, in my limited capacity, could never comprehend.