With all the attack-type posts over the weekend I lost track of the parents that were discussing spanking. I have 2 girls ages 4 and 7. The 7 yr old has mild ADHD inattentive but with impulsive tendencies. I have never spanked my kids. After my own research and life-observations, I came to the feeling that spanking models aggressive behavior. Kids learn to hit from their parents.
We also do not watch anything but Public TV and actually very little of that so my kids are not exposed to violent commercials or shows. We have some videos that the kids rarely watch because they are so busy with playdates, outdoor activities, imagination play, school and my 4 year old likes educational computer games. My husband and I get the daily news on-line. We use time-out, loss of privileges, and discussions to manage behavior.
My kids have hit each other only a couple of times so far and there has been no pinching, hair pulling etc…. I started yelling quite a bit and it was doing absolutely no good. It would take forever for my daughter to get ready for bed or get going in the AM. I would get behind in my responsibilities because I was so busy getting her back on track.
After a note from the teacher and several weeks of yelling to keep her on task, I saw the light. I could see her deep despair and her sense of hopelessness. I realized that this child was doing her best to please me and I was becoming an out-of-control mother.
She needed tools to deal with this. Even without really knowing what was wrong with her, I started making lists for her of multi-step tasks. We started a sticker chart with a trip to the dollar store after earning 15 stickers. This cut down her time to get ready for something significantly but she still would go astray.
