I know that the idea of a parenting manual is asinine as every kid is different.  But, I could certainly use one now.

Noah, our first, is an amazing kid.  He is so sensitive and full of life and love.  But he is also impulsive (at times) and easily frustrated.  He takes everything personally and this sometimes causes him to lash-out.  He hates to get in trouble.  Even more, he hates to be told he did something wrong.

As I write this, I realize I need to tell him more what he is doing right.  I will, without a fight, take responsibility for my child and their actions.

I could beat myself up with the questions:
What have I done to enable/encourage this behavior?
What has my husband done?

But I won’t.  As I lay awake in bed at 3:30 this morning, wondering what I had done wrong (I know a bit melodramatic–it’s not like my 6-year-old did anything that  horrible–he threw a toy at the neighbor girl and then hit the babysitter when she scolded him and went for a bike ride without telling her–causing her to panic a bit–yes, all serious infractions).  He is an angel at school, takes his consequences without so much as a eye-roll and is respectful to all authority figures.

This was the first time, he has acted like this with anyone who wasn’t his parents or his grandparents.  I have been trying to figure out how to leverage punishments as opposed to consequences.  I did a lot of early morning reading on my iPad as I pondered all my parenting wrongs.  I certainly need more than a few early morning sleepless hours for that.

My first instinct when I heard what he had done was to punish him but taking away TV, and making him stay in his room for the rest of the week/weekend.  But then I read something that really spoke to me and to the style of discipline that is used at the kids school.  That if I send him to his room for a weekend and take away TV, all I am teaching him to do is “do time.”  This made sense to me.  What I discovered might work (again, every kid is different) is a consequence that is task-based and not necessarily time-based.

So, I thought about what he had done and decided what the punishment consequence would be.  He would no longer be able to play with the neighbors when they have a babysitter (the dynamic of my two kids and there two kids can  be good–but it can also be bad–there is a lot of competition to be Alpha).  He would not be allowed to play with his swords when he has friends over. And he would not be able to play at all until he wrote a letter of apology to both the neighbor girl and the babysitter.

He fought it, and at first didn’t want to talk about it and spend some time in his room thinking about it and being mad at me (really being mad at himself).  He talked about not wanting to listen to teenagers, etc.  The sitter had told him he was being bad one day (he was messing with his sister) and Noah didn’t like that and it just all boiled up.  I made it clear that his babysitter is the BOSS when they are here and that hitting is never okay and isn’t going to tolerated anymore.  He doesn’t hit hard–it’s more of a symbolic gesture (he isn’t doing it to cause physical harm–but that isn’t the point).

He asked to write the letters this morning and we did.

I don’t know if this consequence will have an impact or not, but I do think it really got him thinking about what he did (more than being sent to him room would have) as he had to articulate what he did and how he felt.

Parenting is really just a crap shoot and I don’t know what i could have done differently, if anything, but we just have to keep trying and doing what we think is right.  Everyday I am a parent, makes me realize that attempting to judge any parent for what you see a kid doing at one particular moment is wrong and not helpful.  Maybe that is the only thing the parenting handbook needs to say.