Effective Ways to Discipline Children

When I was a child to an early teenager, I was grounded punished in other ways regularly by my father for the smallest of reasons: walking over a piece of lint and not picking it up and coming home one minute late from playing outside, for example. I would receive at least a one week restriction for small offenses like the above mentioned. Just imagine the restriction I would receive if I forgot to do something like a chore. Quite a few times I was grounded for a month straight for misbehaving.

With that in mind, I make a point to not give punishments that do not fit the crime with my children. I have a 12-year-old step-son, a nine-year-old step-daughter, and a one-year-old daughter that misbehave regularly. Each of my children has his or her own separate problems that need to be handled differently.

My step-son has a problem with his mouth; he likes to talk back and cause trouble verbally for his 9-year-old sister. My step-son constantly talks back to his mom (my wife) and anyone who steps in his way. Most of the time when my step-daughter is near him, my step-son meanly talks to her and eventually tries to get her in trouble.

My step-daughter is no peach either; she has temperamental issues that required her see a counselor for a year. If my step-daughter did not get her way, she would throw a huge temper tantrum that would be unbearable for the most patient of parents. I would try to gain control of my step-daughter when she was misbehaving in such a manor, but failed miserably.

Fortunately, through the help of my step-daughters counselor’s advice, I am able to handle my step-children effectively when they misbehave now. In order to gain control of my step-son’s mouth, I give him 10 sentences every time he talks back; sometime the sentences pile up because he does not want to stop talking back. I also make my step-son apologize to his sister every time I hear him belittling her. With my step-daughter, I make her have a timeout to wait for her to calm down from her temper tantrum and them I talk to her about the cause of the temper tantrum. I will also make my step-daughter write 10 sentences or so to make her think twice before misbehaving again. My 1-year-old daughter gets smacked on her hand whenever she misbehaves and is told to stop doing whatever she has done wrong.

There are occasions when I need to ground my children (minus my baby daughter) for severe reasons though. If my children refuse to cooperate or disobey a major rule of the house, I will ground them up to four days. I will tell them I am going to ground them for a week, but I always tell them they can get days deducted from their punishment for good behavior; they always get days off on good behavior.

If I still cannot gain control of my children’s misbehavior, I will send them to my wife who will take care of the problem; the problem usually ends with the children crying from the spanking that was given to them.

It is safe to say that I have my children under control now that I know how to handle them during rough times. I give most of the credit to my step-daughter’s counselor that counseled her during the rough time in her life. Without the counselor, I would still have a hard time gaining control over my children.

I am still not perfect with making the punishment fit the crime though. Because of my upbringing, I tend to sometimes give extreme punishments to my children. My wife always talks my down from the extreme punishments though. All my wife needs to tell me is I am not my father; just because I was extremely punished, it does not mean I have to do the same to my children. I always calm down after my wife’s wise words.