Q&A: parents disagreeing on disciplinary techniques

Valerie writes:

"My husband and I have 2 kids, ages 4 years and 6 months.  The 4 year old has followed fairly well along with your suggested timeline for adjusting to his sister, and I am currently seeing his behavior as much better at home and feeling much more connected to him than I did just after the birth.  His behavior at school, though, is up and down.  I work part time and he is at preschool about 8 hours a day.

My husband is a firm believer in spanking and I am not.  We have talked about this quite a lot, and are not having luck coming to a compromise. My husband was spanked, but not much because he witnessed his older brother getting spanked often, and that worked as a deterrent for my husband.  I'm not a believer in spanking and neither was my mother, I was raised (33 years ago) with playful respectful parenting and positive discipline.  My mother never read a book about parenting, she just followed her heart and that's what happened.  My mother is my parenting model.  I'm an only child, and one of my husband's arguments is that he thinks I just don't know anything about parenting boys.  I personally think that gender is irrelevant, we need to find approaches that work for our son, but not based on his being a boy, based on his being an individual.

My husband's approach to parenting is very authoritative, he thinks we (as parents) should be in charge, and our kids should 'do as they're told' promptly when commanded.  He has a lot of rules, and generally forbids much more behavior than I do.

So, my son's behavior needs to improve, he's very high energy and rough, and we have a hard time getting him to calm down and respect the personal space of others, especially me.  He is very rough with his toys.  He also has this problem at school as well as choosing not to follow directions and generally disrupting the classroom.  I think his behavior is fairly age appropriate, but it needs to be toned down.  My husband thinks he needs more spankings.

I suspect the differences in my husbands and my parenting approaches are doing my son no favors, but I don't know what to change to get us closer to agreement on how to handle my son's actions.

My son has been at his school for over a year.  He has been in full time daycare for 3 years.  This type of behavior started around the time he turned 3 (a year ago) and has been worse the past 8 months.  Other than the arrival of his sister, 6 months ago, nothing major about his life has changed recently."

This is a tough question for me to answer, because I honestly don't really know how a couple can bridge two huge differences of conviction (because it does sound like both of you are truly convinced of the correctness of your approaches). And it's very hard for me to see your husband's side in all of this, because I'm an anti-spanker (although I have gotten out of control and smacked and felt like the lowliest worm in the world, and hey, it didn't even work, surprise of surprises) and think that it can be especially damaging for boys to be disciplined with violence. (Not that it's not damaging to girls, but I think it's damaging in a different way. That would make an interesting discussion for another day.)

So I really don't have any advice on how to make a compromise. In your situation I would try to convince my husband that spanking is counter-productive. The article "Ten Reasons Not to Hit Your Kids" is excellent, and there are great links at the bottom of that article.

I'd also talk to the teachers at his school to see if you can enlist them to talk to the two of you together about better strategies for disciplining your son. (If the teachers at school don't spank the kids there, then that means that they have effective alternative strategies to teach you. I feel like most of us vastly underuse the excellent brains and extensive experience of our kids' preschool teachers.) To me, your son's behavior sounds absolutely normal, especially considering that it all escalated right before having your daughter. ("High energy and rough": check.) Older siblings act up for a long, long time when a baby sibling comes into the house, and it's just not reasonable to expect that they'll be "used to the baby" in a couple of months and will stop acting out. IME, it really took a full year before my older son got his feet back under him again after our younger one was born. In addition, 3 is a tough age, and kids are just starting to approach the border of being able to control their own actions. It can be extremely hard for them to navigate boundaries and control and language and physicality.

One of the strategies you may end up using is physical guidance. Not violence or pain (hitting, smacking, etc.), but guidance. My older son needed/needs this. He has never been able to stop himself from doing something when he hears a verbal command. If I needed him to put down a toy, I had to walk over to him and put my hand over his and help him release the toy. Back when he was a toddler pulling our cat's fur, I'd have to walk over and help him release the cat's fur from his hands. If it was time to leave the playground, I'd have to put my hands on him and help him wave to say goodbye to the park, then help him walk out of the playground. He was also one who needed to be hugged during a tantrum. It's like he needs the physical help to make the neurokinetic connections. I think there are some kids who are more physical who just don't respond to other forms of guidance, but parents often don't think of guiding them physically because they didn't have that example. (FWIW, at the age of 4.9, my son is doing really well at controlling his own actions, but he still seems to engage in selective listening more than I'd like!)

My suspicion is that I've answered your question the way you wanted me to, by giving you resources to help convince your husband that your approach is going to work better in the long run. But it's possible that you actually do want to be able to reach a compromise, in which case I'm going to have to go to the readers. Have any of you bridged a huge gap in approaches to parenting? How did you do it?

Comments

[Sarah]

It sounds like this couple has been trying to work this out for a while, and has come to an impasse. I'd suggest couples therapy with a focus on parenting issus. In my experience these types of struggles (between the parents) often bleed over into other areas of the marriage,and it can be helpful to have a place to put it all on the table and sort it out.

[liz]

I'd also suggest bringing the husband along for a meeting with the Pediatrician for a discussion on what can be expected of a 4-year-old and an authoritative voice on the harm corporal punishment can do.

[hedra]

I was going to vote for a joint parenting class and/or counseling, as well.

My main tip for the parenting class is that when mom presents this idea to dad, she has to be very clear that she's willing to adapt and change, too. There may well be things she feels are right that are ineffective here, and the dad NEEDS to know that this isn't about going to class so he can learn to do things her way, as the expert says she's right and he's wrong. It is about being able to be partners in the same team with a unified, effective (both now and in the long-term implications) approach that does not violate the integrity of the people involved. If you lay it out like that, I can't see how he'd be able to say no...

[hedra]

Oh, and buy Real Boys or Raising Cain, and leave it in the bathroom. Accidentally having removed all other reading materials... ;)

[Maureen]

My husband is a believer in spanking (but maybe a less hard core believer than your husband) and I am strongly against it (again, we had different up bringings/experiences on this from our respective families). Anyway, the way I "got around it" was to encourage my husband to try the no hitting approach first and see if it worked (which it generally does) so we haven't had to resort to the spanking method now. I think if you can talk your husband into trying the suggestions Moxie made with the directed physical approach or with consistent use of time outs for 6 months and then agree to revisit the discussion at that point, you may make some ground... just a thought.

[Shandra]

I hope this doesn't sound intrusive but I think a few sessions of couples counselling might help - not to fix anything but just for some guidance in negotiating a serious, ongoing issue in a way that lets you both come to some kind of long-term agreement. 'Cause it's not just about whose method is best (I am on the no-spanking side) but also about how do you settle questions about your son when you both don't agree.

[hedra]

A ditto on Shandra's comment - my dad and step-mom still keep their old couples counselor 'on retainer' for things like this, because they've found they actually work best with a neutral third party when they have a conflict of this sort. They've learned a great many skills in how to negotiate the conflict, but sometimes, it still just helps to have someone else there pointing things out as they go along (who is professional, skilled, and unlikely to take sides for personal reasons).

[Lisa]

I agree with all the comments above, but maybe before couples counseling you can try a different approach. When discussing appropriate courses of discipline, lay out typical problems and solutions. Once it becomes obvious that not every offense is a "spankable" offense, it'll be easier to encourage non-violent methods of action. the key is to deciding on what to do before it arises.

My husband and I had this discussion before toddlerhood struck and I was so glad we got it out of the way. He was pro-spanking, but not in a serious way, more of a last resort. Now that we've talked about it, we both know what to enforece and how. And we ALWAYS support the other parent.

I think too often spanking is the result of frustration on the parent's part and less about the actions leading to it. And that's not fair to the kid.

Good luck!

[Num Num]

When a young child is out of control, it's often because he or she is over-stimulated. Spanking only increases those sensations. But the mom here may also want to think about why she is reluctant to adopt an authoritative voice in addition to her gentle voice.

I think as well that Moxie's physical guidance suggestions are brilliant.

[anon]

I'm working on bridging this gap with my husband (our kid is too young to be spanked). What has worked for me with respect to bridging our parenting styles is to explain why I'm doing something and explain the theory behind it and ask that he support me. I know that as our little boy gets older, the spanking question will get harder to bridge, but I'm hoping that if my husband gets into the positive/playful parenting mindset and sees the success, then we won't have as many issues. As for boys, the other day, a mother of seven explained how she uses time outs, even for her ADHD little boy -- she makes them more physical, either in an "air chair" (in a sitting position against the wall, but without a chair) or a "front hand stand" (in a push up position) -- she says the timeouts are shorter (for obvious reasons), but that they work well to calm little active boys (because they're concentrating on the physical aspect and she's broken the thought process away from the behavioral problem). I'm filing that away for future use and hoping that those types of solutions will help bridge our gap.

[Valerie]

I'm the Valerie that asked the question, and I wanted to thank everyone that has responded. The suggestions are all good.

I sort of asked two questions, and I really appreciate your answering them both. I already do what you suggest with physically helping my son comply with our requests, and I'm extremely pleased that you think he is still at an age where this is appropriate. From your response and some others I'm seeing that maybe I should spend more time reading about boys, I think I will get the books suggested. I'm very grateful to be reasured my rough and high energy little boy is perfectly normal.

His behavior at school has been much better. My daycare situation changed for the baby and she is now comming out of the house with my son and I in the morning when I take him to school. He is with me when I drop her off, and it really seems to have helped him see that she is not with me all day. He knew this before, but actualy seeing her go seems to be the reasurance he needed to feel like she is not getting special treatment.

I agree with everyone, also, who mentioned that it was very important for me to respect my husband's roll even though we disagree regarding discipline. This is why I asked the question, I've read quite a lot on the benifits of not spanking, and we discuss that. He still disagrees and it's challenging for both of us to support the other while we can't agree. I think a parenting class or parent specific counseling would be a very good idea. There are many areas where we are different, and we usually don't have a lot of trouble comming to a compromise, but this one is tough for us.

Thanks again for the great advice.

[pnuts mama]

sorry i am coming to this late- i am also from the no-physical violence as punishment camp, as everything i know as a professional and in my heart tells me no good can come from it, yet as someone who was spanked as a kid, i know that the urge to strike out when I get frustrated with my toddler is still very much there (and my kid is still so little, it's so awful I would ever even consider it). so this is something I have to deal with, thinking through the moments when I get that urge, and decide what made my temper flare up and why it would be an inappropriate response to act that way. I am firmly committed to breaking the cycle of using violence as discipline, but it will take a lot of work I know.
what I would suggest for you to discuss with your husband is the idea of other behavior modification techniques instead. you mentioned his older sibling was spanked and that modified his behavior as a kid, so maybe if this could be something that would put it in his terms. perhaps the two of you could find effective non-violent yet appropriate techniques to achieve the same goal, or at least use those techniques as "first/second/third-resort" discipline and as another poster suggested, know what behaviors would be considered "last-resort" for spanking.
also, as the aunt of 6 nephews, IME your son sounds completely normal as far as the reaction to your new baby (regression, acting out for attention) and just his basic energy level (HIGH!!). that 3/4 year old exuberance of expressing all their emotions physically has been pretty typical in our family, and my sister and sis-in-law (both have 3 boys) try and let their sons do as much physical activity as possible when appropriate to let them get it out, as well as activities that teach actions having consequences. best of luck to you!

[annon]

My husband used to have a lot of frustration around behavioral issues. One thing that helped (both of us) is to get a better idea of what is reasonable to expect from a child at a particular age. When he talked about how he was never allowed to do something, I realized it was from a much older age. Most of us have very few memories before we were 5 or 6, so most of what we remember concerning discipline is from much later. By that time most of the basic issues have been worked out. So it's helpful to know people with kids 6 months - 1 year ahead of ours so we can see where they are developmentally.

We managed to agree that we have the same goal (well mannered children) but that it isn't going to happen right now. This realization reduce the tension around the whole issue a lot and helped him start to explore new ideas, and come up with some himself. Sometimes it is just about keeping the peace while we wait out certain stages.

Have same goals

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