|
Alternative Behaviour Controls For ParentsAlternative Behaviour Controls is meant to give parents various methods to achieve peace in the home for themselves and their children. With todays ambiguous laws clouding how we the parents are allowed to discipline our children, we need as many methods that work as we can get. Here in the UK some parents have been arrested and or had their children taken away from them due to the nebulous accusations of the public at large who can't bear to see a screaming child in a full blown tantrum get a smack on the bottom, and through children who have not got their own way at home crying wolf to the authorities. This has left the UK, public and civil servants in a situation where no one wants to take charge of the upbringing of children. Unfortunately like many Western countries and states we are immersed in a culture of a total lack of behaviour Controls
and are in dire need of Alternative Behaviour Controls in order to bring balance and order back into our homes and streets. This is evident in the climbing statistics of children who believe themselves to be untouchable and who display this notion by vandalising other peoples property, attacking teachers & rival gangs of kids both in and out of school. It is evident in the attitude of Kids who believe they own the roads and pavements and in the timid or avoidant behaviour of adults who don't want to be caught up in their childish but extremely dangerous games, or their insistant demands on them as passersby to go and buy them cigarettes and alcohol. Adults who dare walk through the gang and ignore them are often at the very least, sworn at or pelted with stones and at worst attacked and beaten up. Knife
crime is climbing and so are the statistics for girls getting involved in violent crime and anti-social behaviours. Many more really young children,(10-11) are drinking openly in public as they too believe that they are untouchable and have the God given right to swear, harass the public and vandalise property.
Of course as long as the government takes the three monkey stance on this issue the worse it is going to get. In the mean time the majority of us who want to give our kids a good, loving, sound upbringing, are suffering the consequences of governmental interference via Brussels, due to the few who do not understand the difference between loving, protective discipline and actual abuse of children. These parents along with governments have hog tied parents who want to raise their children in a way that makes them welcomed into the wider world and society as a whole. Most parents are proud of their children and want them to become an assest to society and a proud legacy to them the parents. The bitter irony and truth is that too many children are not welcomed into society due to their lack of self-control and social skills, born out of the confusion about discipline in some cases, and a total lack of discipline in others.
..................................................................................................................................
Never in the history of civilisation have children been so entitled and slavishly entertained by adults or subserviently tolerated regardless of behaviour. Yet ironically, the children who need some of this focus the most, are the ones we only hear about once they are dead. Most disturbing of all it is not for lack of specialist knowledge about their circumstances and environment that these children die. Most of them have been on at least two at risk reports from doctors and or social wellfare officers! Generally they die at the hands of the parents or guardians who lack in knowledge, self-control and all manner of social skills. The reasons that these children have been left to their fate is generally just as horrifying. Excuses range from, difficulty in gaining access to the children, doctors pushed for time, reports not escalated! 'Baby P.' died at the hands of his mother and her boyfriends from multiple injury's including a broken back. This little boy had been seen by a local GP who was told by the mother, that the child bruised easily. Two months later the same GP sent the child to Whittington Hospital for a head injury explained away as accidental after being thrown in the air in play. Social services removed him but sent him back to the mother when no decision was made regarding the guilt or lack of guilt for his injuries by the mother. He suffered further injuries and a broken back which went undiagnosed by a doctor despite his cries of pain. Just days before a social worker who had seen him covered in bruises camouflaged with chocolate left him in the mothers care as according to her, "he appeared well. He smiled when I spoke to him" And rather than alienate the mother who appeared at that time to be cooperating, he was left in her care. That was 48hrs before he received a fatal blow that knocked his tooth out, by the boyfriend of the mother. My question is, why are we concerned about alienating a callous, uncaring, selfish, baby maker! This child should have been removed and kept away from the mother at the first suspicion of abuse and at the first declaration, of lack of care by the social workers! Yet in instances where the social workers and those with power see a situation where the parents are amenable or at the very least ignorant of their rights they will jump in with a club and remove a child at the behest of a member of the public who has no knowledge of the parent/s but has deemed them abusive for having smacked a child in a public arena that was in full blown tantrum mode and creating merry hell for the parent at the time. This just smacks of cowardice and heavy handedness on the one hand and a pathetic attempt to be seen to be doing something on the other.
So what does this say about us? We have become too politically correct to enforce the law on abusive parents if they come from a poor or underpriviledged background. We find endless excuses for abusive parents if they are drug abusers or violent toward the authorities for fear they may take it out on us the protectors of children. We are locked in a beaurocracy that does not communicate with all the other supposed fail safe authorities like the police, doctors, hospitals etc. The filling in of forms and ticking boxes that are set up to protect the soical workers has effectively distanced them from the work that they are supposed to do, which is to protect children from real abuse. We pussy foot around parents who patently abuse their children for fear of alienating them instead of laying down the laws of get your act together or lose your child! Poverty does not prevent parents from cleaning their children or the house in which they live. In England, unlike Africa no child should have to starve! Personally I would like to drop kick some of these parents who feel that they are too poor after having bought their drugs, alcohol etc, to buy proper food for their kids, into Zimbabwe or Soweto, in fact anywhere in Africa and let them get a real taste of poverty! (sans their kids of course) We passively accept that parents do not have to teach their children to care about other peoples fragility and feelings or to care about the rights of other children, respect for the law, teachers, their elders and property that does and does not belong to them in any fashion that has painful consequences. And on the other hand we are shocked to the core when we see these same children behaving like untamed animals!! We should I believe have to explain our lack of action in teaching kids how to behave like civilized people, to those who have lost a child, husband, mother, to brutal and violent youngsters or the beaten baby how it was better for them that we turned a blind eye to our unruly children and waited for their own built in wisdom to kick in! Perhaps one day the unwanted child will understand why it was better that we let her 14yr old mother stay out all night and piss it up at parties than to teach her to wait until she had an older and wiser head on her shoulders. Or that boys will be boys and that we should never expect them to be responsible for having unprotected sex. Perhaps the neglected child will understand that it was no-ones job to teach their parents to cook, take responsibility for their actions, drunk or sober, to work and care for people other than themselves and how to make adult decisions about the things that impact on the lives of others! We desperately need to get away from these two extremes for the sake of society and promising young children who are either perverted by lack of control or beaten to death by parents who have been taught neither love, care, sympathy, consequences or control. in these instances Alternative Behaviour Controls is teaching control! No matter which way people care to twist it, we as parents are responsible for the actions of our young children. The people who come under fire on a daily basis dealing with other peoples uneducated children should be able to seek recompense from parents who refuse to educate their children about the rules of society, whether it is in the form of repayment for property damage with pocket money or physical effort. Children who think it is fine to bash the living daylights out of others should be made to pay in a way that makes them stop and think carefully before repeating the behaviour again. The same goes for kids who gang up on others and take away their God given right to walk the streets in safety, play in public parks and attend school without fear of being bullied. Firemen and Abulance people need to be allowed to go about their duties without having to go in
with back-up in some areas because of children preventing them from doing their jobs! We need some Alternate Behaviour
Controls that will close the mouths of the bleeding hearts to some extent and that works in reversing the trend of the adult 'is always wrong'! We also need Alternate Behaviour Controls for young parents who do not understand that discipline does not mean smacking and hitting children willy nilly without careful consideration of whether it is necessary or where and how hard they smack their children.
So herewith some Alternative Behaviour Controls. Teaching our gang acceptable behaviour starts very young. At the age of five months I had to teach my son for his own safety that he could not go into the bathroom, (that had no door) as we had an old tin bath usually filled with washing or water from the night before. He was at this early age already very mobile, crawling about on his hands and feet like a little spider and he could get from the lounge to the bathroom in a matter of seconds. We started off with me between him and the bathroom with me saying "no" and him trying to dodge in between or around my legs with a big grin on his face. When he got too close to the bathroom I would pick him up, say no, whack his well padded bottom just hard enough for it to make a noise on the waterproof and put him back in the lounge. Even though the smack had no chance of hurting him through the linen nappy and waterproof he did not like it that I had smacked him, but not enough to stop him from scooting back through to the bathroom where we would play the whole game over again. Each time I would make my voice sterner and my face very serious, up close to his so he could see that this was no game and that I meant what I was saying. After 4-5 times he got the message and headed off in a different direction. In those days I had to go about the same sort of ritual with the electrical sockets as they were such that young children could stick their fingers in the round holes and get shocked. This was too dangerous to take chances with, he had to learn fast and after again saying no and making sounds that meant that he would get burned or hurt I smacked his enquiring little hand, fingers extended ready to enter the hole, and took him away from the plug. Yes, we played this game several times as well, me getting sterner and more serious and the smack getting just a a little harder each time so that he knew that I was very serious. Let me be very clear about this, in no way did I hurt my child or leave a bruise or mark. What he got was consistency. He got told No, got smartly smacked for expediency, got my face in his, and got removed each time until he understood that this was serious, a bit painful and it was not going to go his way. I was not going to change my mind. Immediately he decided to listen to me and turn away he got a kiss, a smile and a good boy from me! In these two instances I could not take the chance that he would have a go when my back was turned, the situation was far too dangerous. One of the points to these two examples is age! he was on the go at five months! Therefore he had to learn at five months. This also meant that I had to take into consideration that his skin was very tender, his sensitivity to voice change and face changes would be quite sharp and therefore I made sure that I did not yell at him or make my face so angry that it would scare him too much. Each of these things was done just enough for him to see and understand that there was a noticeable change in my attitude when he went to do things that I did not like. Shouting and screaming at children this young is counter productive and smacking them hard enough to make your own hand sting is going to bruise them which is just not necessary and cruel. In a word, you should never smack a child in anger and you should never lose your temper with babies. Alternative Behaviour Controls means never losing control. Don't wait until you are angry ever. Address the problem immediately and consistently. Don't stop until you see that your child understands what it is that you want and expect. Expect to do the same thing again the next day and the next until it becomes entered into long term memory! The other alternative is that you allow your child to get hurt by using inconsistent commands or by hoping that the problem will go away. Alternative Behaviour Controls gives parents the means to keep children within boundaries that keep parents calm and in control, because they don't have children running the show.
Picking up babies and small children every time they cry, gives them the impression that crying is a means to controlling the picker upper! At some stage they have to learn to amuse themselves and that rest time means rest time. This rest time is not just for children but for adults too. Carrying kids around all the time does not make for good parenting it makes for tired parenting. My motto is and always has been that when I am enjoying my children they will enjoy being with me, allowing them to make my life miserable means that I will probably make them miserable too. Alternative Behaviour Controls means making time for parents to regroup. Some babies and young children reach a natural nap time and will show it by getting niggly, rubbing their eyes and getting irritable. Generally if they get put down just before they start to get irritable they will go to sleep quite easily. Other kids just don't get tired before night time but that does not mean that the parents should try to keep up. These children should get put down for a nap at the same time every day even if they sit in their cots and play for an hour or so. This gives the care giver time to have a peaceful cup of tea and time for their nerves to rest. This is Alternative Behaviour Controls to dealing with tired children and tired parents. Putting children to bed at the same time every night allows parents to talk and take a breather from little kids who can be very tiring. It does not mean that these parents don't love their children, it means they love themselves and their children enough to realise that they both need rest. It also means the parents are less likely to lose their tempers through being as over tired as their kids. Alternative Behaviour Controls in this instance means allowing children as young as 8 months to cry until they decide to turn the water works off and go to sleep. The other alternative is having small kids and young children running around until all hours of the night and keeping parents and brothers and sisters awake along with them. Going anywhere for a week-end or on holiday with children who dont know when to go to bed is a nightmare for the parents and other holiday makers. Parents who put up with this behaviour are more likely to lose control over themselves as well as their children. These parents are also more likely to shout and scream rather than talk to their children. It is by far easier to teach young babies controls than it is to start trying to teach children over the age of two or three or worse, five, to go to bed at the right time or to eat proper healthy food and to come when you call them or to leave the ornaments etc on the table. For parents who think that other people should remove all items off of the coffee tables, consider what will happen if your child pulls a hot cup of coffee over themselves because it was too much trouble or not necessary to teach your child to leave the things alone that they are told not to touch. yes it maybe wise to make sure that there are no cups within a childs reach but one day some day someone is going to forget! From the minute you enter someone else's house, make sure you tell your child not to touch things that are not theirs or yours. Your child, your responsibility. Don't wait for other people to look after your child simply because you are in their house. Still your child, your responsibility. Using Alternative Behaviour Controls, like teaching your children not to touch the things you dont want them touching rather than running around like a mad woman, makes visiting a pleasure for you and the person you are visiting. Yes it will mean consistently stopping them from touching or pulling at things until they listen, no-one said it would happen magically but the point is they will eventually get it and you will have a child that is less likely to make you want to head for the hills. Children being removed from the room or being put in a corner for behaving badly or having a hissy fit wont break the love they have for you, rather it endorses respect as well as love. Often children who have not been taught respect also don't show love or even understand it as a consequence of never having been shown that their care givers deserve respect. All the toys in the world and all the lack of demand for manners and respect will not make your children love you. Sadly more often than not children who show love and respect above and beyond the call to do so are those who have been given nothing and who have been maltreated. This tells us that we need to hit the spot right in the middle. Alternative Behaviour Controls is not ignoring children and making up for it with toys and sweets, nor is it beating them on a daily basis for the smallest infringement. It is not locking them in a room for hours on end or removing food from them for days on end. It is about making it clear what you expect from them at an early age by using methods that they can understand even if it takes repeated actions. It is about understanding that kids will try every method in the book to get what they want and more often than not the actions they take are loud, aggressive and rarely cute. Alternative Behaviour Controls is about ignoring all around you and doing what needs to be done. Kids who know that their parents will give them sweets or toys in the supermarket rather than be embarassed, will go in for the kill every time. They
may not be able to spell embarassed or even give the meaning, but they can read it's name on your face. Remember kids read faces very well!!! If you don't watn your kids nagging you in the supermarket or having tantrums in the isles because they want everything within their reach, then don't start the
whole problem by buying these things in the first place. Sweets and toys should be treats not a right for every venture to the shops. Don't keep sweets at home unless you love having tantrums at supper time, tea time, lunch time and every other second that your child remembers where they are and that you always have a ready supply of them. Kids do not miss sweets if they are not given on a regular basis or if they know they are not always in the house. Parents set the the precedent for such scenarios all by themselves. Alternative Behaviour Controls for sweet tantrums is sweets for treats on week-ends or a few days whilst on holiday. (note a few days whilst on holiday or you'll get the
whole ball rolling for when the holidays are long gone). Sweets and toys dont mean love, they mean bad teeth, fussy eating, tantrums and spoiled children with a short attention span made worse by ignorant parents. Alternative Behaviour Control means letting children know that you will not be moved by bad behaviour!
Using Alternative Behaviour Controls when teaching young children to eat different foods also means having patience and not giving up at the first sign of a scrunched up face and mouth! All foods and textures are a new experience for young babies and children. The bottled foods are generally not too much of a problem as they are still smooth but there are still a few with sharp flavours that may make some babes shudder involuntarily or screw up their mouths. Don't stop right there, give them chance to chase these flavours around their mouths and a couple more to get used to the taste. Try to at least make them have a couple of teaspoons before stopping and then keep on trying at intervals when feeding them until they are used to that particular flavour. There are very few foods that children wont eat but if you stop at every face wrinkle you will end up with a very fussy child. Don't get too precious about mess as soon as your child wants to start feeding him/herself give her a spoon and feed her whilst she tries to get food into the spoon as well. If you want your child to get a good all round experience of foods then avoid the easy baby foods from the start, such as chocolate puddings and custard etc. Go for the sweet veggies first like mushy peas, pumpkin, squash and carrots. Liquidize spinach with a little low fat butter for taste. And rather introduce fruits like apple, banana and peaches before even thinking about the puddings. Don't get put off by babies that shudder, it is just a reaction to something different and perhaps a little tart or different textures. There will be certain foods that your child wont like and no-one can predict whcih these will be but if they still dont like them at around 8 yrs old chances are they are unlikely to ever like those particular foods.(Please note I said unlikely not never) For my kids it was liver. I persisted for so long, (8yrs) as I knew that liver is a good source of vitamin B and iron. However when I could no longer fool them with different gravies and sauces I finally quit. They then decided at around 14 and 15yrs respectively that they both liked liver and discovered this at boarding school. Boarding School!!!! Just how bad was my liver???? Alternative Behaviour Controls and food means not giving up at the first jump!! It means persisting and persevering with your mission as with all wanted and unwanted behaviours. It means avoiding sweets and cooldrinks. For thirsty babes and children try Rooi Bos tea or Red Bush as it is called in England. This is a non caffeine drink native to South Africa, that is tea like, and so good for fevers and tummy upsets or even colds! It can be drunk with or without milk and sugar. I used to make it black with a little sugar for my granddaughter who slugged back bottles of the stuff in summer. Using Alternative Behaviour Controls with food means giving children a great food experience and a taste bud education that sweets and biscuits cannot give.
Alternative Behaviour Controls means letting your child gain some independence in good things like buttoning up their own coats and allowing them to put on their own shoes etc without becoming impatient. These behaviours are good and should be rewarded. you can always re-button the coat when he/she has forgotten about it or is distracted by something else. These small things give a child pride, a very important ingredient to becoming a whole person. It also means letting them get dirty. A child that is always clean does not mean wonderful caring parent, it can mean over-demanding parent. We have a saying back home and that is "clean dirt is good dirt", meaning the dirt that is picked up by a clean child over the day and that is washed off again in the evening bath is good dirt acheived through healthy play outside. I beleive my children were probably the talk of the town as trying to keep them clean for five minutes was an impossibility. They were up by 5.30 in the morning and dirty by 6.30 in the morning. Their first stop was teeth then tea then outside and off down to the stables where we kept horses for local people. From there they followed our wonderful farm hand around the garden and helped by watering the vegetables which somehow meant that they got soaked and muddy almost instantaneously. They dropped in for breakfast at around seven and headed out again to see what was else happening in the garden. Then it was off down to feed the pigs. Breakfast was topped up with whole paw paws picked from the trees, ripped open with chubby hands, scooped out and eaten with their by now decidedly earthy fingers dripping yellow juice and mud which then splashed off their chins and down onto what was their clean clothes! Their idea of sweets and good food was strawberries with a side order of Mopani worms picked straight from the bush in the first instance and straight from the bark of the trees or leaves in the second instance. Eating Mopani worms, I found out, took a deft hand! The worm was gripped by the head with one hand or two grubby fingers and the innards were zipped out by the other hand in one swift movement before being popped into the mouth!!!!! I did find out that they are known to be very nutritious being that they are high in protein! No I never ate one! The fact is, if I did not surrepticiously follow my children around in order to see what they were up to I would probably not have seen very much of them at all except for breakfast, tea, lunch and dinner time. And I probably saw them clean and pink for all of about 3hours a day. No child that came to visit my house ever left clean! The other Alternative Behaviour Controls would have been to keep washing them and changing them several times a day, and it would have spoiled all the fun that they got out of every day playing outside in good clean dirt. This Alternative Behaviour Controls also meant that we never argued about bed-time, they were lights out and in dream land by 6.30, totally worn out by the days activities. By todays standards my children would probably be seen as deprived as they had no designer lable clothes, their toybox (1 of which they shared) held about 12 large toys and 15 smaller ones, such as toy cars, crayons and colouring books, some lego etc. They actually played with all of them at some time during the week but mostly they played with playdough made by me and eaten by them around the time it had gone brown and red with mud! They painted with me outside on big sheets of glass wrapping paper used in the supermarkets. My daughter carried her favourite doll "fat baby" everywhere she went. As dolls went it wasn't the prettiest, her hair had been brushed and tangled until it became ratty with the odd bald spot, but for some reason she loved her and no new doll could replace her. Play dates for them usually meant breakfast with their two best friends at a local dam, cooked on an open fire and fishing with a piece of nylon fishing line on sticks with tiny hooks afterward. Then followed by mud fights whilst I and their friends mother sat and chatted in the early morning sun. They did not have an endless supply of sweets, had no clue of what the latest fashion or toy was, but they were far from deprived or unloved and uncared for, despite the paw paw stains that stubbornly refused to come out of their clothing! Alternative Behaviour Controls for me is not confusing young children with all sorts of commands made at random intervals and never followed through. It is not making children into little angels, scared of their own shadows and it is not, no control at all, that makes them unwelcome everywhere they go. It is a consistent expectancy of desirable behaviour that keeps them safe, helps them to understand the rules of engagement in a civilized society, helps them to know the difference between teasing and cruelty, love and emotional blackmail, tiredness and laziness, helping and being used, using people instead of scratching one anothers backs, politeness and rudeness, earning respect and demanding respect, and when to give respect, to who, at 90% of the time and where the other 10% lies! Alternative Behaviour Controls means for me, enjoying your kids instead of putting up with them! On this page of Alternative Behaviour Controls I would like to thank my children for the happiest years of my life for having the priviledge of raising them, watching them grow, for making
me so proud and for the laughter they gave me that still makes me ache inside. I want to pay Homage to my mother-in-law for her Alternative Behaviour Controls, different from my own but
just as effective in the early years. I also want to pay respect to my wonderful daughter who is raising three wonderful children on her own with so much skill, grace and love. She uses her
very own Alternative Behaviour Controls very effectively in her own inimmitable way of 1,2,3, and the result is my amazing, beautiful and loving grandchildren! God bless you always.
I hope that some of these Alternative Behaviour Controls help some of you. I would love to hear about other Alternative Behaviour Controls that have worked for you as a parent or even for you as a child! Please share your tips and I will set up a page just for you and your tips or stories.
Alternative Behaviour Controls Back To Home Page
|
