“Fear of punishment is a poor motivator.” –SO fucking true.

Parents who are inconsistent, unpredictable, or innattentive will not get their children’ respect nor their good behavior, no matter what rewards or punishment they use. A kid who respects his parent is thinking “I can’t do that, Mom would be so disappointed,” not “If I do this, mom is going to scream and ground me.” Fear of punishment is a poor motivator.

Smacking (or grounding) a kid for knocking over a lamp is not discipline if you ignored her running aound the room for twenty minutes first. That child knows rambunctiousness is acceptable and is not going to understand why they’re catching it for breaking the lamp. This leads to confusion, resentment, and further poor behavior. *

If they aren’t cleaning their room, you don’t bribe them, you go in there and clean it with them until they (by example) develop the habits they need to do it themselves, and they know it is expected of them. That it’s a mess in the first place says they haven’t got good habits and that the expectation of cleanliness is not consistent, either. Kids are mimics- if they see you doing it, they want to do it- so encourage them.

What’s really sad is, children WANT to be good. They thrive when they know what is expected of them and when they are given the tools to achieve it successfully and consistently, and the rewards are consistent and approppriate (praise and positive attention). If you observe people with well behaved children, you’ll see that they pay close attention to them, and it’s unlikely punishment is routine for them.

Unfortunately, many of us are too overwhelmed by the mistakes we’ve already made, or worse, to defensive to do anything about it. The good news is, if you aren’t completely disfunctional, it only takes a few weeks to fix even the worst problems, and it works on stepkids and neighbor kids, too.

Also, who was it who suggested V “needs” children - that’s utterly ridiculous - no one needs children, and suggesting that V needs children in order to make her life worthwhile is not only offensive to every intelligent, useful and interesting (in their own right) person in the world, it goes directly against things she’s said in previous posts. Sigh.

I have nothing against the kids who are already in the world, but this attitude that all women should have children, that people “need” children, is ridiculous. Ever heard of overpopulisation? The world does not need any more kids right now!

I never doubted for one second that VA has children.

But gee, VA readers sure are easy to fool!

You know this behavioral training crap why? Because you have a kid with autism that’s why. PDD/autism same thing. In fact, you have more than one kid with special needs.

Did social services come to your house and teach you this or did you actually read a book about something other than your own condition?

Listen people, VA started this site with her posts about the mommy-bloggers that she was so angry with for exploiting their kids. She’d have to be a mother herself to be that angry. That was my first clue.

VA knows enough to hide the fact that she has kids herself because she doesn’t want them to be a target. She knows that they are her “soft spot”. Also, she knows enough to have this site which she hopes looks like it’s owned by someone else so that people can say whatever and she doesn’t have to be responsible for their comments. At least she’s smarter than a lot of anonymous bloggers but she’s like most attention whores - like serial killers, they all really want credit for their work and stop trying to hide their identity so much.

If I remember correctly, there is at least one article in which V states that she has no children, and her stepchild plays with the neighbor kids.

@4 Lola
@5 anon

How about instead of telling her she’s wrong because she has no children, you give some sort of anecdote about how you’ve tried this with your children and they all grew up to be car theives and dope dealers because of fetal alchohol syndrome?

@V

A car bursting into flames is way worse of a punishment than a parking ticket, however, I think the self absorbed assholes (SAAs) have two reasons to park illegally:

1) I don’t know where you live, but the meter maids aren’t perfect. Therefore, they don’t catch everybody every time, so there’s a chance they can get away with it.

2) It’s sort of redundant to say rich, self absorbed assholes. They have lots of money they don’t mind spending on completely useless crap. My friends’ rich parents don’t think twice about dropping $2k on a new computer when their current one gets trashed with spyware, while knowing full well that the fix is less than $100. That sort of money just doesn’t register as anything meaningful.

VA you need a child, desperately. Forget all your lists of charities, errands, and hobbies to keep you occupied untily you burn out — become a fulltime parent and you’ll see if what you think and say on your blog holds true. If you want to change society, and show you can make it better, then educate your child with your knowledge of what is right and wrong — since your own mother painfully scarred you for life.

Robin: There is a huge difference between punishment and ‘natural consequences’. Depending on the age of the child a consequence for breaking the vase is that they help clean it up. A two year old can wipe a floor. Of course, the adult would have to make sure the glass was cleaned up and the area was safe. Even a token effort on the part of the child makes an impact. The child could hold a garbage bag while mom/dad/whoever cleans, and see how much work they have to do. If the vase was of sentimental value, the adult might show some sadness and explain that it was ‘grandmas special vase’ and there are no more just like it. If the child receives an allowance, they might have to sacrifice some of it and help pick out a new vase. A little utopian I suppose. I understand that many parents lose their cool in stressful circumstances (myself included), but nothing wrong with striving for an ideal. Okay I’ll go back to blurking now.