you often mention disciplining children
so they behave what is your advice for
making them behave without resorting to
corporal punishment well first of all it
depends on what you mean by corporal
punishment
timeout could be regarded as corporal
punishment it also depends very much on
the age of the child let's say a
two-year-old well in my new book by the
way I have a chapter in there called
don't let your children do anything that
makes you dislike them and the reason
that I wrote a chapter about that is
because people who let their children do
things that make them dislike them end
up disliking them and because there's a
huge power differential generally
speaking between adults and children if
you end up disliking your children
because they're not behaving well
they're behaving disgracefully say or
their or their challenging your position
in the Authority hierarchy to regularly
something you won't put up with by the
way even if you think you will it's
necessary to get your disciplinary
routine straight so the first thing I
would say is figure out what the rules
are there shouldn't be too many for
two-year-olds basically they have to
know what no means and they also have to
learn as they approach three not to kick
hit bite or steal essentially now it's
easy to train a two-year-old but no
means you can actually start with a
child that's only 13 months old a child
that can cry let's say that or that can
crawl let's say that you have a child is
starting to crawl and wants to explore
the house so the first thing you do if
you have any sense is try to get rid of
most things that the child could cause a
tremendous amount of trouble with - to
the things or to the child so that it's
reasonably safe and then the child is
going to want to want to crawl around
and get into everything and so but maybe
there are things you don't want him or
her to get into like maybe there's a oh
what would we say maybe there's a
tablecloth and on top of the tablecloth
there's a plant or maybe there's some
plants on the floor and when the child
is crawling and goes off to do something
that he or she shouldn't
you can just grab his leg and you know
gently but firmly and say no and the
child will keep trying to move forward
because they're stubborn little
blighters and you can continue to say no
and if you persist with saying no then
the child will eventually give up and
sort of go limp now now and often the
child will cry when you do that and of
course that might make you feel guilty
but what that means is that you've
effectively brought the behavior to a
halt and if you do that ten times you
got to watch your child and don't stop
them from exploring things that they
need to explore and you want to use this
sort of thing with judiciously you can
grab them by the leg and say no and no
no and wait until they give up usually
they'll cry and then you can let them go
and then soon after you do that about 10
times soon then if you just say no with
the same tone of voice the child will
generally what happens the child will
immediately cry and then stop and then
after about 10 repeats of no without
having the leg grabbed then no will just
produce stopping of the behavior and
that's unbelievably useful because as
soon as you're you train your child to
understand what no means then they
really have free rein of the house in
some sense with relative minimal
supervision from you first of all they
can learn what things they're not
supposed to get into and it's amazing
how fast children can learn that and how
fast they can generalize to the class of
things that they shouldn't get into like
you don't have to teach them every
single thing they can generalize very
rapidly that's not much different than
thinking but also once they are capable
of understanding what no means you have
an extremely potent means of helping
them regulate their behavior with a
minimum of intervention so that's
unbelievably useful so now let's say you
have a two-year-old who's pretty
contentious and two-year-olds are pretty
contentious some of them in particular
because about five percent of
two-year-olds most of them are male are
quite aggressive by temperament and
those are the ones that if you put with
other two-year-olds will frequently kick
hit bite or steal know what all kids are
like that but some are and most of them
get socialized out of that by the
time thereabout for now let's say you
have and at 2:00 they also start to
experiment with saying no back and also
with misbehaving although they can do
that even younger than that so if you
have a two-year-old who's particularly
rambunctious and who decides he isn't
going to listen to you we use he in this
example because it's boys that are more
likely to misbehave and not not listen
you can you can pick them up and you
know by the arms now you got to get your
attitude right because you don't want to
be stupid you don't want to let your kid
make you mad especially when they're
really little because you're really big
and you can hurt them and so you got it
you got to have us a clue that's why you
want to get the rules of discipline and
order the minimum rules of discipline
and why you want to have a strategy but
let's say your two-year-old is insisting
upon doing something that you don't want
them to do like inserting a fork into an
electrical outlet and you just can't
have that and so you can say no
hopefully you've already done the no
training that I recommended and and if
that doesn't work what I recommend doing
is picking the child up by the arms and
then putting them on the steps say look
you sit there until you're ready to
listen now or usually the child will sit
there and then the rule has to be
something like you can get up as soon as
you're ready to be a civilized human
being again and you can refer to
yourself your own attitude during a
process like that because if the child
does comply and sits on the steps and
then comes and says I'm ready to be good
and you like him again you got to be
honest about this then you can tell that
he's honest in his decision to rejoin
the civilized world now sometimes if you
put a two-year-old that's particularly
rambunctious on the staircase that as
soon as you let go of their arms they'll
run off and that can be a game or it can
just be an act of defiance and in that
case then you go get them and you put
them back on the steps and you do that
several times if necessary and if that
that becomes a game then you sit on the
step and you hold them by the arms
remember no anger because he's just -
for God's sake you know you don't have
to be angry just put him on the steps
and hold him say look I'm not letting
you go until you sit there and behave
and so if you hold him for a while he'll
squirm and look away and so forth but
you can get his attention if you're a
little bit stubborn you hold him there
and say you
gonna sit there till I decide that you
can leave and so you hold him and he'll
squirm and but you can outweigh him if
you're patient but you got to make the
time and then eventually he'll stop
squirming and you can let him go and
then you can sit there and watch him and
when you think he's you know decided
that he's going to be a civilized
creature then you can say that's good
and you can give him a pat on the head
and you can say let's go back and do
what we're doing and the rule has to be
you see that the punishment not only has
to bring the behavior to a halt in the
most merciful manner possible but that's
still effective but it also has to
satisfy your need for order and justice
so that you don't carry resentment and
irritation about the child's misbehavior
forward with you because you don't want
to kid yourself about what sort of nice
person you are you're not nearly as nice
a person as you think and no one likes
to be brought down the authority
hierarchy by a recalcitrant two-year-old
so in almost all circumstances those
processes will suffice there's other
disciplinary strategies that you can use
too that are more positive I mean one of
the things that you can do for example
if you're let's say you want to get your
child to go to bed which is a really
good idea you should set a stable
bedtime for your child and I would say
if they're under 4 it should be around 8
or 7 or something like that because you
want to have a life and you want to have
a life with your wife so that you don't
end up hating your child and so one of
the things you can do if you want to
train your child to go to bed at 8:00 so
maybe he's not going to bed until 10:00
right now and you want to fix that so
you say okay go to the grocery store or
a little convenience store and buy ten
little gifts and it can be cheap kids
don't care they're not very bright you
know you can fool them so buy ten little
things that you think your kid would
like and wrap them up and then put them
up on the shelf where he can see them
but can't get out them then you say look
kid I'm gonna put you to bed at 9:30
tonight and if you don't get out of bed
then I'm going to give you one of these
I'm gonna give you one of these gifts in
the morning so or if the or you can do
it another way too if the child is
always giving you a rough time about
getting ready for bed and going
you can say look if you're if you put on
your pajamas without fussing and you
climb into bed then he'll give you one
of these little gifts and so then if
that works then the child can have a
little gift and he's in bed at 9:30 and
then you can make it 9:00 and then you
can make it 8:30 and then you can make
it 8:00 and those are called that's
called successive approximation right
you hit the target you specify the
target that you want the child to
achieve and then use small rewards not
too often in order to attain that goal
and those are unbelievably effective
strategies and they can actually be
pretty fun but I would say the advice to
not let your child do anything that
makes you dislike them is really really
useful you want to talk this over with
your partner to so that you have your
disciplinary strategies and your rules
talked out so that you don't work across
purposes to one another so okay so
that's probably good enough for that