I thought that it might be fun and helpful to have start a blog based on the question this morning during Grace Talk. I encourage others to give any advise they have as well or to ask other questions as followup. I appreciate what Kevin had to say this morning his advise was very wise and helpful. However, his time was limited and so I want to expand on what he started.

The question was, “I have two very different kids. One seems to be very loving and compliant and the other always pushes the limit. How do I give correcting attention to the one that needs it while not seeming to reward this child with my attention? I don’t want my more compliant child to be tempted to disobey to get my attention.”

I will take this question a phrase at a time and humbly offer what I can.

“I have two very different kids.” Anyone who has two or more kids will tell you, they are all very different. I have been continually amazed at how an identical gene pool can produce such a variety in personalities! It is amazing how different and individual our children are.

“One seems to be very loving and compliant and the other always pushes the limit.” The wording of this statement leads me to make a couple of assumptions. 1st, the compliant one is still quite young, because the author of the question makes it a “seems” and not a “definitely is” statement. My guess is that the one always pushing the limits is the oldest of the two. That really doesn’t matter, I’m just reading between the lines. With very young children, you cannot do a lot of reasoning because they just don’t understand it.

I will embarrass my two oldest children by using them as examples here…but if ya’ll don’t tell them, they’ll never know! My oldest, Amanda, was always pushing the limits. If I drew a line in the sand, it didn’t matter what the line was about or why I drew it, she would poke her big toe right over it just to see what I’d do. It was definitely a battle of the wills with that child. From the very beginning I had to let her know that I was the boss and she was the subordinate. On the other hand, her little brother Taylor, he was very loving and very compliant. He rarely, if ever, challenged a rule or bucked the system. He was just busy being a happy little boy and pleasing the adults around him.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both personality types in the adult world, which I won’t get into now. It is the parents job to prepare their children for adulthood, and this is where you are living right now.

“How do I give correcting attention to the one that needs it while not seeming to reward this child with my attention?” This is a very interesting question to me, because it never occurred to me as I was correcting Amanda that I was rewarding her with my attention. My correction (when I was doing it right…which wasn’t 100% of the time) was swift and firm and NOT in any way a reward. It really doesn’t matter what motivates a strong-willed child to push the limits, whether it is for attention, to manipulate the parent, or just to have see what will happen, the child probably doesn’t understand why they are doing it, it is just what they do. Amanda told me years later that she remembers sitting on the stairs (as a very young child) and deciding to throw a temper tantrum just to see what I would do.

Okay, so what is swift, firm and NOT attention-hogging discipline? Generally for us it was immediate time-out, away from the family, for an age-appropriate length of time. (This is when she was 2 to about 6) I would say “go to time out” and she was expected to go immediately and sit in the time-out chair in the dining room. This would isolate her and there was no receiving of attention during time-out. I would set a timer in the kitchen and she could not leave the chair until the timer sounded. It would be 3-5 minutes for a 3-year-old up to 5-10 minutes at 5-years-old and 10-20 minutes by 6-years-old. The length of time would depend on the severity of the infraction. There could be no talking or playing while in time-out. If she talked to anyone or got up from the chair the timer was started over from the beginning. I would go about my business as if nothing had happened while she was serving her sentence. Taylor and I might continue baking cookies or reading a book or whatever we were doing when she misbehaved. He was the one who was rewarded for being compliant because he continued to get my attention and she got none.

Time-out was not always adequate and in that case a spanking would be needed. When she was 3 or 4, she learned how to whistle. Well, she thought this was the greatest skill ever and practiced it unceasingly. Finally, after about 8 hours of non-stop whistling, Ken told her enough. No more whistling for a while, we needed a break… even the most saintly parents (which we were not!) can only take so much whistling from a pre-schooler! She did not obey, and continued to whistle, so I sent her to the time-out chair. She proceeded to whistle while in the time-out chair. (At the time I didn’t realize she was just a little budding musician dying to practice her art, but that still does not excuse disobeying.) I went into the dining room and told her she had to stop whistling and that I was resetting the timer. Her response “Mommy, I just can’t stop! I have to whistle!” Okay, so here is when I teach my child how to control “uncontrollable impulses.” I told her she could stop, she just needed to want to stop bad enough. I said, “the next time you whistle while sitting in this chair, you will get two whacks with the wooden spoon. Then if you whistle again, it will be four whacks, and on until you no long feel you “have to whistle.”” So I left her sitting in the timeout chair to contemplate her situation. In less than two minutes, she whistled again. She got her two whacks on the bottom with a promise of four whacks with the next whistle. Very shortly, she whistled again and she got four whacks on the behind with the wooden spoon. She did not whistle again. When her time-out was over, I told her “look at that, you really can stop whistling if you want to bad enough.”

It is extremely important that you do what you say you will do. If at any time your child disobeys there must be consequences. By the time Amanda was school age, we had pretty much had our biggest battles, which considering she was a pre-schooler and I was a full-grown adult, they were pretty one-sided. I won hands-down every time. She was strong, but I was stronger. She was determined, but I was more determined. She was smart, but I was smarter. I was able to say to her “when have you ever won a fight with me?” and she could honestly answer, “never.” I could see the wheels turning as she realized this and she basically surrendered. But she was not broken, she was disciplined. She is still a very strong and opinionated individual who knows who she is and what she wants.

“I don’t want my complaint child to be tempted to disobey to get my attention.”
In all of this, my very loving and compliant Taylor never chose to misbehave to get my attention like his sister got. He didn’t want that kind of attention. He much preferred the positive attention. Not that Taylor was perfect, he did misbehave…but he didn’t spend nearly as many hours in the time-out chair and his spankings were few and far between. But the same rules applied. If he ever disobeyed I didn’t wonder what his motivation was, I just disciplined him swiftly and firmly. Your compliant child will disobey, all children do.

My children were never allowed to tell me no. If they were told to do something, they were expected to do it. Period. I was not always perfectly consistent, but I tried. There were days when I was really tired, and it seemed like too much work to be the enforcer. But those days were the exception and not the rule.

Amanda is 18 and I could not have asked for a better teenager. She has been a joy! If I had let her rule our house like she wanted to from the beginning, I don’t think I could say that right now. Recently we were discussing a teenaged acquaintance who was having some real attitude issues and struggles with authority. Amanda told me “I see myself in her. If you hadn’t thrown me in that cold shower when I was 6-years-old, I would be just like her.” (That’s another long story, but the short version… she was 6-years-old and throwing a huge tantrum. I sent her to her room and she was throwing herself against her bedroom door. Spanking didn’t work and so spanking again would be abusive. So we turned on the shower, cold water only. I picked her up and put her in it. She was so shocked, she immediately stopped screaming and fighting. I took her out, dried her off, put her in clean clothes and told her that from now on a tantrum will end in a cold shower. It was the last temper tantrum she ever threw.) Children can control their behavior, just need to be motivated.

Taylor is 15. He is a great kid. He is very bothered when students in his class are disrespectful of authority. Kyle is a completely different child from my first two, but the rules are the same. My kids are not perfect, we have our issues at home. I have not been a perfect parent… I’ve apologized many times for losing my cool and yelling. I’m afraid that my youngest may get a way with a few things that his siblings did not get away with because I am older and a little tired. But this blog has renewed my resolve to see this parenting thing all the way to the end for all three of my children.

As Kevin emphasized, make sure your children understand that you love them and you are disciplining them because you love them. Besides my mother, I was most influenced in my parenting by James Dobson and John Rosemond. I would highly recommend any book on parenting written by either of these men.