OK, are you ready? This morning you're going to have a pop quiz. You didn't have time to prepare? Who had time to prepare for parenting?
Are you ready? Get set, go.
You walk into your 3-year-old's bedroom, the one you finished painting last week. To your horror you see large loopy scribbles from red and blue marking pens covering her walls. What do you do? How do you respond?
A. Although you're jumping mad, you resist screaming. With an intense voice and accompanying body language you state your frustration, "You know better than that. Don't you know I just got done painting in here?"
B. You tell her, "I'm really angry. I just finished painting in here, and now red and blue marks are covering these walls. I'm putting you on this 'time out' chair for three minutes. Don't get up."
C. You get a bucket filled with soap, water and two sponges, and have your child help you clean the walls.
D. You use empathy and set a limit. "I'm sure you thought that wall was just a big piece of paper, but it's not. I'm putting these marking pens away; you can only use them with my permission and supervision."
E. When you have calmed down, you sit down with her in the kitchen and let her draw, scribble, mark and create all the red and blue pictures she wants.
F. All of the above.
The answer is "F."
In a situation like this you might use all of the responses which will lead to your disciplinary goal. The goal is that your child will never color on walls again with marking pens or anything else.
You want to be careful not to yell because often when emotional, parents say things they don't really mean, which conveys to the child that what they did was catastrophic and unforgivable — which is most often not the case. Nevertheless, parenting is emotional, and you want to do all you can to prevent losing your cool.
However, realize the statement, "You know better than that," is worthless. If you were to ask her, "Is it OK to color on the walls?" she would most likely say, "No." But that doesn't mean she has the self-control not to do it. Young children are impulsive. Your job is to help them develop the control to stop such impulsive behavior.
Putting your child on a "time out" chair can help, especially if you need some time to calm down and decide what to do. But be careful: "Time out" can be overused and misused. It's not a disciplinary panacea. Sometimes isolated "time outs" work against reaching the goal of improved or changed behavior.
When a child misuses crayons, it's only logical to put them away. When a child writes on a wall, it's reasonable that she help with the clean-up. These are the logical consequences in the situation at hand.
Saying, "I know you thought the wall was just a big piece of paper" lets your child know that you understand her point of view. Empathy is important because even though you are not going to allow the behavior, it conveys your understanding.
Answer "E" is the most important. Without teaching a child where to use marking pens, all the other disciplinary techniques are lost. Discipline is teaching. It's essential to effective parenting.
By using all these approaches in many situations, you can hope that your child will learn self-discipline, which is the ultimate parenting goal.
Jan Faull, a specialist in child development and behavior, answers questions of general interest in her column. You can e-mail her at janfaull@aol.com or write to: Jan Faull, c/o Families, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists
