Discipline help needed, please, before I just give up

I apologize in advance if this is long. I need some guidance from some hard-nose disciplinarians (I think there are at least a few here, right? LOL)

I have three boys, they are 7yo (2nd grade), 4yo and 18months. Josh (the 7yo) has never been to public school. Homeschooling K was easy and fun. He learned to read (because he wanted to) and we did lots of math and language readiness. Gr1 went by ok, was kind of hodge-podge as we switched around parts of our curriculum, got a handle on his strengths and how he learned and tried to figure out what works best for us.

This year so far has just been one big write off. We started almost 6 weeks ago, and we've accomplished next to nothing. Josh as steadily been showing an increase in really crappy and unacceptable behaviour. It's 99% bad attitude that manifests itself in whining, back-talking and being defiant. I'm admitting that I just don't know how to deal with it.

I've always done my best to be very consistant in my discipline and to always be clear what the consequences would be for misbehaviour, and to always follow through with those consequences. It's to the point, though, where nothing seems to be working anymore, especially when it comes to schoolwork. If none of the punishments/consequences work, how do you force a child to sit down and do their schoolwork? When he's crying and throwing a tantrum "I'm NOT doing school!" (over and over til you want to break out the duct tape), what do you do?

I feel like we've gone beyond rewarding good behaviour. I've tried practically everything and have yet to find anything that provides enough incentive to curb his defiant behaviour. I tried, despite my personal belief that I shouldn't have to bribe my children to do their schoolwork... it just has to be done whether they like it or not.

I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I feel like I'm failing him. He's always been such an even-tempered, easy to get along with kid. When it comes to his little brothers, he's so loving and helpful. He's creative and he's really really smart. I feel like, whatever I'm doing wrong in regards to his schoolwork, is just sucking all that right out of him, and leaving this ill-tempered, sossy-mouthed kid in his place :cry:

Just wanted to add, in regards to me saying "I" all the time, that dh works a lot, so I'm 99% the disciplinarian. DH is excellent at backing me up when he's home, though.

I have always felt, and still do, that homeschooling is what's right for our family. None of the reasons dh and I decided to homeschool have changed. I'm honestly starting to wonder, though, if I'm just fooling myself. Maybe ds just isn't capable of being taught by his mother. Maybe he needs an outside influence. I'm really just scared of failing my kids. Their education is SO important.

Any and all advice would be so much appreciated. If you made it through all that, thank you for listening.

 

The issue sounds centered just on school work so it seems that's the place to look for trouble. A couple of things:

Could you do a quick outline of what you're schooling looked like last year and what it looks like this year? Maybe there's something there some of us can pick up on.

Maybe you're asking something of him he's not developmentally ready for or he's feeling left out of the mix while doing his work? Have you had an opportunity to snuggle up with him while he's calm and have a chat with him about his school work?

 

Something I noticed is that you said your dh works a lot. When my dh was working 16-18 hours per day my son was 7/8 years old. He started acting out and misbehaving and I was at my wits ends with him. We finally figured out that his behavior was due to not having as much time with dad has he had before. He was missing that time and acting out because of it. My dh made extra effort to spend time with him, (which is really hard when you are gone more than home) even if it was just 15 minutes of wrestling on the floor before bed. I saw a drastic improvement in his behavior.
I don't know if that is your situation or not, but I thought I would share my experience.

 

Have you talked this over with your husband? What does he have to say about it?

First, I would come up with some very rigid rules/consequences with your husband. Then I would have the two of you sit down with your son and let him know exactly what's expected of him and the consequences of not doing them. Then be prepared for a fight. The first time he starts to give you any grief, remind him of the consequence. Then if he continues, pick him up and dump him in his room and let him have his tantrum. Try to totally ignore it. You might want to time it, and he'll need to "make up" that time later. Take away EVERYTHING if you need to...remove toys from his room, no TV, no playing with friends, no computer. He can stay in his room all day, and when Daddy gets home, he can handle it. But this is a battle you MUST win.

Edited to say: 3angelsmom was posting the same time I was! She's got a good point; you might want to check that out first!

 

Is he misbehaving just at school time or all the time ?

 

Hi Dawn I'll answer the second part of your question, first. I've tried to sit down with him and talk about what it is that's causing him to not do his work. I usually get some variation of "I just don't like it". Trying to get specifics about what exactly he doesn't like generally just gets replies of "I don't know, I just don't".

I know that it's bothering him more this year than it did last year, that he has to sit and do school work while his younger brother (the 4yo) doesn't have to. I haven't been able to find a good solution to that problem. I do have some pre-k stuff I do with the 4yo several times a week, so that we're all sitting at the table together, but all it seems to do is cause "how come he gets to do easy fun stuff while I have to do work?!" jelousy. I try to offset this, like if 4yo is practicing tracing lines in a dry erase book, I'll set up 7yo with some of his math problems on the dry erase board instead of in his workbook. It still ends up with 7yo complaining because he has to do work instead of fun stuff.

7yo complains a lot about the younger kids "distracting" him all the time. While sometimes it's true, and I have to work hard to wrangle the younger two from being right up in his face while he's working, usually he finds it "distracting" just because they're doing something (ie playing with toys) that he'd rather be doing besides his schoolwork. The problem there is that we're in a minihome. DH works nights, so he sleeps most of the day. The younger kids can't go play in the bedroom because it's right next to where dh is sleeping, so there's no getting 7yo where he can't at least see what the younger two are doing.


Last year really was mixed up, like I said. We started out using PACEs for science and social studies, which Josh really disliked. Same with the Spectrum Language Arts/phonics we tried. He gets frustrated if he has to write too much, so I do my best now to mix up writing, doing things orally, making games out of the work. I switched Science this year to a work-together, experiment-based curriculum that both the 7yo and 4yo can be involved in, and it's probably the part of school I get the least amount of attitude about doing. Social studies we're doing almost completely orally, together. Same with French. We're using Singapore Math, which he LOVED last year. He's very math oriented and picks up the concepts really quickly. Our math books came in almost 3 weeks later than the rest of this year's curriculum, and so for those 3 weeks he whined and moaned that the only school work he wanted to do was his math books because he loves them.... then once they arrived it was right back to "I don't want to do it"

With 2 younger kids, though, especially a crazy active 18 month old, there are times when he's going to have to sit and do some work independantly, you know? Not that my sitting down with him while he works has been doing much to encourage him, anyhow.

 

You know, you might have a really good point. I can't believe that never even occurred to me. My husband is a union worker, and just started back to work mid-August after being laid off for almost 8 months. He's been working nights and sleeping all day, and has only had 2 days off in the last 5 weeks, so we don't see very much of him. Maybe I should get him to take Josh out for "coffee" and have a chat with him.

 

For over a year, my husband has been rarely home except on weekends and before that he always worked long hours with an erratic schedule. My daughter does act out when she misses him. (I probably do some of my own as well. ) However, he and I are a united front. If she is not behaving for me, Daddy punishes her too whenever he does get home.

I have taken EVERYTHING out of her room and she earned them back one at a time, one day at a time if the entire day goes acceptably, including our lesson time. I only had to that twice and she never gets that bad anymore.

Homeschooling is a combination of education and discipline, but when the education part is taking a back seat because of behavior, you simply have to treat them as separate issues or else every day he is going to see homeschooling as something that he hates because he is in trouble or he can get out of if he causes trouble. It is difficult to keep a balance there.

One other thing, my daughter is a random learner but was more so when she was younger and she can get bored with one subject. I simply switch around or go back and forth between subjects if I have to on those days when she is zoning out or being stubborn. It is kind of like letting her eat a bite of something she likes and then a bite of something she does not like or going around the plate. That helps quite a bit most of the time, even though it irritates me a bit, being that I am sequential. However, the results are what make it worthwhile as she learns better and faster that way.

 

Does your 4 y/o takes naps still ?
I have a son that turned 1 last week, and we do our work only during his nap times. I am really lucky because he still takes 2 separate 2 hour naps a day. I couldn't imagine trying to get any school work done while he is awake, it would be really distracting.

I have a similar situation to yours, but it is with my 13 y/o dd. She is in PS and since I started HS'ing her 2 sisters this year she has gotten really jealous. Although it could also be her teenage hormones making her evil. She chose to stay in PS because she likes the team sports and all her friends. However, she is so mean to her little sisters. They don't even have to say anything to her and she just goes off. I have no idea how to deal with her either.

 

Sounds like a very frustrating situation and you've got some great ideas here! Here are some things that work in our home- maybe you can glean something from them!

We have a daily quiet time for the kids. My oldest is 5 and she doesn't nap but she does have quiet things to do- books on tape are her favorite, along with coloring and puzzles. She doesn't stay in there as long as the younger one so that gives me a break but I still have time to let her get up earlier then the baby and her and I can do some one-on-one work. Could the 4 yr old have an hour worth of quiet time daily and you use that time to work with your 7 yr old?

I have also noticed that my daughter works better/harder when she has some choices. I might have a list of things that need to be done that day and let her pick which one she wants to do when. Or, I'll give her a choice between two things and we do the one she picks. She likes feeling like she has some control over it. I also make sure to plan some "fun" things in there- like computer, video, special game with me, etc. If I notice she is doing more playing then working, I tell her I'm sitting an alarm. If that work is not done by the time her alarm goes off, then she doesn't have time for a fun thing. I try to be realistic with the time I give her- if I notice she is working hard and consistently but she is still not done when the timer goes off, I will add on a few more minutes since she wasn't wasting that time. It seems to really help her focus.

I also break things up during the day. We'll do a few things and then stop. I'll let her go play or do something else while I get some housework done. Then a little bit later we'll come back to school and do a few more things.

Hope some of those ideas help!

 

I know I'm new here, but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in. The first thing that comes to mind is "don't give up!" I will give you some advice I received when my oldest son was 4....

A close friend told me "discipline him every day 10 times a day if you need to now and when he is older you will rarely need to". I have found that to be very accurate.

Also, another thing that worked for my oldest son was a BIG day out on Friday if he ________ all week. This totally changed his behavior! (He was only 4 at that time, though).

Hope this helps and you end up having a blessed day

 

I have to say that I go along with taking everything away and he can earn things back by good behavior. It's better to promote good than try to correct bad, that's just logical.

I would sit him down for the schoolwork time and he can not get play time until "xyz" is completed. If he still doesn't want to do the work after a time amount you set, then he can get away from the work area, but not to play. Explain that the play comes after the work is done. No other reasons. An intelligent child will look at the reasons you give and try to talk a way around them. This will be more frustrating to you.

I believe in giving children choices. If there is misbehavior, then the choices consist of what you need the child to do, and something that you know the child won't want. Be consistent and firm. If you waver and give in after starting this method the child will try to get that to happen each time.

Good luck!

 

I'm also new here...but not new to parenting or teaching. One of the thoughts that came to mind when I was reading your post was that sometimes even bright, creative kids can have some issues which make schoolwork challenging. And very often at this age those manifest as reluctance or refusal. Lots of possibilities such as kids who have undiagnosed fine motor skill problems resisting writing. Kids with processing problems being frustrated with math or language arts. Kids with learning disabilities becoming very discouraged. Kids who are very distractable not being able to concentrate for the duration of an assignment, etc. Some of the brightest kids I know have also come wired up with some challenges.

I of course have no idea if anything like that is going on with your kiddo, but since I've been there, done that I thought I'd toss it in for your consideration. Often kids like this will become very oppositional because they don't have the self-awareness or language to describe what's really happening. The natural tendency for the parent and/or teacher is to respond with a more authoritative manner and in such a case it's not the needed approach.

Good luck with working through this. I'm sure it's very frustrating.

 

I'm very tempted to say, "OK, maybe you're right and your work is too hard for you. So if you want to only do baby work, here, do this baby work. When you get ready to do big boy work, just tell me". And let him color, trace, do whatever the 4yo does, but make him do it for the whole school-day. I'm predicting (although I KNOW I could be all wet here!!!) that after a couple of days of that, he'll be so bored he might be ready to do some math, or something. Of course, you'll still include him when you do cuddly read-alouds to the youngers on the couch, or play Memory with the 4yo, or whatever.

The other thing that occurs to me is that maybe he's reached a stage where the curriculum you're using no longer fits him for some reason.

All these other things that people have posted -- missing daddy, undiagnosed finemotor weakness, simple distractibility, all kinds of things -- could be the "real" problem and the "I don't want to" is just a symptom rather than the real problem. Then again, it could be the real problem....he really doesn't want to. My ds -- who is 27 now, with two of his own -- has always had the Peter Pan Syndrome. He told me when he was 6 "I don't want to be a 'big boy'." Even then he didn't want the responsibility that comes with growing up. And in some ways, he never has..... :,(

 

something i thought of from one of your posts, you said your dh is sleeping and the kids cant stay in there and play while he works on school, bc it would wake dh. i totally undertand, my dh works nights as well. but if it truly is being distracted, or even if that is part of the issue, here is what i would do. ( i have a 7 yr old who is highly distractable, and a 20 month old who is good at it, lol) put a desk in that room for his independent work, and even for your teaching part. make it a special spot, just for him. and the youngest have to stay out while he works on "big boy stuff". this is what i have done here. we try to school during my youngest nap time, right after lunch, at least get all the teaching stuff done, and then if there is any left, we go into that room and have a few min of peace. i might put the baby in the high chair, with her sippy and a cracker, turn on dora (yes i use the tv for a babysitter occassionally,lol) and work at it with him. also, i would make it mandatory that my 4 yr old sit and look at books or someting else quiet while he has a bit of time to work on the main stuff, math and language arts. 4 is old enough to behave and be quiet for a bit. maybe do 15 min of quiet and school, then 5 min of play and outside fun, or 30 min of quiet and school, then 10 in for a snack??

 

The thing that stood out to me was about your dh working nights and sleeping days. for me it made me more stressed when my kids were young and dh worked nights, I did nto sleep well and the kids could tell and so we went around and round tryng to keep the house quiet and the kids doing school at appropriate times.. it was hard on me and so it was also on my kids.

What I found is more sleep helped behavior with two of my kids and more attention with the other. I would seriously find out if he would like to be the "big kid" and do things the younger kkids dont like to do as well, if he does his school papers with out having a fuss then he, being the older child could have or do ------ whatever.
Now some may call that bribery I call it reward system and for the older child it usualy works best.

 

DS tried this mess with me too. Sucking teeth, whining, complaining, slamming books and doors, falling out in the floor. I'm not having it!Sounds to me like it's time to start taking stuff. I took Video games, tv, fieldtrips, No Swimming at the YMCA. No work, No fun. Be ready for PS school at 6:00 AM next week,because I am enrolling you on Monday. I'm not having it, shape up or ship out!

Problem Solved,but you have to be firm. One day DS sat at the table from 9:30-12:00 refusing to do math, because he claimed to already know how to do it. Guess what, he sat there until it was done. Next subject. We didn't finish school that day until 5pm.

We have bad days, but for the most part everything is good. Have you tried HSing in the park or outside since you DH sleeps days. Or maybe changing the schedule so you start later. Some kids don't do well in the morning, but I was thinking your DH could still get some sleep in and you could take the kids out to the park or something. Just a thought.

 

I also have 3 boys, just hang in there it will get better!! My oldest is 8 this year and it is a complete turn around from last year. He was the same way.... throwing fits, stalling, "why do I have to do more than Cade, it's not fair". He drove. Me. Up. The. Wall!! I just refused to engage in it with him. I do no negotiate with terrorists. He can throw all the fits he wants but he will do as I say.... and there will be consequences for the fits.

This year is totally different. He works independently.... some! The fits are few and far between and he gets control of himself pretty quick.

 

In my case my son wanted me by his side continuously while doing school at that age. He wants mommies encouragement. If I wasn't paying attention neither was he. I know that you have your hands full with the other too but maybe he needs more of mommies time and also daddies time.

 

Tell him he has to do "harder" work than the babies because he is a big boy and has already finished what they are just learning. I would probably put the babies in a pen and drop in a few toys, put on a video cartoon, put them in a johnnie jump up, swing,etc. and take him another room and let him do a subject. Once he finishes that subject (and only if he finishes the subject) then I would let him do a coloring sheet or play with the babies for 20 minutes or so and then take him back and let him do another subject and so on. Occasionally you could get videos - age appropriate - from the library relating to one of his subjects like Indians for history, volcanos for science, etc. and let him watch it with his siblings. If all else fails and he continues to act out - I'm a firm believer in a couple of warnings and then final stage - the belt. I've only had to use the belt 2 or 3 times in my daughters 11 years. When I say the belt, she knows I'm very serious and what the consequences are and then suddenly getting her work done is no problem.