Discpline for Kids Who Refuse to be Discplined

I am sure that many of you read the title and thought to yourself, there isn't a child who can ever refuse to be disciplined because you're the parent, yada yada yada. Well, you can come and live at my house and your tune will change rather quickly.

Yes, I live in a home where 3 out of the 4 children are bad kids. Bad how you ask? They are rude, ignorant, disrespectful, hurtful, spiteful, mean, lazy, rude, and they lack appropriate manners. Oh wait, I am sure you are once again thinking, "Well, that's your fault, those types of behaviors / attitudes / etc are supposed to be instilled by you because you are the parent." Nice try, but unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way.

Firstly, we are a blended family. It's a his, mine, ours setup. He has his two boys, I have my daughter, and we have a 2-year old together. So of course, there is a lot of opposition already. Secondly, the kids (minus ours), all are "special" and by special, I mean that we have hit the jackpot of mental illnesses / behavioral problems, etc. Thirdly, past experiences and situations while three of the children were young have really shaped them into who they are as well as their behaviors & attitudes. When done at a young age, it is hard to reverse the "damage" that was done.

I don't make excuses, but I will offer a very quick bit of advice, when something happens to your children or they have to go through something terrible & messy, like a divorce for example, the worst thing that you can do for them is spoil them, excuse their behavior as being the result of the divorce, and let them get away with murder. I tell you this now to save you a lot of agony and strife later. Do not spoil your children with material things thinking that this is your way of apologizing for whatever event happened. This is not what children need. Do not be their best friend either, you are not there to be your child's friend, you are there to be their parents. Of course you want them to respect you and to come to you with things, problems, issues, or whatever, but when they think of you as a buddy, then you lose that respect and your life will become miserable.

In this household, the children get crummy grades, they have no responsibility, they have no work ethic, and no respect. I can ask them to do something until I am blue in the face and it is met with hostility, resentment, and laziness. And don't give me that, "you can reward them" nonsense. We've been there, done that, and epically failed. We have encouraged good grades by offering incentives as well, FAIL-DOZER (beep beep).

Nothing works in this house. So you can only imagine that it is filled with stress, lots & lots of it.

So where am I going with this? I don't know, it was all planned out in my head, but it soon took flight. But tonight, there was an incident with one of the children & it involved baby gates getting knocked over and using one's foot instead of their hands to pick it up. I asked once for him not to use his foot, he used his foot anyways, and this repeated for a few minutes until after knocking the gates over and having to pick them up, he finally got it (or was sick of looking at me). Then said heathen child wanted to stomp around like a jerk out of being angry. So he found himself putting on his shoes & coat and then began stomping outside. Of course at first he didn't want to stomp, he wanted to march, so we had to wait until he was stomping like he did in my house in order to start the one minute timer.

Unconventional, surely. But I will tell you this, I have been through plenty of the behavioral management stuff. The 1-2-3 Magic is nonsense, time outs are pointless, taking away privileges, whatever. It does not work in this house. Therapy, medications...been there & do it all, only to end up in the same situation every day.

It's insanity, it really is. It gets tiring & boring & beyond stressful. Oh and please, I don't need to hear "the kids have issues, they need to be dealt with differently" because that is a total crock. The kids have zero when it comes to any type of morality, ethic, etc. I try to enforce it and make them realize that they are making poor choices, lay out what the consequences will be, yet they seem to think I am stupid.

But of course, we are always met with "that isn't fair" & "my friends don't have to do ZYX" & "you treat me like a baby". Of course I treat you like a baby, because you cannot show that you have any sense of responsibility or consideration in attempting tasks/chores/behaviors that prove otherwise.

However, you must be thinking...she didn't mention Pinterest this time, what is going on? Well, never fear. I found this resource that I shall be employing in this household, from Pinterest. It is called 21 Creative Consequences. It it supposed to be directed toward Tweens, however a lot of the methods & suggestions apply to younger children as well.

Like I said, I am not messing around. The disrespect for me is going to stop and not listening to anything I say is going to stop. Now usually this is not an issue for Richie, as the kids will usually do what he says without much of an issue, but for me, pshaw. They need to learn that I am not acting like a psycho because I think it is fun, but because I am trying very hard to instill some important things into them, like taking pride in one's work, some sort of work ethic, respectfulness, and making good choices.

Who knows where this shall lead, but I am glad that I finally stumbled upon some discipline tips that are different from the traditional