Setting Limits Part III: The Process

The reason I like Setting Limits so much is because it's not really a "magic system"...it's really just common sense. Here are the steps I recommend you take to implement this common-sense process with your child:

1) DECIDE ON A TARGET BEHAVIOR: Decide on your top one or two "annoying" behaviors and focus on those. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, so don't expect your child to reverse every annoying behavior right away. Most parents' top "annoying" behaviors include: 1) Whining 2) Not listening/ignoring instructions; purposely misbehaving 3) Inability to share or play well with other children 4) Tantrums/Pouting when they don't get their way.

2) LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES: Decide on what your "logical consequence" for the behavior will be. A logical consequence is a consequence that fits the crime. Too often parents let misbehavior go and by the time 5pm rolls around and your child has been misbehaving all day, parents lose it. The kid does one minor misbehavior and Mom takes away TV privileges for a week or explodes and makes him stay in his room for an hour. Those consequences are not driven by logic, they are driven by emotion.

**Remember, what I write only applies to what I know and things I have tried. So my only knowledge is with 18 months to 4 year olds. With that in mind, most misbehavior can be solved with the logical consequence of a time out. We started time out with Brooke at about 18 months. At this age we thought she was old enough to understand right from wrong and she was also mature enough to understand consequences. Some 18 months olds are not--you have to judge for yourself. But somewhere around this age, you can start implementing time out. More on the timeout procedure later.

3) SET THE LIMIT:

- Younger Kids (18 months-3'ish years): As soon as misbehavior occurs (not after it's happened for the 50th time that day and you're frustrated and tired), give ONE, SIMPLE warning. Something like, "Michael, we don't whine. It's not nice. Stop whining or you'll go to timeout (or, "you'll be spending some time alone")." For little kids, keep it simple, very few words.

- Older kids (3 years & up): Once kids get older, empower them to realize that they have the power to make their own decisions: "Michael, you know we don't whine. You can keep whining or you can spend some time by yourself...WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?" Those words are key. That makes them actually have to answer, which is quite powerful. When I phrase things like this, I feel like it's kind of an "ah-ha" moment for Brooke. Like she's thinking, "DUH--I don't want to be alone or go to timeout!!!" For your strong-willed ones, if they don't answer that is the same as continuing the behavior. See Step 4.

ALWAYS REMEMBER:

**Use your NORMAL tone of voice. Be calm, but firm. Look your child in the eye.

4) FOLLOW THROUGH: This is THE most important step!! This is where most parents fail miserably. After you have given the warning with the logical consequence, you MUST MUST MUST follow through the VERY next time it happens. So your kid is yelling, you give the warning, he keeps yelling (Remember, he's your little scientist! He's gathering his data!). TOOOOOOOOOO many parents (I have been a victim) keep up with the warnings: "Michael, I TOLD you to STOP YELLING!" Again: "Do you want to go to timeout??" Again: "How many times do I have to tell you!!??" With each warning, our blood pressure rises. This is why many parents are frazzled and burned out. They have spent their whole day threatening their kid and never actually disciplining them.

So what SHOULD you do? Misbehavior happens again. You say, "Ok, I'm sorry. We don't whine. You need to spend some time in timeout." Take him to timeout and say, "You need to stay here until I tell you to get up. I will set the timer." AND SET THE TIMER. I use the tried and true rule of one minute per year of age. I use the timer on my microwave so Brooke can hear it from her timeout and know when time is up. DON'T CHEAT and don't try to "guess" when X minutes has passed. Use a timer!!!

5) CLEAN THE SLATE: When the timer goes off, go to your child. Resist any temptation to over-explain or "lecture." By now, they know what they did was wrong and that you won't accept it. End of story. Hopefully, your child's time in timeout has given you time to compose yourself as well. Please don't hold a grudge!! Many parents like to say things like, "Next time you do that, you'll be there for 20 minutes!" or "I don't know how many times I have to tell you!" Not very educated, common sense parenting'ish. The slate is clean and welcome your child back to whatever you were doing. Keep your words simple like, "Ok, it looks like you're ready to come back! Let's finish playing that game!" Keep your tone of voice upbeat. Take your child's hand and lead them back. Let them know you're not "mad" at them.

And that, my friends is all there is to it. Sounds pretty easy, huh? It IS. If you stay consistent with this process, I can almost guarantee behavior will improve. The hard part is staying consistent. You can't let X behavior (i.e whining) slide one day and then crack down with "Setting Limits" the next. Talk about confusing your child! No wonder he acts out. You need to do the procedure EVERY TIME behavior occurs.

Yes, there are some problems that may occur and some troubleshooting that needs to happen. I'll write a "Troubleshooting" post soon. Happy limit setting!!!

Setting Limits Part II: Our Little Scientists

In his book, Setting Limits, Dr. MacKenzie compares children to mini scientists. Little do most of us know that our little scientists are constantly doing research and taking data on how we teach and enforce our rules.

For example, picture a 3 year old sitting in a movie theater kicking the chair in front of him. You say, "Honey please stop." He stops for a minute and keeps doing it. You say again, "I told you to stop that." He keeps doing it. You say, "Stop that right now or we're leaving!" He stops for awhile and starts again after 10 minutes pass. The people in front of you end up moving after giving you a dirty look. You go on watching the movie. Problem solved. So what data has your little scientist collected from this series of events? You guessed it--your words are meaningless. He doesn't have to listen to you because you never do anything but repeat yourself, raise your voice and threaten. No big deal for him!

Gary Ezzo's book, Toddlerwise gives "obedience percentages" by age. An obedience percentage is the amount of times your child **should** comply with your instructions:

2 years old: 60%
3 years old: 70%
4-5 years old: 85%-90%

As educated, common sense parents, of course we want those percentages to be as close to 100% as possible! And quite honestly, it's not too much to expect that your child obey 85%-90% of the time, no matter what his age. The majority of young children WANT to please. Brooke definitely falls into the 85%-90% range. Most of the time, she does what I ask. However, she does have a very strong-willed side to her. When this side comes out, she will explain and try to negotiate her way out of compliance. She challenges the hell out of her dad and me on some things. I can only imagine how it will be when she's a teenager! When she pulls this on us, I definitely have to use my Setting Limits knowledge and parent her differently than I would when she's being compliant.

Likewise, you might have one child who is very compliant and another who is strong-willed. You will have to parent these two children differently. Going back to the scientist metaphor, compliant children don't need much "data" to make their decisions: you tell them to do something and your words are enough to make them comply. On the other hand, the strong-willed child is dubbed the "aggressive researcher" by MacKenzie. He will constantly "test" you to see if your words have any value. He needs more than your words to make him compliant. He needs to know your actions will speak along with your words. Go back to the strong-willed child at the movie theater. He is thinking: Will she actually take me out of the theater for kicking the chair? Let me try and see. He kicks the chair again and you don't do as you threatened. Research project over.

These aggressive researchers are not "bad" kids. They simply have different personalities that require you to "parent" a little harder. Since we learned at a very young age that Brooke did have this strong-willed side to her, we started Setting Limits with her at about age 2. It's always better to start early when the problem has not escalated into a full scale family war. Remember, good habits are easier to create than bad ones are to break. We used limits and logical consequences with Brooke as early as 18 months, which included time out. When we first started, we had to do timeouts fairly frequently. But as we got problems nipped in the bud, it has become a lot less frequent. I've sent her to timeout maybe once in the past year.

I will discuss in a lot more detail setting limits, logical consequences and the timeout procedure in the next post.

Setting Limits Part 1

My sister in law recently asked me if I knew of any good "parenting" books that she could relate to for her 2 year old. I told her hands-down, the best book on parenting I have read thus far (and I have read quite a few!) is Setting Limits by Robert J. MacKenzie. Let's face it, around 18 months (give or take), we've hopefully got the eating and sleeping things sorted out with our kids. Now it's time to move from "caring" for your child, to actually parenting your child. This is when the fun begins!

I'll be writing a series of posts on all different aspects of this book. Hopefully you will find them helpful. I learned so much by reading this book.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Dr. MacKenzie in person last year. He and his team trained our entire teaching staff on how to set limits in the classroom. He's also held a number of parenting seminars for the parents at our school And lord knows, many of them need to learn a thing or two about parenting! We've been implementing his program at our school with great success.

Dr. MacKenzie is a smart, witty, easy-going, common sense kind of guy---which of course is why I like him so much. His methods are straight-forward and are practically all just plain COMMON SENSE. No special "methods" or "tricks"...no getting in touch with the "primitive" side of your toddler--for those of you who have read The Happiest Toddler on the Block. The great thing is, you can read this book and you will be able to relate it to your 2 year old who throws applesauce off his highchair to your 16 year old who constantly breaks her curfew. It's timeless! However, I have not had the opportunity to parent any child older than 4, so I will not be commenting on how this book relates to anyone older than 4. I will only talk about my personal experience with this book with a 2-4 year old.

The first thing this book does is categorize three different parenting approaches:

1) The Punitive Parent: Punitive parents are often caught yelling things like: "Do that one more time and I'll...[insert threat here]," or "How many times do I have to tell you..." Punitive parents yell and threaten. They can be found in grocery stores around nap time and in the Target toy aisle. Punitive parents present themselves as frustrated, mean and exhausted. More than likely, we've all been a punitive parent at one time or another. I know I have! Although this isn't my typical parenting approach, I have definitely been known to raise my voice and use false threats: "Stop that right now you're going to bed!" (it's 5pm, and that would be nearly impossible). It mostly happens when I am exhausted or stress gets the best of me. For many parents, however, threats are the only way they know how to "parent."

2) The Permissive Parent: Permissive parents permeate the upper middle class. These types of parents are often overly-concerned about their child's feelings...never wanting them to be upset, hurt or disappointed. Permissive parents often end their sentences with"OK." "Spencer, stop banging your brother's head against the wall, OK?" Permissive parents tend to over-explain, and want to parent their children as "equals" instead of clearly establishing themselves as the person in charge. Permissive parents are always trying to bargain, plead, lecture and negotiate with their children. Children of permissive parents rule their households. They have learned that their parents never follow through on any sort of "limits" they set and they also have learned the art of negotiating their way out of undesired things such as going to bed.

3) The Setting Limits Parent: This is the approach endorsed by Dr. MacKenzie and I'm sure in our minds, what we all strive to be. The Setting Limits parent is fair, yet firm. These parents are clearly in charge, without being a dictator. The allow their children freedom, but with limits. This parenting approach requires that you set fair and firm limits and FOLLOW through each time. As with sleep training your infant, it is not always the easiest parenting approach emotionally-speaking, but this is a long term parenting approach, not a short term fix to get your kid to stop throwing a fit in the grocery store.

Imagine this: You're grocery shopping with your 2 year old. You are almost done when your toddler decides he wants a box of Captain Crunch. You say no. Toddler starts whining. You hold firm and try to explain--"No, sweetie, that type of cereal will rot your teeth and then you'll have to go to the dentist and...blah, blah, blah." [The Permissive Parent] Toddler throws a fit, starts screaming. People start looking at. Yes, you are worst parent ever! :-) In frustration, you say, "OK just this once. But next time, we're getting Special K." Toddler is happy.

Now as educated, common sense parents, you know exactly what this person did wrong. But admit it--it IS easier to just quiet a screaming child and save yourself embarrassment, isn't it? Just like it's easier to nurse your baby to sleep for 12 months than hearing her cry every time you lay her down to bed. Easier in the short term, that is. Don't forget, my friends, parenting isn't about the short term. You're in it for the long haul.

I'll go into more detail on how Dr. MacKenzie recommends becoming a Setting Limits parent in future posts.