Dealing with less than good behavior

[Tot-Time]

Oh mamaof4, I can competely understand why you would be hitting emotional burnout with your son. I am afraid I don't have any words of wisdom but I do agree with the others that setting boundaries as to when negotiations are acceptible will help possibly deter the negotiations during non-acceptible times. I believe in being firmly but friendly saying 'this is a non-negotable'.

Something that may help is using I messages, when you son tries to negotiate. Something to the effect that, "I need you to do this, because this is how it makes me feel when you don't", or "I need you to stop doing this because it hurt my friends and that makes me sad". I agree that attempting to ignore the negotiation would be best too, but can you possibly turn the negotation around in exchange for good behaviour for your son to get what he would like. What I mean by this is "cleaning your room is a non-negotiable right now, but if you clean your room quickly without complaint I may consider letting you play the xbox for 30 min tonight".

I do not let my daughters negotiate out of their 'punishments' but I do let them negatiate some terms of a grounding. For example, if one of my girls are grounded a weekend and it turns out to be the weekend that a very special activity is happening, I will let them negotiate out of it, on my terms, which is always, I will gladly exchange 1 weekend of un-grounding, for being grounded the next two. This tells me that the activity is really important to them and that they are not just trying to get out of the grounding. Sometimes, I won't make them do the second weekend because of good behaviour.

I don't necessarily believe in giving choices (negotiating terms) to children because according to child guidance the choices should be both positive for the child, but in my home the child has 2 choices, 1 to do what I would like or to do something the child doesn't like But when a child is having a temper tanrum type behaviour, the choice is usually "1) you can stop your tempertantrum and go play or 2) you can go over to the time out corner and have your temper tantrum there". Usually the child chooses to go and play, but in the case of my daycare diva she almost always chooses a time out.

Depending on his age, it could be he is trying to control so giving him simple choices to make each day might help him not negotiate, playfelt gave some good examples such as would you like to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt today. But this can be a double edged sword because then the child feels that s/he should have a choice in most aspects of life. So it is important on setting boundaries for what choices are acceptible.