The Real Reason Discipline Might Not Be Working

Use your words. That is absolute crap. That is your world. That is not the toddler's world. It's very disrespectful to talk to a toddler that way. Their words are kicking and screaming and all that. I struggle with consistency and find myself letting things go because it doesn't seem like such a big deal. One thing I let go turns into 10 and I keep playing catch up when I see my kids are going backwards with the progress I've made. If you don't provide that leadership, you send them out in the world without leadership at home. They're going to be very vulnerable to peer pressure, bullying, the drug dealer on the corner, the internet, the Kardashians. You get the idea. They're going to go searching elsewhere for leadership because they need it that bad. When you say just be a leader, that feels daunting to me when I'm hearing that. This is killing me. You got to let me go here. Okay. Welcome to the Brat Busters Parenting Podcast. My name's Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach. I'm a mom. I'm also a grandmother. And I'm Amy Bunnage. Lisa's daughter and I handle the marketing and planning here at Brat Busters. While I don't have kids, each episode will dive into parenting topics and Lisa will answer your questions. Let's get started. Okay, sweetie. What are we talking about today? Today's topic is reasons why your discipline isn't working. And I have a few ideas already here, but then you can add to them if you'd like. Well, how about you start the ball rolling and we'll go from there. Okay. The first one is inconsistency. That's really important because if you're not consistent, it's sort of interpreted as a lie. Like if you say, that's it, you did that. So here's your consequence. And the next day you don't do it was yesterday right or is today right? It's very confusing. That would be like if you go to drive down the highway and one day you get pulled over for a ticket and then the next day you see the police are the radar guns out and you're going even faster, but they don't pull you over. By the way, you'd be very happy about that inconsistency, but wouldn't it be confusing? It'd be, you know, kids need to know what's coming. They need to understand what the consequence is. If it's not consistent, they're gonna keep trying because they think maybe this is the day that they're not gonna follow through. And then when you find that parents have maybe been a little bit inconsistent, does it take even more to kind of prove to your kids that you will be? The reason it does and the reason I say that you should use the behavior board is because it just makes you focus on one bad behavior at a time, one battle per week, okay? Because you can't focus on everything when you're starting out. So the leadership is signified by that behavior board that you've got slapped up, it's very big, it's on a high traffic area. And that signifies, hey, we're changing our parenting, but we're just starting with hitting or whatever you choose, okay? So then you focus on that one bad behavior that you wanna train them out of, or maybe you want them to start doing something good, whatever, you start slow, start small, because that way you can build off of that. Then the next week you have two behavior boards, the next week you have three, you don't go past that. But anyway, so, but yeah, that's why it's so important to start small because it's very hard to be consistent when you're trying to address everything in day one. I would do everything in day one, but I'm level 10 with this because I invented all this stuff. But when you're learning how to do anything, you start small, right? You know, this reminds me, when I learned how to drive back in 1975, they had simulators they used to put us in. We went with that, my mom paid for my driving lessons because she knew she couldn't teach me, she was a nervous driver. So, and they put us in a simulator, it was the dumbest thing, it was so embarrassing. You're sat in this office with these little wheels in front of you. But we were practicing driving. They didn't just throw us into a car back then, it was probably safer to do the simulator. But I still remember that and I thought, geez, I remember when they got rid of those, I thought, wow, that would have been great. And I had to learn on a standard and boy, was that stressful. Probably dangerous for the public too. But anyway, so yeah, you wanna start small, you wanna learn, well, you probably learned a few things before you got in the car, right? You learned where the break and the gas was, hopefully. So yeah, you gotta learn a few things before you really drive or before you really deal with everything. And we learned, you did not teach me. Well, it was interesting when my ex-husband and I first got married, I said to him, okay, I'll do all the parenting because I've got tons of experience with kids. But there's two things that I don't wanna do. One is when they're throwing up. I don't mind cleaning it up, but I can't handle the action. Unfortunately, he was at work or whatever or traveling with business, usually when they were throwing up. But anyway, that was one thing. I said, you be there for the action, try and catch it if you can. The other one is you teach them how to drive. It's not that he did tons of other stuff, but those were the two things I said, I don't want anything to do with those two things. And it was great. I do vividly remember, I was getting really close. Well, I didn't realize I was. I was getting really close to the curb, like a belt to hit it. And just calmly, he goes, you might wanna move over just slightly. And it was just, I mean, I could have really done some damage. Well, I remember he was teaching me how to drive in Australia because you drive on the other side of the road. And we were driving along this quite a busy road. And it was in Sydney, very aggressive place to learn how to drive in Sydney. We live sort of close to downtown. Anyway, and we went on this road and he goes, you might wanna go a little bit more towards the right. He says, I think our left wheel is almost off the cliff. The way he said it was so calm. And I said, okay. But yeah, I would have screamed and probably wet my pants if someone was doing that and I was in the car. Worked out well and he was very consistent to go with the theme. But with consistency as well, you do talk about the fact that it almost is like the parents tend to, and this is coming from, I'm sure, like a well-intentioned place. They go from one direction to another. So they have maybe not as many rules. Maybe they're trying to be a little bit easier on their kids, but then it might just not be working. So they swing the other direction and they have too many rules, too many consequences out of nowhere. Well, that's like with dieting too, you think. That's it. The first of January, I'm gonna go on this really restrictive diet, 600 calories a day or whatever. Of course you're gonna tank right away because it's too extreme. You wanna start small. You wanna start in a realistic way, okay? So, but yeah, a lot of parents do that. I call it the pendulum. The pendulum swings one way and they let everything go and then it's just chaos. And then they say, that's it. Tomorrow everything's different. This and that and that. And it's too exhausting. When you go the other way, you can't keep it up because all of a sudden you're trying to deal with everything and you often go overboard too because you're kind of mad. And then you forget the number one thing with parenting is connection. So when you're so focused on all the bad behavior, there's no connection going on or playing or fun because their love language is fun, right? So if there's none of that going on, the discipline's never gonna work if you're not connected with your kids. I actually had that as the second thing is not connecting enough. Yeah, connecting is, that's really all I'm teaching here. I'm teaching, because when you're a leader, you give respect to get it. That's why you're on the behavior board. And even with toddlers, you play in their world, okay? You always connect with kids in their world. And connection is the number one parenting skill that I teach. The only reason I talk about discipline so much is that's why people listen. That's what they wanna hear. But I keep peppering that in with the connecting. Remember, fun is their love language, even with teenagers, humor, showing an interest in their world, okay? Don't try and get them to be interested in your world, chances are that's gonna tank, okay? So it's all about them and their world. And you'll get some 50, 50. Like you'll get times when they will be interested in your world. But parenting is a lot of one-way street-ish, street-ing. And a lot of parents sort of don't really get that. There's a lot of give and very little take. Your joy is that you're raising happy, well-adjusted, nice kids. That is the, that's the payback. Okay, the next one that I have here is words instead of actions. Yeah, words are overused. And I think because that's your language, that's my language also, but it's not kids' language. Their language is actions. They're watching you more than they're listening to you, right, especially up until seven, okay? That's when they're forming their personalities and it's all done through observation. So parents tend to use too many words. Even with toddlers, they'll say stuff like, use your words, that is absolute crap. That is your world, that is not the toddler's world. It's very disrespectful to talk to a toddler that way. Because they don't have their words. Their words are kicking and screaming and all that. So the better you get at disciplining them, okay, using consistent corrective actions with toddlers, then the behavior board with three years old and over, the better you get at that, the less likely they are to act out anyway, okay? So, but yeah, all these use your words and then discussing all their, whenever they're angry, discussing all their big feelings, big emotions, discussing the bad behavior, that is bad. Pull away from that. Do quick action. If they're naughty, you do a quick, consistent corrective action, or say let's go to the behavior board, have a consequence and then let it go. Everyone, parents wanna talk about the bad behavior. They are misunderstanding that it is not about understanding that stops kids from doing the naughty things. It's a lack of consequences and a lack of impulse control. That is what gets them to do the naughty things. It's not that they don't understand. They already know right from wrong past about two years old. They just get it. They understand right from wrong, okay? So you can say it once, okay, that was naughty if it's something they really don't know. Don't keep going on about it. They don't care why it is, by the way. All this reasoning, you shouldn't do that because it hurts their feelings. They have tuned you up. Once you say no, they're gone. They're not listening anymore. So yeah, parents tend to over talk and under act. Okay, I had discussing bad behavior on this, but you kind of covered that. Yeah, discussing bad behavior is something that you do for yourself because it's almost like a revenge thing. Well, I want them to understand that they already do. That's not why they did it. That's not why they're making choices. They're making choices based on the outcome, okay? They make a choice to do something good because either there's a reward for it in that they feel good about themselves or they get, I don't know, something, you know, something happens in their life that's good because of it or they do something bad and then something bad happens to them. I used to say to my kids, if your good life is good, if your bad life ain't so good, I'll make sure of it because I'm your mom and that's my job. In other words, I'm gonna make you understand that you are totally in charge of your own life. You are, I'm gonna make you accountable for everything you do, good and bad. I'm gonna give you credit when things are great and I'm gonna give you a consequence when they're not, when you make poor choices, okay? I do feel like the discussing bad behavior is that it may also just be coming from a respective of like that is another narrative online with parenting. Is the discussing the bad behavior? Okay. And again, I don't look too into it so I don't have like specifics, but I do hear the idea of it being like unmet needs and you're meant to address the behavior. So if some kid is maybe hitting, maybe you're going to, okay, this is killing, this is killing me. You gotta let me go here. Okay, now you look at the pool story. That's the pool story. Just you can Google Brad Buster's pool story. I address bad behavior, then I focus on the good kid. Focusing on the good kid and pulling that goodness out of any child, any teenager is what gets you what you want. It's not focusing on stopping them from doing bad things. It's focused on encouraging them to do the right thing, making them feel good. And you don't, they don't feel good as a result of you telling them they're good. They feel good as a result of being good. There's no pride in being told you're wonderful. There's a lot of pride in being wonderful. They know the difference. Parents are always trying to maybe over praise and underplay, make them feel good, enter their world, play with them. Praise is okay, but it tends to be overused. So the pool story explains everything. It explains how I deal with bad behavior. I don't take any crap from kids at all. I deal with bad behavior. I don't discuss it. I just say, oh, that was bad. Here's the consequence. Then I switch it fast and I focus on the good kid. Instantly, my goal is always to make kids feel good about themselves because I know when they feel good, they do good. When they feel bad, they do bad. The longer you talk about bad behavior, the more it becomes ingrained in who they are. It lowers their self-esteem. It makes them feel bad. Where you put your energy, where you put your focus is what grows. I had to take a breath there. And I do want to reiterate is I do think that parents are approaching this with good intentions. I think that they're, and we've talked about this before, but possibly they felt like whenever they used their words, when they were getting older as kids, maybe those words were not listened to. So they're possibly trying to teach their kids that they have a voice, they have a vocabulary, and they will listen to them when they talk. Well, your superpower or the engine with all this is the connection, but really your biggest skill is listening. If your kids feel heard and feel like they have a voice, in that you're, if you do something naughty, they get to punish you too. If they feel that they have control over their own lives, it changes everything, okay? So, and also this is interesting. So parents will say to me, not so much anymore, because by the time they hire me now, they'd get it, right? But years ago, I wasn't, I didn't have as much of a presence online. So people would hire me, usually through schools or references, other people would recommend me. Anyway, and then they'd hire me and they'd say, oh, I just can't believe I'm hiring you, but you're just gonna think I'm so awful. And I go, no, I've never been hired by a bad parent, not once, not ever. What kind of bad parent would hire a parenting coach? Everything parents do with their kids is good intentions. It's just a lack of knowledge and experience, okay? That's what I'm teaching here. All of your intentions are great. I'm not here to judge, believe me, I'm not here to judge, but I'm here to help you. I'm here, I want you to have a happy family. That's what I'm here for. You're doing the best either that you know how or that you're able to. Even when I've taught someone how to do something, it doesn't mean they're able to do it. They've got their own emotional baggage, so we have to work through some of that too. But yeah, our parents are well-intentioned. No one is handed a newborn in the hospital and holds them and says, I'm gonna mess you up. Everyone wants to raise happy, well-adjusted kids. You just don't always know how to do it. That's all, that's what I'm here for. Are your kids driving you nuts? They don't have to. Check out bratbusters.com for my boot camp courses if you wanna learn how to become a leader. Okay, we'll get into the next one. And that is about showing your kids that you're frustrated at them, getting angry at them. Okay, if you show anger, frustration, or disappointment, you're not a leader, because that makes them feel bad. You think about it. If someone looks at you and goes, I can't believe you did that. How does that make you feel? I don't think bad behavior should make a kid feel bad. If a kid did something bad, I would say, ooh, that was bad, here's your consequence. And then I move on. If I went, oh, geez, you should know better than that. That's the shaming, blaming, and bullying. That is not leadership. I don't do that at all. Okay, we have one final one here that I have written down. And it's about parents not being on the same page with parenting. Okay, that happens a lot, by the way. And because you're sort of floundering, trying to find what to do, and one parent will maybe find someone online that they like, and then someone might find someone else. Here's what I say, flip a coin, go with one parent's ideas for three weeks. Say we're gonna do it my way for three weeks, you back me up, we have to be on the same page. If you're not, and they sense dissension amongst the parents, they're gonna go in for the kill. They're gonna use you against each other, okay? So yeah, make sure that you pick one parenting path and stick with it also. If you're gonna follow someone online, like me or someone else, there's three criteria I think they have to have to teach parenting. One, they have to have worked with hundreds of kids. How can you teach parenting if you've only raised your own? That's ridiculous. Two is they have to have finished the job. If you haven't lived with teenagers yet, how do you know how to get there? How do you know what's gonna build into making teenagers easier, okay? The third one is you have to have found it easy. If they struggled through parenting and then said, oh, now I get it, too late. If they didn't find parenting fun and easy, I wouldn't listen to them. There's probably lots of other people out there just like me, okay? So that's one thing. What was the original comment or question I forgot? Parents not being on the same page. Not being on the same page. Okay, I know what I was gonna say. It's that if you're following someone, don't follow anyone else. If you follow someone, me or someone else, and you think, oh, I kinda like what she's saying, don't follow anyone else. It's like dieting. You can't pick and choose what you like from different parenting coaches or experts or whatever you wanna call these people or me or whatever. You can't pick and choose what you like from each one and put it all together. It's just like dieting. Would that work? No, it's ridiculous. You've gotta go with one path. A good example of that is if you were to throw a reward chart for good behavior or timeout into my methods, it would tank. I hate both of those things. They're horrible. So pick one path, flip a coin, decide to go with it, support the other parent who's gonna lead the way with that. If it doesn't work after three weeks, you say, well, that was stupid. That Lisa doesn't know what the heck she's talking about. Then go on to the other parent's idea. Should we get into the parenting questions? I thought that was the parenting questions. Sorry, I'm recovering from a cold. So I have to keep coughing and drinking water. So she's gonna have to leave these out. That's okay. I'll get into the question here. The first one is Rebecca from the United States. Kids ages 10, eight, four and 12 months. Tips on how to be consistent 100% of the time. I struggle with consistency and find myself letting things go because it doesn't seem like such a big deal or it's just easier to look the other way because there's so much going on at the moment. One thing I let go turns into 10 and I keep playing catch up when I see my kids are going backwards with the progress I've made. Okay, focus on the older one. Always start with the oldest or if maybe the eight year old might be the real target, really focus in on them. Use the behavior board. The reason why I put the behavior board up there or that it's completely free on my website. The reason I would put that up in a high traffic area is say, look, I need to be a better parent for you or we need to be better parents for you. Here's what we're doing. Here's the behavior board. You focus and perfect one behavior board at a time. You can only be consistent when you start small. If you start big, like I would address everything in day one, because I invented all this stuff, right? But when you're learning how to do this, you start with one behavior, one battle per week. Okay, just check out the free behavior board explains how to move forward. You can only stay consistent if you start in small steps. You can't stay consistent if you're just trying to do everything all at once. It's overwhelming. You're gonna crash and burn. Okay, the next one is Shayla from the United States and I've shortened it a little. Hello, I'm a mama to a newly turned six year old boy. He's such an amazing little person. As a toddler, I was too permissive and his dad was very old school and fear based. Now I struggle at times with my son's attitudes, so mean words, lying and deliberate defiance. At bedtime, we used to get out of bed, run around laughing and giggling saying no and all sorts of toddler-like behavior that naturally started after his toddler cousin was staying with us for a month. After being consistent with your behavior board methods, he doesn't get out of bed anymore. On a smooth night, he stays quiet. On a dysregulated night, he gets right into and stays in bed but calls for me constantly and or calls out this mean stuff. So question one is with before story issues. So before we read the bedtime story is losing his bedtime story for the night too harsh of a consequence? Should I read the book always and use next day deprivation consequence? And the second question is the mean and disrespectful words that come out at bedtime or morning routines. How should I approach that? Okay, you never discipline at night. And you said that once you've, he's gone to bed, then he's yelling out mean things. You can't take away the stories before he's even committed the crime. So, and I wouldn't take away stories because that's love, so I wouldn't take that away. I would still read to him lights out and then he's yelling out mean things. Wait till he gets out of bed but he said he's not getting out of bed anymore. So that's good. I just want to make sure to clarify. So any bad behavior that happens before the bedtime story. So she's saying that the quote unquote crime has already been committed. Yeah, okay. Well, I still wouldn't take away bedtime stories. I wouldn't do that. Follow the behavior board. The behavior board doesn't do the second consequence first. It does the first one first, right? The second consequence is when you take something away. The first one is the chore or whatever, do a positive action. You say, I'll tell you what, you just hit me or whatever. We'll discuss that tomorrow, okay? If he keeps going on about it, you say one more time, I said we'll talk about it tomorrow and then shut down that conversation in that you don't have to respond to it anymore. But why? But you said that, I would just say, okay, story time. You see, I want them to go to bed on a happy note but if they keep getting up then that changes things but he's not doing that anymore. You never discipline at night but you can mention that you'll be doing it in the morning. And don't discuss how or why, just say we'll discuss it tomorrow. And then the morning, say remember last night, you hit me and let's go to the behavior board, here's your chore or whatever. Okay, and the mean or disrespectful words that come out at bedtime? Well, good luck with that. Unless he's, that's the attitude. That's just a tell. It just means he doesn't respect you. You know, a lot of parents say, oh, how do I correct the attitude? You correct it by becoming, by teaching yourself how to become a leader. They don't cop an attitude with a leader, they just don't. It would be embarrassing because they look up to the leader. Have you ever looked up to anyone in your life even now? How do you treat that person, right? You want them to look up to you and you want to look up to them sort of too and treat them really well. That's why you never show anger, disappointment or frustration when you're disciplining because that's not treating them nicely. Bad behavior doesn't mean bad kid. Bad behavior makes poor choice. I do feel like sometimes, and I'm just trying to listen to this as a listener but then also as someone who maybe hasn't heard a lot of your approaches. When you say just be a leader, that feels daunting to me when I'm hearing that. And I'll say especially because it's like, trying to liken it to something, I'm just as bad as analogies as you are. But it would be kind of like if you're trying to play pickleball and then someone goes, well, just be a good pickleball player. And it's like, okay, yeah, thank you, but how do I do that? Yeah, but everything I teach, everything I'm talking about is your pathway to leadership. There's not one thing you can do to become a leader. Basically you give respect to get it, okay? And you enter their role, play with them, and fun is their love language. You meet their needs and manage their wants, okay? Their needs are fun. You wanna be a fun parent. I was a bit of a clown. You don't have to be an idiot like I was, but I love goofing around and it's just my basic personality, so it came easily to me. But I had to pull it back in the teen years, that was hard. I remember my son was about 18, had some friends over, and I decided to enter the room with underpants on my head. And my son was so used to me and his friends, some friends that were there weren't. They looked like, what the heck? And my son just said, mom, enough with the underpants on the head. So I had to learn how to pull it back. You know, you have to adjust when they're teenagers. That wasn't showing him respect, but they did end up laughing. So anyway, I got what I wanted, I got laughter. So, but anyway, analogies, by the way, you're nowhere near as bad as I am in analogies, I just wanna make that very clear. I also just wanna say, I felt like I felt a little sassy there being like, how do I do that? But I'm just trying to really put myself in the shoes of the listener, because it does feel a little vague if you're new to calm leadership. Yeah, but it's like anything, you won't really learn how to do it unless you listen to a lot of it, because it's very multi-dimensional. You give respect to get it, meet their needs, manage their wants, their needs are fun too. A lot of parents forget that. And their needs are also discipline. They need to, you know, they need crave and want leadership. They're desperate for it. Remember once the teenager said to me when he was in real trouble, because I specialize in troubled teens. And he said to me, my parents didn't love me enough to make me a good person. All kids, every single teenager has said something like that to me. Not quite that extreme, but they've all said, yeah, my parents didn't love me enough to discipline me. I mean, I've heard that many, many, many times. They equate discipline with love, not the yelling, but the actual effect of just here's your, you know, you made a mistake, here's your consequence. Just that respectful discipline. They equate that with love. It's interesting. I wouldn't think they would, but they do. Okay, the next one is Michelle from the United States. My son is 10. He was angry and threw a rock shattering the living room window. Aside from him having a financial consequence, earning the money and skipping activities until the amount is recouped, should there be an additional consequence? He currently does not have his iPad or TV either right now due to this. Okay, he's 10. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, at that age, I would take the money out only if he has a lot of money in the bank, you know, like he's been saving up, you know, gifts and all that. I might take it all out. Yeah, I might. Or I might just take out half. If he doesn't have much money, I would just take half of his allowance. By the way, check out my videos on allowance because I have a real good system for that. So yeah, I would do that because that's such a big deal. Now, if that was a two year old, I wouldn't do that. They don't understand throwing a pillow across the room compared to throwing a rocket glass. They don't understand a 10 year old understands. Okay, he knows what he did and he knows it was wrong. So, and then I would have an additional consequence, but don't go overboard with that. You've already taken money away from him and say, now we're going to do 24 hour media blackout. Just do it for 24 hours. That is the second consequence, but with something that big, I would do that. I wouldn't just get him to sweep the kitchen floor if he just shattered the living room window. No way. Yeah, I would take 20, I would do 24 hour media blackout. Wait a minute, he's 10. I might double that and go to 48 hours at the most. I never go past that. Something I was trying to figure out what movie it was, but something that reminded me when you talked about how kids really like discipline, it's almost like with that movie, Home Alone, where the kid gets to, like his parents forgot him. And at first he's like, oh, this is great. I could do whatever I want. But then it's like, oh, okay. I kind of miss the routine. I miss the structure. Well, we miss the leadership, and that's what it's all about. You miss knowing what's coming next, especially kids, they need that, okay? But think about it, we all kind of look up to a leader. We all have someone that we look up to. It might be someone in business, someone in, I don't know, some author, someone that you look up to. We like to have someone to look up to that's better at stuff than we are. It's only natural. That's how you improve yourself. How can you be mentally stimulated by someone who's worse at something than you are? It's just natural. Okay, so children need premonitly leader. It's an actual, they need it. We don't all need that as adults, but it's nice to get it once in a while. But children actually need it. It's one of their basic needs. Someone to look up to and guide them along the way, because they're learning. They're brand new human beings, right? Okay, if you don't provide that leadership, you send them out in the world without leadership at home. They're gonna be very vulnerable to peer pressure, bullying, the drug dealer on the corner, the internet, the Kardashians. You get the idea. They're gonna go searching elsewhere for leadership because they need it that bad. Whenever parents tell me, there's my kids so influenced by the bad kids at school or whatever, and I say, well, let's work on your leadership skills, and that won't happen. Okay, the next question is Elaine from Wales. My four-year-old is throwing tantrums, hitting and throwing, et cetera, in daycare and at home. It seems to have escalated in the last six months. She has a new room leader in daycare. Before she changed rooms in daycare, we only experienced these types of tantrums once in a blue moon. But now she rarely goes a day in daycare without an accident and at bedtime at home. Almost always results in tears and tantrum as soon as we finish her bedtime stories. I've been using your strategies for the last six to seven weeks. And while things are improving, there doesn't feel like there's any logic to her tantrums. Her dad and I do not give in to her tantrum. We don't reward the bad behavior. We don't engage in the tantrum. We apply your filing nails method. And yet she still decides to kick off even when it doesn't get her any results. I don't know what to do. She's very bright and caring. I don't want her to isolate herself by lashing out at teachers, peers, when she doesn't get her way. Okay, now they only do what works past the age of three and a half to four. So there must be some payoff for that. She must be getting attention at school or something. I don't know. But she's escalated it because it must be working better or something's upset her. Maybe she's being excluded from a friend group or something. She's really little for that to be honest, but maybe something like that's happening. And don't worry, it might not be anything huge. Whenever I say, oh, maybe something's gone wrong at school, parents often go, oh my God, what? And I say, might be something really little. Maybe they had to switch coat hooks with someone and they prefer their old coat hook. I've had a kid who was having a fit over that. We had to do some investigations to figure that one out. Anyway, so yeah, it's escalating because it's working or something's upsetting her. She's been switched in the class. She's getting away with stuff more. And she's that type that once you give her an inch, she goes a mile. So it's gotta be that or something's upsetting her. And it did mention the change in the leader at daycare. Yeah, change. So maybe her new teacher does let her get away with more or gives the wrong attention. I don't know. But I never criticize teachers. The reason is that they're just, you're the parent. Their behavior is on you, not the teacher. So I'm also suggesting something must be going on at home other than how you're being good at ignoring tantrums. Does she get away with stuff? Do you tend to give in to her or just avoid things that do upset her? A lot of parents do that. They don't realize they're doing it. They say, well, we always ignore the bad behavior. But then they'll avoid certain things that they know are going to make her upset. You don't do that. If I know something's going to upset a kid, you guarantee that I'm going to drive them right to that door. Because I want them to be able to be tested. I want to prove that I know how to handle this. That's like that kid that I first met. He was eight years old. And he said to me, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to have a fit. And I said, bring it on. Like I was happy he said that because I thought, I know how to exercise my leadership. I know how to use that to my advantage. He didn't have a tantrum because you could just see it in his face. He completely changed. He thought, oh, she knows what she's doing. He was great with me. He was a real handful. But he was great with me. So yeah, I never try to avoid a scene. If I know they're the types that are going to have them and you're ignoring them, I'll bet you're probably avoiding stuff that causes scenes. That would be my guess. And the school isn't. OK, the next one is Maggie from the United States. I have two boys. One is three and the other is one. So ask me about the older one. The struggle I have with discipline isn't that he's a brat at all. It's that he is happy and playful 100% of the time. There isn't a specific behavior that is a problem. The issue is that he wants to play all the time, even when I'm needing him to move to a task or do something necessary but not fun. He turns everything into a game and tries to play instead of obeying. If I ask him to come put his shoes on, he will grab his shoes and run around the house laughing, wanting me to chase him. If I tell him it's time to leave the playground, he will start playing hide and seek, so I have to chase him down. He is always happy, kind, and compassionate. It's just that his motivation to make things a game outweighs the desire to avoid punishment or a negative consequence. Even with a negative consequence, he's so good at making anything fun that he typically doesn't understand as a consequence. His school has expressed the same struggle to get him to understand when he's in trouble, because he is just having fun in any context and is unbothered. How can I help him distinguish when it's okay to play and when he needs to obey without dampening his joyful spirit? Well, that fun is part of his bad behavior because he's controlling you that way. He knows that you don't want him to do something or you do want him to do something, and he's turning it into a game because he's in control. So that is bad behavior, by the way. And he's old enough to understand that, for sure. So I would just start with the behavior board, and I would say something like this, put your shoes on within five minutes of being asked to do so, put a set of timer when that dinger goes and the shoes aren't on, you say, okay, so we have to go out now, but when we get home later, there'll be a consequence, okay? Follow the behavior board, start from scratch, just say put your shoes on within five minutes of being asked to do so, and then if he doesn't, then there's a consequence when you get home. Now, I'm a little bit confused. They said that he doesn't seem to care about consequences. Was that in there too? Yes, it was the idea that he can make any consequence fun. You're maybe not finding the right ones. He might not like putting 10 toys away within 10 minutes. You might want to time it. Maybe he likes putting 10 toys away within 30 minutes because he plays with them while he's doing it, or it could be put 10 toys away within one minute. Okay, that could be literally his consequence. I don't like doing that one. By the way, not everyone should use that one, but for this kid, maybe do it. Maybe he's got too much time to do a consequence. So he's having fun between moving the toys around. You see what I mean? 10 toys away, he's got one minute, it's plenty of time to put 10 toys away. So maybe try that, and then if he doesn't, then you go to the big kahuna, the big take something away. There must be something that he likes to do every single day or they likes to watch that you can take away for 24 hours. This might be a good time to touch on the word obey and your thoughts on that. I don't like that because I always say, you don't want to raise obedient soldiers because there's no pride in being obedient. There's only pride in being a good person. I want them to make their own choices. I never tell kids what to do. I say, here's the rules and boundaries. You follow them or not. If you don't follow them, then we have to come in with a consequence. Just like if I don't follow my rule, because I'm on there too, then I have a consequence, okay? I never micromanage kids. I don't tell them what to do. I do set down boundaries, rules and structures and habits and that sort of thing though. And I have them too though. They see that, you know, they remember they're not listening to you. They're watching you. They've got to see mom and dad also having consequences if they break a rule. That's what makes this all work. Monkey see, monkey do. It's not monkey hear, monkey know. It's not monkey listen, monkey forget it. Oh, that was painful. That hurt me too. I'm gonna need some aspirin after that one. Okay. Okay. The next one is Brandy from the United States. How big should or could you make an early behavior board rule? So for example, no interrupting. This is hard even for adults. So I wonder if it's too big to put on the behavior board for a five and seven year old. I don't want constant punishment, but is that behavior? But that behavior is one of the most frustrating ones. It is a, it's a hard one for me to say, it does come up a lot in coaching and I do deal with it, but it's certainly not the first thing I deal with. I'll often say, let's save that for session three or four, even five. It's a tricky one. So I don't want to tell you what I do and you can't put it on the board because it's, it's not really bad behavior. It's more of a habit that they've learned that you've trained them to do that, by the way, cause you haven't dealt with it from the time they were little. But yeah, I don't really want to address that. And I got to though. I have to know. Okay. I'll tell you what, there's one really simple method you could try. I wouldn't put it on the behavior board, but treat it like whining. The way I treat whining is you say, okay, when you talk like this, you know, say, okay. So from now on, whenever you talk like that, I'm going to pull my ear and that means you're whining. And if you keep doing it, you're going to get ignored until you talk nicely. And then you got to be quick. If they talk nicely, you got to answer them right away. The answer may still be no, but you will answer them. You can do the same thing with interrupting. And, but make sure they get enough attention. Make sure you very, you make it very clear what interrupting is when I'm on the phone. I mean, don't just say when your dad and I are talking, cause you could be talking all night and ignoring the kids, right? So you got to make it fair and reasonable. Plus, you know, you don't always get a lot of time with kids and most parents work these days. And then when the parent, then when you get home, the kids are usually in bed long before you are, sort of save your couple of time for after that. A lot of parents are trying to talk over the kids and it's just chaos. The more, the better you get at connecting with them and playing with them, the less likely they are to bother you and interrupt you by the way. Okay. So anyway, interrupting. So you make it very clear what interrupting is. Soon as they interrupt, say, it's the same kind of thing. You can have a signal. It has to be like a physical signal. You don't say something. You touch, touch your nose, whatever you want to do. Or you can just put your thumb down, you know, like face it down instead of up kind of thing. And you could say, and that tells you you're interrupting. If you continue to interrupt, there will be a consequence. Okay. So you're not going to be ignoring them. There'll just be a consequence later. So you can just say it like that. And you don't need, I wouldn't put it on the board though. Yeah. Or you can say, we'll just ignore you, but you're already trying to anyway. So it kind of is not quite the same as whining, but it's similar. So then say later on, say, I'll tell you what, you're interrupting me. So now we're not going to do this. We were going to do it. Yeah. But don't put it on a board. It's, it happens too often and it's too, sometimes I will, but only when I'm coaching, whatever. Okay. Is that good enough? Do you think? I feel like that covered it. Okay. Good. Okay. We have one final question. So Shayna from the United States, we do the pay of your board and I listened to you every day on the podcast for the past six weeks. We, the parents are on the board too. My daughter's rule is no lying. If she lies, I give her a consequence like white, the table. My rule for myself is follow through on what you say. In the car, she lied about something. So I told her that when we get home, she has a consequence. We got home, put some things away and told her that she needed to wipe the table. She then said that I owe her a consequence because I didn't make her do the consequence right when we got home. What do I do? I've already explained that the consequence can be completed when I say it's a good time. She's literally making me feel like I said something that I didn't. I still followed through and made her wipe the table. Oh, she's trying to take charge and she doesn't have a foot to stand on because you didn't say, you know what I would do? I would say when we get home, we'll both do our consequences. And then when you get home, you can get her to do hers first, yes. And then if she says, but you should have done yours, say, no, I'm gonna do mine after. That's all I would say. I would say I like that too. No, I'm gonna do mine after. Like that really quietly. If she keeps arguing and saying, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're lying, you're lying, you're sad. And I would just say, whatever. You see how my voice is very calm? I'm just a little confused because the parent apparently did not need a consequence up until they got home. And then it was only- Oh, I thought the parent already had a consequence coming to them. Oh, I see. Oh, so she said you're, oh, so it is because she didn't impose the kids' consequences as soon as they got home. Is that it? Oh, I see. Oh, okay. And the mom's rule is to follow through. Okay, we'll just say, well, there was no time on it, so we're gonna do it now. But you said you didn't follow through. I'd say, anyway, here's your consequence. See how I'm controlling the narrative? I'm in control, not her. She's trying to control you, that's all. Sounds like she's doing it too. So she's been trained to do that. They don't talk like that unless you've trained them to do that. Like if a kid talked to me like that, because I didn't say what time we were gonna do it. And I'd say, well, we're doing it now. Your 15 minutes starts now. That's not, you did this, you did it. I'd say, oh, 11 more minutes left. See how I'm not, I only answer it once, very sort of casually, like I don't get into it. And then that's it, I shut it down. Every time she says something about that afterwards, I go, whatever. I am not gonna enter into that conversation. She's on the low road when she's doing that. You stay on that high, calm road. If you start answering that and let her control you, now you're on the low road. And once you hit that low road, that ladder to the high road is kicked out from underneath you until the next day, even maybe even longer, okay? As soon as she's pulled you into that manipulative conversation, she is now in charge. As soon as you feel yourself starting to explain yourself, even though she already understands, they're in charge. The more you explain, the more they complain. Okay, was that better? That felt like it covered it. I think one thing though, that maybe might be important to cover is because when you do say the more you explain, the more they complain. I do think that some parents tend to want to explain themselves because again, they don't wanna be the my way or the highway, your authority style parent. But you did explain yourself. There was no time on that. Like I would say it like that too. There was no time on that. Anyway, yeah, I'm gonna get you to empty the dishwasher, the 15 minutes starts now. Not fair, you didn't, but 14 minutes left. You know, I'm just gonna say this. I don't remember a ton of discipline, but when you talk like that, it just turns me into like a five year old kid because that is literally how my mom spoke when we were being disciplined. Okay, well that's your choice. Here's this we're gonna do like that. There was no discussing it. It's just plus, but if I was in trouble, what happened when I got in trouble? Then we got to also give you a consequence. It was a big deal too, because I played it up. Oh, mom's in trouble. Uh-oh, what did I do now? And it was fun. They got to punish me too, but I ate it, I owned it. Okay, so I showed them that if there's no shame in doing something wrong, there's only shame in not being accountable for it or arguing it, right? We're all very good at admitting when we're wrong, very quick to admit it. You would also negotiate. If I gave you a consequence that you didn't wanna do, you'd go, okay, I'll tell you what. What do you want? Name your price. I think one of them once was, I think my son would have said this. I don't think you're not allowed to talk after dinner. I had to be quiet and I said, that's not gonna happen. Let's start the negotiations. So I would have given them anything to get out of that one. So, and basically they were kind of in charge of my consequences, but we had a blast doing that. So yeah, I would have said, let's start the negotiations because that's not gonna happen. I could not be quiet all night. That's just was never gonna happen. Okay, well, that's it for the questions. Okay, listen, the topic was reasons why discipline isn't working. It's working because you're not consistent, you're not confident, you haven't got a clear path on where you're going and you're not accountable either. If you're not accountable, because remember, they're watching you, they're not listening to you. If you're not accountable for your actions, without shame, just accept the fact that we all make mistakes and follow through with your own consequences and they are watching you. They're gonna feel so respected when they get to punish their parents for doing something wrong. Okay, so remember, remove the shame, remove all the discussions around all the bad behavior, remove all that, just get it done and then move on and have fun with your kids. Remember, fun is their love language. Did you notice that when I told you the, where I was like, oh, that's everything, you go, okay, listen. I was like, okay, okay. I know, but I just wanna drive the point home that leadership is really about making them feel good about themselves. Okay, that's the bottom line. If they feel good, they do good. Pride does not come from being told you're great, it comes from being great. And they know when they're good, they know when they're bad. If you allow them to continue to be bad, their self-respect is in the toilet, okay? You want them to have high self-esteem, high self-respect by bringing out the best in your children. And this is how you do it. It also brings out the best in you, by the way. Give your kids a voice. If they don't like something you're doing, my kids for sure they had a voice. They would have said something right away, okay? You wanna give them a voice. Anyway, now this is completed, I guess now. I think we can wrap it up. Okay, thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back again another time talking about another parenting topic. Happy parenting. Thanks for tuning in. If you're ready to dive deeper, check out bratbusters.com to learn more about the behavior board, parenting courses, and private 101 coaching with Lisa. If you've enjoyed the show so far, we'd love it if you could take a moment to follow, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more parents just like you. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Lisa is a parenting coach, mom, and grandmother. She is not a licensed psychologist or counselor. Her services do not replace the care of psychologists or other healthcare professionals. For a full disclaimer, please visit bratbusters.com forward slash disclaimer.