Many foster children are removed from their families for physical abuse. Not simply spankings, but beatings! Bruises, marks, and scars!
These darling children come to live in our foster home after this abuse. They are perfect little angels, and you wonder how did this happen.
For a little while. And then: DEMANDS, FITS, HITTING, WHINING – the behaviors that would challenge the Dalai Lama…
These children NEED structure, boundaries, discipline…
As a foster parent, you CANNOT spank!
1-2-3-TIME OUT!!! Yes! That’s it! The perfect method to discipline a child.
I’m going out on a limb to say “NO”!
As readers of this website may know, our 3-year-old son adopted through foster care is the master of fit-throwing. (Yesterday, as I was driving down the road, he was throwing Easter eggs at me from the back seat. I threw them out the window as he threw them at me. Observers probably thought the Easter bunny was driving by.)
We institute the 1-2-3 time-out as discipline for misbehavior. However, this week, I did something different.
“NO! You are not getting candy for supper! Stop hitting me and go sit in your father’s lap right now and tell him what you did was wrong!”
Would you believe it calmed him down sooner, and he behaved the rest of the evening?
A TIME-IN! Time-In Discipline?
Last year, we had a 12-year-old foster child, Big Helper, whose mother had voluntarily given up her children instead of divorcing her incarcerated husband. (I don’t get it either)
Big Helper was dealing with intense feelings of the ultimate rejection. I began to notice that her most intense breakdowns occurred after she got in trouble. At one point, she even ran away one evening while I was out-of-town on business. Apparently, the time-out form of discipline was another rejection to her, and she simply was emotionally overwhelmed.
I didn’t know anything of a time-in until just before she left us.
[…] time-out do not work AT ALL. Penelope W has posted a great article on her site (Foster2Forever) that you have to […]