It was Easter Sunday and I was in church with my wife and son. I took him down to the front for the kids story time and all of the kids were sitting there listening, except for mine who was screaming about wanting to be with his mum. The talk finishes and it is time to take the kids out to their program. I pick him up and he decides to scream a bit louder and I am trying to hold my nerve and stay calm. Then he starts pounding my face with lefts and rights and I am now getting cranky as other parents and kids are walking by watching a 33 year old man getting beat up by a 2 and a half year old. I took him into a quiet corner and read him the riot act about not hitting Daddy and being a good boy. This did no good as he was far too tired to care, he just wanted the comfort of Mummy. I offered him the chance to say sorry, which he declined so I thought to myself 'screw this, I am taking you home you little so and so'. I loaded him into the car took him home, gave him another chance to say sorry which he again refused. I sent him to his room and he promptly fell aspleep while I sat down and tried to work out what had gone wrong. What had supposed to be a family trip to church turned out to be WW3 with me having taken 10 of my sons best shots to the head.
Once he woke up, I had some stern words with him and he understood what he had done wrong and apologised. I went back an picked up my wife and we had a discussion about how to proceed. My son has been going to her for comfort lately and we decieded that she needed to come down hard on him so that he knew that he had done a very bad thing. His behaviour has shown significant improvement since then.
Key learnings from this distater;
1. Don't worry about feeling embarrassed if your kid has a meltdown in public, stick to your guns and deal with the issue.
2. Don't discipline out of anger. I would have loved to have given my son a smack on the backside but it would have been to appease my anger rather than to correct his behaviour.
3. Don't make a threat that you are not prepared to carry out.
4. Make sure that both parents are unfied in the course of action to take. Stick to the plan.
4. It is difficult to block punches if you are holding a toddler.
Positives that came out of the event.
1. My son has a handy left/right combination.
2. I learnt a bit about disciplining a toddler having a public meltdown.
By Peter Denman Copyright Aspire Consulting 2008 For more information or if you would like to reproduce this material please contact Peter Denman aspireconsulting@bigpond.com http://www.learnerdad.com.au/
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