First I must be very strong that I do not believe in hitting or any kind of striking a child, is all appropriate discipline and the Academy of Pediatrics strongly says that too and we say that in the Child Care Book, but what do you do with a child who is out of control or who is difficult to manage? First of all it is a challenge, it's not easy, but we do know that hitting never is the answer either, that it gave the child the real message that they would often use that technique when they interact with their friends or others, or their younger siblings. So that's just got to be off the screen. So what do you use? Well, there have been a number of techniques and approaches, mainly around the issue of limit setting of occasionally you are withdrawing your child to a place with no stimulation for a certain amount of time, not a long time but certain amount of time, usually if you take the three years of age, three minutes four years four minutes something like that, and they are not going to have any kind of stimulus.
Host: Like a time out that kind of thing.
Speaker: And time outs, time outs are not easy either and the key is that a young child distraction works and also avoiding the situations that the child you know it's going to be difficult. If you have a really difficult profile who is in a difficult period actually let's say, you don't take them to places where they have the potential to act out whether it's a super market or whether it's public spaces, you just try and figure out ways around that or do it at times where they are not so crowded or other things to modify.
So avoiding situations where a child is likely to act out is the first step, that's a prevention. Second is using techniques that make the child understand that that behavior is not acceptable and if you have to withdraw the child into a quiet room or quiet place for a couple of minutes in order to reinforce that and then there is the need sometimes to not reward, very definitely not to reward when that behavior happens and be very conscious of doing that and not giving mixed messages about rewarding things when the behavior has been outrageous.
So those are the kinds of mixes of behavioral interventions. Hitting doesn't work, no matter what people think, it may make your frustration go away for a moment but very quickly after when parents hit, they feel bad because it doesn't feel good to your child and it certainly doesn't feel good to be hit.
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