Sickening disgusting people.

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2ukenkerl is right. Giving dirty looks, calling them names and forcing them to do unnecessary things (like sit down when it's perfectly okay to stand up) is not discipline. It's abuse. Use ANOTHER way, a non-painful way, to discipline them.

It has NOT been scientifically proven that "gentle" discipline does not work in any way, shape or form. You're making that one up.

The simple truth is that it doesn't really matter what "type" of discipline a parent uses as long as they follow one simple rule: be clear and be consistent.

What Ana is describing are not just parents who discipline their children, but inconsistent, unclear, and abusive ones. Strict parenting works quite well. But parents who claim to be strict but are in fact unclear, unconsistent and/or abusive are completely ineffective. They confuse their kids and lower their self esteem. Don't defend these parents, Kramer, that isn't what you believe in. Look carefully at what she described. They weren't disciplining, they were being unreasonable.

I know you believe in tough love, but to get the results you describe I would have to guess that you are also quite clear and quite consistent. Would you actually call a child worthless for failing at something, or would you explain that you believe he can do it, and that you expect him to? It makes a huge difference to the child and how effective you are, which you choose.

I don't defend poor parenting of any stripe. Poor parenting can come in gentle forms, and it can come in strict forms. The main commonality isn't the level of discipline, but the lack of consistency and clarity in it.

While I am a lenient parent, I have HUGE respect for friends of ours who are quite tough parents. But I've watched closely. Those parents are NOT like the ones Ana described. Yes, they have high standards for their children. Yes, they have harsh consequences that I could never imagine issuing. But they also know when to let kids be kids, they show love and respect to their kids, and most importantly they are consistent and clear as to what is expected.

leechbabe,

You said enough to make sense. I don't think you should care if the child is NT or HFA or LFA or AS. Just treat them according to their needs. If the LFA kid LOVES loud noise, and it isn't TOO loud, LET THEM! If the NT child is hurt by moderately loud noise, don't punish them if they complain about going to some sports game, etc...

As for how a special needs child affects an NT person, etc... encourage them to be considerate. That LFA person should suffer SOME punishment if he/she exposes that NT child to such loud noises.

That is how *I* would do it. HECK, any decent dog trainer will tell you that punishment should FIT, and be after and related to the condition. The reasoning is to get the idea across to the dog and be humain. GRANTED, kids aren't dogs, but ****WHY**** do so many people treat their kids WORSE than a trainer treats a DOG!?!?!? And this AUTOMATICALLY means ACCORDING TO NEED! Of course, autistic people, or SPD, etc... have different senses, etc than normal NTs. THAT is where the asking should come in. After all, if a dog scratches(a BAD move), and it has a skin condition, or fleas, etc.... you do NOT punish it! You take care of the problem!

My dad once did something similar to my younger sister, when she wouldn't leave the playground when told to. He drove off intending to just go around the block, but it took much longer than the minute or two he thought it would. He never did anything like that again. Yet, still, my sister proved to be hugely scarred but that experience. It was so foolish, and he knows it. It drove her to fear abandonment in everything: relationships, jobs, and more. She found herself leaving every situation before it could leave her, and choosing men who could never commit. She was in therapy as an adult for years. People do make mistakes, and we all say things we shouldn't, but I hope no one, NO ONE on this forum will ever intentionally say something like this thinking it is a reasonable discipline technique.

This one struck a chord with me, because I've been quilty of saying something similar to my NT daughter. Well, different, but still the same effect. She just can't manage to ever be happy and it is so frustrating and difficult to deal with. She complains about the gifts she gets. She gets upset at her own birthday parties. She manages to turn everything that we try to do for her into an ugly situation. Basically, she really really acts like we've spoiled her rotten, and sometimes I wonder if we have, but then I see how it happens even when that effect wouldn't, and I know she needs professional evaluation (we're pretty clear that she isn't AS, but depression issues are likely), but getting from point A to point B is tough and sometimes I just don't know what to do.

When I was 11 I saw two little boys messing with a shopping cart at Marshalls and the mother came over to them and pulled one of them by his ear. It freaked me out.


When I was getting off work one day, I was at the bus stop waiting for my bus and I see this young mother who looked to be around my age. She had a baby in a stroller and two little kids. One of them was messing with the chain on the fence that goes around the park along the grass. She told him to come here and to stop and gave him a counting and she spanked him for not listening. I don't see how is messing with the chain a problem. I sure haven't seen kids get spanked in a while until this year. She didn't hit him real hard.
That was the kind of parenting I got from my mother as a little girl except she said she was going to spank me if I didn't stop.

That makes so much sense. Being consistent is the hardest part of parenting yet the most important part.

NT daughter is so great with her HFA sister yet also can be very cruel.

Just now they were playing in the lounge room. HFA daughter started kicking her legs, a stim she often does. NT daughter however was in the way and got kicked, so she responded with a really loud scream/growl combination that she often does. HFA daughter was straight away curled up with her hands over her ears. NT daughter knows the loud scream/growl combo gets HFA daughter to stop. BUT that is not the right response. HFA daughter accidentally kicked NT daughter, but NT daughter deliberately responded with something that hurt her sister.

So NT daughter gets put in time out. While she is there I tell HFA daughter kicking people is bad and hurts them. The when time out was up I told NT daughter to use her words 'stop it I don't like it' with stop hand gesture. Also try once again to explain to her that HFA daughter needs to kick sometimes and it was an accident and that NT daughter should not stand near HFA daughters legs at those times.

NT daughter gets upset that HFA daughter did not get put in time out and screams it is unfair and runs to her bedroom.

2 minutes later they are playing happily and lovingly together. Drives me nuts this constant balancing of two very different needs.

What really disturbs me is to see parents who act like they're ashamed of their autistic kids, or who punish the kid for actign autistic in public. I actually saw a woman hit her apparently HFA preteen for rocking in public. He was coping really well with being in a grocery store full of people, but he was using his stim to cope, so she slapped him. What a *****!

This right here has to be my biggest fear with parenting. While you have NT and HFA, I have HFA/AS and MFA. Things HFA gets put in time out for, MFA does not, but more out of the problem that MFA doesn't understand time out, HFA does. I'm waiting for the day when he realizes that they don't get punished the same way.

Trying to explain to HFA that MFA needs to be left alone when he's melting down is another hard problem. HFA will often out of his own fears lash out at MFA. MFA will scream, and that will cause HFA to scream for him to stop while covering his ears. This is my biggest motivator for getting them two separate bedrooms when we move in March.

Indeed. Kramer is making stuff up. Cite your sources like a grown-up, Kramer. There are near fifty years of behavioral science suggesting the exact opposite.

Aww, DW. It does matter. Punishment-based discipline doesn't communicate much, wastes time, makes resentment.

I guess I was SO agast at the OTHER garbage, that I missed this!

Gentle discipline DOES work! It is a PROVEN FACT! It works with animals, it worked with me, I have seen it work with others.

YOU are the type of person that thinks things like leave it to beaver is a JOKE and NEVER HAPPENED!

NEWS for you! I was there Around the time of leave it to beaver, and perhaps a bit later. I DID go around town like he did, DID talk to adults like he did and, YES, if I said something wrong, etc..., I would often just be sat down, and told what was wrong and why. THAT "discipline" WORKED! I WAS sometimes told to stay in corners and that usually had little effect. I changed my behaviour ONLY because I knew what they wanted to get across. If people yelled at me, or hit me, for no good reason, I DIDN'T change.

BTW I STILL remember training my dog to go to the bathroom in a certain area. Even IT was disciplined gently. If we beat it, or put it on a leash, do you think it would even have made the connection?

Sometimes, the gentle stuff works BETTER! If you insist on saying otherwise, I guess there are a lot of aliens around, including ME! I guess australian shepards aren't native to this planet either!

<--- This is how I feel when I'm trying to get through the idea to parents like you, that there's discipline and respecting your child as a person and a human being. I've seen your other posts in the parents area. Telling parents to lord over their Aspie children, in order to teach them..I don't know, I mean what do you think they're going to learn other than their parents are to be feared?

People, like Kramer, think that respect and fear are the same thing. They AREN'T! They are pretty much OPPOSITE!

Currently I'm using the age difference to explain why they are being treated differently. I've tried telling 5yo NT that her 3yo HFA sister thinks differently but when NT daughter is angry or emotional it does not get through. So I go with the simpler option of you are 5, when you were 3 you did not go to time out for XYZ. Mostly it works.

Correct discipline can be administered without ever raising your voice. I just wish we had that mastered here.

I never call them idiots, though, so that's something. And I've stopped taking them to stores with me. I know they need to learn to deal with different situations, but seeing as how I can't deal with it, oh well. The big one talks the whole time, the middle one has to pick up half the things in the store and touch the other half, can't just point or even just touch. And the little one, well, she's 2. That says volumes.

I would point out that sometimes when a parent seems mean, with the exception of obvious cases such as hitting or name calling, it may be that you have just come upon them after a long shopping trip of saying, as I have so often done,

"Come on. Come. On. Put that down and come on. Grab onto the cart. Grab on with your hand. No, we can't buy that. We're not buying it. Because the answer is no. We don't need it. We have enough toys. Christmas is next week. Besides, you already have some. No, you can't have an early present. Come on! I'm actually walking forward, you need to be next to me. Don't hand her that! Agh! Now I have to take it away. I can't hear you, the baby is crying and your sister is trying to tell me something. No, I said we couldn't buy it. Put it back. Come on. You come back here! Don't you go around that corner. Dang it, where did he go? I can't get the cart through here... No, don't chase him, he'll run! You come back around that corner or you're grounded from computer! One... two... you are so lucky you came back when you did. I was just about to say three. If I say we can't buy it, we can't. You don't go running off. That just gets you in trouble, it won't make me change my answer. Do you understand? Say it, then. Use words. I know you want to go home, but I need to buy some things and I can't remember what they are anymore!"

Just one of those three kids is enough to push you over the edge if you don't watch yourself non-stop, which makes it hard to find the best price on paper towels. But I know you're talking about the ones who are "beyond the pale."

It's just that I never forgot how hard I cried the day I was already grumpy and had that same little boy, aged 3, in my shopping cart. I had foolishly gone down the grocery store toy aisle to get to the registers and he was howling for a toy. I figured I was doing the right thing by saying no and sticking to it. Crying was his natural response. It wasn't succeeding, but I was. I went to the self checkout to avoid bothering the people in line but apparently this failed because after a few minutes some bloody-minded, sharp-tongued old demon cat from Hell saw fit to approach me and in a side-swiping manner ask if I'd ever heard of spanking. As she walked away (quickly, because evil is cowardly) I manged to gasp, "Have you ever heard of minding your own business?" I wish I'd screamed it at her and scared her wig off. I hope whatever demon was possessing her at the time has done plenty of damage. I guess I need to learn forgiveness. Right now, I still feel an unwholesome joy when I think of the infirmities of old age that are hers to cherish.

You definitely have a way with words!! You are a good writer.