Discipline: January 2007 Archives

Sam called me a chickenbutt the other day.

It came out of nowhere. It was a word I'd never heard her use before. And I was suddenly caught in a discipline area I didn't expect to hit for at least another year or so.

The story starts when I was trying to get Sam dressed to go to day care. She goes for about five hours a day, and she loves it. She calls it "going to see my friends."

In the last couple of months, she has become a champion dawdler. What used to take her five seconds to do now takes almost a minute. Just making it out of her room, down the stairs and into the kitchen -- roughly a seven-second trip for the average short-legged person -- can last for minutes.

Anyway, she was dawdling, and I was trying to get her to move faster.

Me: "C'mon, Sam. Please go get your shoes from your room while I get dressed."

Sam (continuing to make a stuffed bear dance on my bed): "OK."

Me: "NOW, Sam."

Sam: "Mommy, you're a chickenbutt."

I almost burst out laughing. Hearing the word "chickenbutt" in her cute little 3-year-old voice is, to be honest, pretty funny. It just sounds so wrong.

But then I remembered the big reaction I had the first time I heard her do an impression of her daddy hammering a nail, which included a swear word at the end. Thanks in part to my major reaction to that, it took us weeks to get her to stop.

So I very calmly turned away, hiding the smile on my face, and said, "That's not a nice thing to say at all. That hurts my feelings. Where did you learn that word?"

Sam: "I just sayed it."

Me: "Did one of your friends at day care say that word?"

Sam: "No. I just sayed it."

Can she possibly be able to put "chicken" and "butt" together on her own to make an insult? If so, I feel like I'm falling down on the job here.

How do you feel about name-calling? Is it something you allow your kids to do? Why or why not?

For a few weeks now, Sam's been in full-on defiance mode.

She's her own person, and she will exert her will in any and every way possible.

As I said before, she's learning how to be funny. That is, of course, a learning process. Right now, she thinks it's funny to kick at me, especially when I'm trying to change her diaper.

After repeated verbal warnings to stop, I put her in the time-out chair for just that reason the other day. She sat in the chair, huffing at me and kicking at anything remotely close to the chair.

I told her she had to stop that, too. She yelled, "No, I don't want to!" And that earned her more time in the time-out chair.

After a few minutes, I said, "Now are you calmed down and ready to talk?" (She knows this is the cue that she'll be able to get up soon, so usually as soon as her little hiney hits the chair, she's saying, "I'm ready to talk now.")

I asked her: "Why did I put you in the time-out chair?"

Sam: "Because you are very, very mean to me."

I was flabbergasted. Does she really see me this way? Am I Mommy Dearest?

I explained that, no, I am not very mean to her. Instead, I am trying to make her understand that she has to listen to me. When I have told her to stop something, she must stop it -- the first time I say so. That way, she won't get hurt or hurt other people.

A day later, she was in the time-out chair for scratching me repeatedly on the neck. She was trying to tickle me, but I told her several times to stop because she was hurting me.

When I said, "Do you need to sit in the time-out chair?" Sam replied, "Yes," and flopped herself into it.

I was suspicious.

Me: "Why did I make you sit in the time-out chair?"

Sam: "Because I tickled you."

Me (sighing): "No. You weren't tickling me. You were hurting me. And you had to sit in the time-out chair because I told you to stop doing something and you didn't. So, why are you in the time-out chair?"

Sam: "Because I listened to you."

I feel like I'm talking to a wall -- a very intelligent wall that can outsmart me.

What frustrates you about parenting? How do you handle it when your child becomes openly defiant?