We have been looking at 5 different types of misbehavior: disobedience, attention-getting behaviors, breaking rules and routines, deliberately hurting others, and wrong behavior rooted in real problems. So far we have covered disobedience and attention-getting, and breaking rules and routines. Today we tackle the question of what to do with a child who is acting out aggressively or deliberately hurting others. The primary tool for teaching a child who is hurting others or acting out aggressively is the “time out.” When carried out consistently and properly, this can be a very effective means of helping a child learn appropriate behavior. But it can fail to accomplish this goal if it…

We have been looking at 5 different types of misbehavior: disobedience, attention-getting, breaking rules and routines, deliberately hurting others, and wrong behavior rooted in real problems. So far we have covered disobedience and attention-getting behaviors. We now come to the third of these: breaking rules and routines. Rules and routines are expectations of family members that are clear and have been taught over the years. We keep some of ours printed out and posted at strategic locations throughout the house (we did this even before the kids could read!). These are things that kids know about, but tend to ‘forget’ over and over again. Examples are: not finishing school work,…