Reply to 6 year old hit someone at school

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "6 year old hit someone at school — consequences?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everyone advocating consequences to make the kid unhappy enough not to repeat the behavior fails to realize a 6 year old who hits out of anger or frustration is not thinking about any reward or consequence in the moment.  Even as adults we sometimes do something out of frustration or anger we regret when we know there are consequences to our behavior.  They are not stopping and thinking, “hmm I don’t like being teased and I feel like hitting.  Would I rather hit them and lose video time or not hit and get video time tonight”

The “punishment” we use in similar cases is simply the time taken discussing the incident, talking about better choices, reading books and practicing strategies to recognize and diffuse building tension, and role playing asking an adult for help before losing control.  This work takes time my child would rather spend playing with their legos.  Consequences might also mean avoiding triggering circumstances.  For example even if my child wants to play on the playground after school I will not allow them to if the previous day they struggled to control themselves appropriately.  This is to keep them and others safe and I explain it that way.  It is not a punishment to make them unhappy.  They feel shame about their behavior afterwards.  They often cry when discussing the incident hours after it occurs.  They are getting better with repeated practice and support at school from their 1st grade teacher.

OP- your child is struggling and getting help.  We don’t punish a kid struggling to read- we support them.  Keep supporting your kid as they learn how to regulate their emotions.[/quote]

OP here

This makes a lot of sense. Thanks. This is more or less what we have been doing. I guess I just questioned it when I saw the other posts about consequences.

Thank you also to those who replied re: special needs. You are right that this is a very different kind of challenge. However I’ve seen consequences help with keeping him on track before, and I know that parenting without consequences will not be helpful to him in the long run.

We are adding in more role play to practice. He’s gotten a lot better about keeping hands to himself over the last year so I’m really hopeful this will resolve with time. He is overly sensitive to other kids’ teasing (rejection dysphoria-like reactions, for the ADHD parents out there) so we need to help him with that also.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics