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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP, I'm the poster who posted about "The Explosive Child".   I can promise you that your type of thinking and reaction is VERY common among parents, even the best of parents.  They feel that if they are only more strict, more consistent with their discipline, and more punitive and take more and more things away, their child will finall learn to do what he is told and not be disrespective, be obedient, etc.

The analogy I would like you to consider is that of a learning-disabled teen who has dyslexia and simply cannot read.   Now, all your other children can read just fine.   So when they do not sit down and finish their book reports, you the parent can say "Fine, no TV/ice cream/sports until you finish that book and get your book report done."   If you are consisten, firm, and lay out your expectations clearly, and follow through with the punishement if the children don't obey, then the children will learn to get the books read and the book report written.

But your dyslexic child can't read the book (in this hypothesis) and can't write the book report -- at least not without a lot of help.   You can punish and be firm, and say "No child of mine is going to fail to turn in a book report!" but none of that will help the child with his dyslexia problem, will it?  You aren't actually addressing the problem, by being firm and punishing and following through.   You are just going to cause a child to either a) explode at you in fruatration or b) withdraw and say "I don't care" because he can't fix his problem by himself.

I strongly suspect that OP's child has a disability in controlling his temper and thinking of ways to respond to frustration that he is able to handle occasionally (such as around his dad) but  inly with great effort, but is probably around mom and siblings more and that's when it really comes out.   If so, there's plenty of help out there for him!   I'm not saying he has a disability to excuse this behavior in any way -- just to say that punishing him for it isn't actually solving the problem!   He probably could use a little medications to calm things down (and my guess is mom could use a little too as they seem to set each other off) while he gets some therapy for learning how to deal with anger and frustration in more productive ways.[/quote]

Thank you! I plan to spend a few hours today reading the book, you're analogy makes sense. I'm struggling and I'm sorry I get defensive, I'm really looking for solutions, my son is wonderful, he's a great student, so smart, has a great personality when he's not raging at us. He's funny, he plays music for his siblings, he's creative. I love everything about him minus when he's screaming at me.

And yes, when he could care less about being punished when he swears or screams at us it's tough to come up with effective discipline to show him we aren't going to tolerate the behavior. I also do not want to set up a fail fail situation with his siblings where they feel they can behave poorly. [/quote]

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