Taming the Shrewd in Your Child

The yelling, screaming and perhaps rolling on the floor are common sights and sounds of a child who is throwing a tantrum since he cannot get what he wants. My boy in his 3.5 years old now havs undergone the terrible twos period. We never spank him coz we do not want to use the cane as the deterrent to stop the act.

However, he does test our limits all the time. In fact, children should continue to do so even when they react adulthood coz we adults too are guilty of testing the patience and tolerance level of others especially our spouses or coworkers

In such a circumstances, the constant discipline and review of the behaviour is required all the time. Every child needs to know the reason for the disciplining session. For e.g. previously my boy liked to swing around the metal pole and threw tantrum in the mrt train during peak periods. This annoyed many passengers who were tired from work. The first time I told him to stop his act. He stopped but continued his mischief shortly. The second time, I reminded him to stop his act but added the consequence of leaving the train despite not reaching our mrt stop yet. He stopped temporarily and repeated the act again. There was no excuse to repeat the offence. We just alighted from the train. My boy was yelling and crying. However, I told him that he ignored all the reminders and he had to pay for the consequencee. Always reinforce the idea that you do what you preach.

Regardless of whether your child can understand the intention of every explanation, get him to acknowledge his wrong behaviour and never to repeat the mistake again. Then you can further add if the wrong behaviour has caused inconvenience to others (e.g. the passengers on the train are annoyed with him after a tired day, we get to our destination late coz we have to do a disciplinary lesson at place that is not the destination etc)

Teach him to empathize at a young age. This is definitely possible at the age of 2years old.