My 9 year old son tends to find the easy way out in whatever he does. For example, he has to get a math book in our math ands science pile of about 8 books. After one look he whines and say he can’t find it. When I go look for it, the math book is in the pile, but slightly covered up by a wider folder on the top. This kind of situation happens a lot and I think it’s due to laziness. So I decided to tell him, when you only look once and not choose to be diligent, by lifting up each book, you are choosing to be lazy. Is this harmful? I grew up without much emotional guidance from my mother and did not recognize the emotions I struggled with until I was in my late teens. I met a mentor then who would label the more complicated emotions she saw in me when I was interacting with people and when I explained what I thought of a person (like jealousy, pride, resentment, anger).. after a while, I would recognize patterns in myself and we would discuss the underlying problem to why I behaved such a way, how to overcome etc. After doing these with her quite a bit I began to recognize these emotions in myself and others. Would you recommend doing this in TSG?

I am a new TSG member, just 1 week old. My 5 year old doesn't follow any instruction. She is also strong willed. And till when she was 4 years old, she was a very social, extroverted, self confident and positive kid. But she takes correction very personally. She often now says she is bad. She has difficulty socializing. She doesn't mingle with a new group of kids like she used to before. She will stand away from the group. She finds it difficult to share things with her sister and her friends. She also wants the last say in any corrections we do which we usually give in. She also seems to have lost her old bright eyed happy self. She also can kick her parents for things like when we don't listen when she is interrupting the conversation even if we say that we are in the middle of a talk and will attend to her in a minute. My parenting skills are sort of at both ends. After several command, I get sort of exhausted and would raise my voice. Then I feel guilty and become too soft with her afterwards. I also tend to protect her from her dad's and grandma's correction which I feel can affect her emotionally. I feel it's sort of manipulative e.g grandma can say to her " if you don't get into bed and get enough sleep you won't grow while all your friends will be taller than you."This is the mildest example I can give. My daughter also often hurts her younger sister who is very gentle but now hits back in self defense.
I want to give a stable environment for her and my younger one. I know there are several issues going on, but I would like to know how I can make her know that her behavior might not be good but she is not bad. How can I help her also to improve her socialising skills? Thank you

11-yo boy is constantly finding ways to break the rules. It is usually very small things, so he earns a chore and then does something else unrelated an hour or so later. He stays calm and is compliant with the chores we give him for the most part, however these are established/pre-taught rules. Are our tolerances too low? Do we keep giving him chores or escalate into the rule of 3?

Here's a scenario. He will walk on the coffee table which is not allowed, so he will earn a chore. Later he will get a treat without asking, so he will earn a chore. Later it will be something else. This is every day, throughout the day.

About 1 year into TSG, & seems that we moving backwards with our 16-year-old son who has his struggles with ADHD. Mom had begun escalating & yelling when our son was going out of instructional control & power struggling. She has since chosen to override his consequences of earning 24 hours loss of privileges.

He’s gone out twice with friends, because she has vocalized her disapproval of TSG & agreed with him. I have tried to be transparent & let her own the decision, letting our son know that he does not have my permission.

Yesterday, he power struggled for about 35 minutes & was explosive in her presence, using profanities, insulting me & pushing a couch several feet, throwing a lamp on the floor & throwing a drink at me. This was after he initially said he accepted a chore for bypassing parental controls watching something inappropriate on Netflix. When I told him it was 20 minutes of chores, he power struggled then exploded.

I did not react or get sucked in. Tried to tell him & her to calm down, & take a breath. My wife initially tried getting him to just do the chores, yelled at him & offered to help him do the chores herself to try to get him to comply (nope). She began acting anxious & erratic, blaming me telling me it should never have gotten to this.

After her & I continued to be at odds with each other, I tried to compromise with her offering her a solution where she could get him to agree to 1 hour of chores at which point I agreed he could go out if he did that. Well, he told her he wouldn’t, power struggled with me in the morning the next day, then got home & she led the interaction. He stalled saying he had homework (watched YouTube mostly). It worked out as I expected & had warned her that he would then say he didn’t have time to do 1 hour of chores before going out. Still led to her disagreeing that he should be held to the 1 hour agreed of chores, & she blamed me & TSG in the end.

Don’t know where to go from here, as we’ve gone from mom not agreeing but letting the consequences and chores happen, to now her actively overriding and giving our son permission to go out & have privileges. I’ve basically told our son & her that I’m going to continue to do TSG, and I will not be unblocking his apps or allowing privileges of technology until he’s ready to accept 24 hours (oh, he cursed at her as well when he was frustrated because he didn’t want to wait for her to take him to his friends house but wanted me to)

Any thoughts? Thank you so

Out 4 year old learned (to my horror) the “f” word from our child neighbor who lives behind us. Our children will talk over the fence and play occasionally. The child over the fence is in the first grade and told my children that his mom uses this word towards him. This made me so sad! The mom and child go to church..the child is in a Catholic school…it seems he is doted on by his mom. She is kind to my children and seems to be sacrificing much for her child..working two jobs just to provide, creating experiences for him, and celebrating life’s occasions with him. There is no dad presence or other siblings. How do I address this? Do I say anything to the mom? My husband told all of our children (including the neighbor child) that this is a word none of them should say and we did limit their time together without our supervision. This is the first time any of our 5 children 10 and under (to my knowledge) have heard this word and our 4 year old will say it when he is not getting his way. We were at the store today and he was tired and he just started saying it repeatedly. We left immediately and I told old him we don’t say that word and it is very hurtful. It’s very difficult for me to not take this personally, and I feel angry that he has heard this word. I’m not sure I handled it correctly because he has not stopped saying the word on occasion. He heard this word maybe 2-3 weeks ago. He has said you “f”… even writing that makes my heart sink. We have tried very intentionally to promote teamwork and respect, and to hear my small child say this is devastating.

Dear Nicholeen,

I am new to TSG and currently on module 3 of the course.

I was inspired to join the course because I desperately want to help my daughter, aged 5. Last year, we had quite a few incidents in nursery where my daughter was aggressive with the other children. However, the teachers assured me it was normal and they thought she would be much happier when she started in Reception. (This is the first year of full time school in the UK). Unfortunately, now in Reception, we are still having incidents where my daughter is aggressive with other children. She pinches, pushes them against the wall and always grabs them too tightly. Today, she hugged a child very tightly and when the teacher told her that this wasn’t appropriate, she did it again. When I spoke to her about it tonight she said ‘it’s terrible being me because I don’t have any friends’ which really breaks my heart. She said that some of the other children have told her that she is terrible.

At a recent birthday party, my husband and I watched as other children played and my daughter was following them around, trying to be a part of the group but not quite being able to make it.

At home, we’ve always struggled to discipline her and to set boundaries and guidelines. I admit that we have coddled her and followed the ‘gentle’ style of parenting. I’ve learned that this is where her demanding, controlling, angry, and argumentative behaviour has come from and I also sense that she is anxious and often looks visibly anxious and fizzy.

I suffer with anxiety and social anxiety. As a child, I always had a sense that I didn’t belong anywhere and found it hard to make friends and fit in. I’m still facing these issues today which I’m trying hard to correct, and it worries me that I don’t have the skills required to help my daughter and I have contributed to her inability to connect with her peers.

Her teacher has been very supportive and has told me she feels like she wants to protect my daughter. She said there is absolutely no malicious intent but she feels like my daughter just can’t help herself. She said that she feels we should look into working with an educational psychologist to get to the bottom of what’s going on

As i’m still at the start of the course, I wondered if I could ask for some guidance please on what I should do about the issues at school. Underneath, she is a wonderful, bright, loving child and with the right guidance I really think she can thrive.

Many thanks x

My 4 year old pretends to be sick (fake coughing, dramatically complaining about certain symptoms that we can tell are not present) to get attention. It’s especially a problem when one of her siblings is sick but she is not. Throws a tantrum when a sibling gets medicine and she does not. We’ve explained that pretending to be sick is dishonest and remind her of times that she was sick and they weren’t and she also got meds when they didn’t. We also are still giving her a normal amount of attention during these times (as in, we are not completely ignoring her as if she doesn’t exist to favor the sick child). Do we do anything about this? My husband thinks we should start issuing some sort of punishment for the lying, but I don’t know what that would look like or if it would be appropriate. Any opinions?

Our 15 year old son is rude and dismissive to our 9 year old son. He has an attitude that his brother is a nuisance much of the time and that he does not want to be bothered by him. We have tried SODA's and given consequences, and we have coached him through proper interactions with his brother, but it has not helped. We need some help with the best way to handle this issue.

Thank you.

What type of consequence should be given to a 5 year old child while away from home, especially during a vacation or a long trip.

We have been doing the rule of 3 with our 11 year old. The first time, it took her over 90 hours to finish her 24 hour loss of privileges because she kept needing to start over/did not choose to follow instructions. She stayed in instructional control for part of a day but lost her privileges again later in the afternoon. She refuses to do anything for hours at a time, including her schoolwork (we homeschool). She would read for hours to delay accepting her consequences, so we need to keep her sitting close to an adult, which makes it hard to give her sibling the attention she should have. Any tips on how to motivate her to choose to obey? It feels like she just loves to power struggle. She continually tries to steal privileges as well.