Letters From Listeners

I heard a caller speaking about her sons fighting. I have 3 sons, now ages 28, 26, and 24. When they were young, my middle son especially, would throw these fits when playing games with his brother.

He would throw things, hit, scream and yell. He seemed to hate everyone and everything. One thing that was VERY effective for us, was writing age appropriate sentences - such as "I will not hit". As they got older, "I will not hit my brother because it hurts him." One time he sat at the table for 2 hours and the longer he sat, the more sentences he wrote. I would hear him yell, "I don't know why you make me write these STUPID SENTENCES ANYWAY."

I didn't give in, I didn't cave, I didn't yell back... I just simply said "10 more" and he sat until they were written. It was worse than a time out, worse than taking something away for him. And today, he is calm, cool, collected and college educated. Guess what... he plays softball on his brother's softball team!

I tried every tactic under the sun! Not everything will work for every kid, but boy he hated writing those sentences. He does still mention the sentences from time to time.