Happy Kids: The Secrets to Raising Well-Behaved, Contented Children Read online

  Cathy Glass

  Happy

  Kids

  The secret to raising well-behaved,

  contented children

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Introduction: Why?

  CHAPTER ONE First Years

  Baby and the 3Rs: 0–1

  Toddler and the Terrible Twos: 1–3

  Some Techniques

  CHAPTER TWO Preschool

  Rising Five: 3–5

  CHAPTER THREE More Techniques

  CHAPTER FOUR School

  Starting School: 5–8

  Big Fish in a Little Pond: 9–11

  CHAPTER FIVE Factors Affecting Behaviour

  Stress Factors

  Siblings

  CHAPTER SIX Difficult Children

  Turning around a Difficult Child

  Maintaining Control

  Reforming Siblings

  CHAPTER SEVEN Not Your Own

  Step-parents

  Acting Parents

  Teachers

  Others who Look after Children

  CHAPTER EIGHT Other Factors

  Diet

  Special Needs

  CHAPTER NINE Metamorphosis

  Pre-teen and Early Teen: 11–15

  Older Teen: 15–18

  CHAPTER TEN Grown Up

  Young Adults

  Conclusion

  Remember

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction: Why?

  Why another book on child rearing? The idea came from my readers. After the publication of my fostering memoirs I received thousands of emails from parents and childcare workers around the world. They sent their love and best wishes for the children I had written about, and also praised me for the way I had managed the children’s often very difficult behaviour:

  I tried that method and it worked …

  What a good idea …

  My son used to be very controlling so I handled it as you did and (amazingly) he stopped.

  I’d never thought of dealing with my daughter’s tantrums that way before …

  I now talk to my children rather than at them.

  You should write a book!

  Their comments made me realise that the techniques I use for successfully changing children’s unacceptable behaviour were not universally known – indeed far from it. I wasn’t sure I knew what I did, only that it worked. So I began analysing how I approached guiding, disciplining and modifying children’s behaviour, the psychology that lay behind my techniques and why they worked. This book is the result.

  As a parent you want the best for your child: you want them to be a happy, self-assured individual who can fit confidently into society. As a parent you are responsible for making that happen. There will be others involved in forming your child – teachers, siblings, friends, relatives, etc. – who will have some influence on your child, but ultimately your son or daughter will be the product of your parenting, good and bad.

  I often feel it is a great pity that, as parents, we are not given training in the job of child rearing. No other profession would unleash an employee on a job without basic training and on-going monitoring, but when we become parents, the baby is put into our arms and, apart from a few words of encouragement from a kindly midwife and weekly trips to the clinic to weigh the baby, we’re left to get on with it. We’re supposed to know what to do, having somehow absorbed along the way the contents of volumes of baby and child-rearing manuals, and the accumulated knowledge of a century of child psychologists. The most important job in the world is left to ‘instinct', without a single course on the techniques of child rearing. Little wonder we quickly feel inadequate when baby doesn’t do as expected. And why should he? He relies solely on us, and yet we don’t always know what to do.

  Unlike parents, as a foster carer I receive regular training in all aspects of child development, including teaching children how to behave correctly. My 3Rs technique is based on this training and on years and years of experience – I’ve had plenty of children to practise on during my fostering career! The 3Rs are Request, Repeat and Reassure. The technique is incredibly easy and successful, and can be applied to all ages.

  If you have older children, I suggest you still start at the beginning of this book. Read about the 3Rs in relation to the early years, where I explain the basis of the technique, so that you can see where its roots lie and learn the principles. Once you know these, you can use the 3Rs with children of any age to bring them up to be contented and well behaved.

  The 3Rs = success.

  Note: the term ‘parent’ as used in this book includes the person who performs that role and is the child’s main care-giver.

  CHAPTER ONE

  First Years

  Baby and the 3Rs: 0–1

  In the last fifty years advice on looking after baby has altered dramatically, and has almost gone full circle – from the 1950s strict routines of four-hourly feeds and plenty of fresh air, through Dr Spock’s liberation of the 1960s where mum and baby knew best, to the 1970s embrace with the ‘tribal’ approach, where baby spent all day in a sling strapped to one of its parents and all night in their bed. Recently there has been a move back to the stricter routine, as many mothers return to work and exhausted parents grapple with feeding on demand and the following day’s hectic work schedule.

  This book is concerned with children’s behaviour, so I shall not be discussing the pros and cons of different baby-rearing regimes, nor the basics of looking after baby, for example feeding and bathing. There are already thousands of books on the market that do this, and most parents will find they adapt an approach which best suits their lifestyle. However, a working routine is an intrinsic and important part of the 3Rs and successfully raising a contented baby comes down to how you deal with two things: sleep and crying.

  Sleep

  Sleep takes on a whole new meaning with the arrival of a baby, simply because babies don’t. Well, they do, but not necessarily when the parents need to sleep, which is at night, and preferably for seven unbroken hours. A newborn baby can’t sleep through the night, as it can’t hold enough food in its tiny stomach. So nature has built in a fail-safe way of making sure baby is fed: mouth wide open, it screams the house down. This hunger cry is not the cry of a child who has hurt itself and needs comforting but nature’s inbuilt response to hunger, which guarantees that baby can’t be ignored, is fed and therefore survives and thrives. We have to accept that babies cry when they need feeding.

  But why is baby still crying when it has been fed and changed? Good question. While baby manuals and child psychologists offer a wealth of possibilities for a baby not settling – from the trauma of birth to sheer bloody-mindedness – no one knows for sure. Other reasons may include being too warm, or cold, needing to be held, boredom, tiredness, thirst, colic and illness, but the end result is the same: crying.

  Baby has just spent nine months tucked up snugly in a warm, wet womb, and no matter how pretty the nursery, it’s hardly a good substitute for this previous all-enveloping embrace – well, not to begin with at least. If baby is to settle when you put him to sleep or go back to sleep if he’s woken he will require a lot of reassuring. You will need to reassure baby that his needs will be met, as well as teaching him what you want in respect of routine, sleeping, etc. This can be achieved by using the 3Rs.

  Request, Repeat and Reassure

  Assuming baby is not ill (in which case seek medical advice), that the room is the right temperature and that baby is fed an
d clean, resettle the crying baby using the 3Rs: Request, Repeat and Reassure. First, Request baby to go back to sleep by tucking him in and settling, preferably without picking him up. Come out of the room, if baby has his own room, or move away from the cot if baby is in the parents’ room. Keep the lighting to a minimum – just enough for you to see what you are doing – and don’t make a lot of noise. It was dark in the womb and relatively quiet, and a sudden noise or bright light will startle baby.

  If baby now settles and goes back to sleep, then you don’t need the second two stages in the 3Rs – well, not this time at least. But if baby is still screaming, then go to stages two and three. Repeat the procedure by going quietly into baby’s room or to the cot, and Reassure by tucking him in and resettling him. Then come out or move away. If baby is colicky, then change his position and wind him to release the trapped air, preferably not by taking him out of the cot but by leaning over to do this. Then come out or move away.

  Still screaming? Do it again. Repeat and Reassure. This time with some verbal reassurance – ‘Sshhh, sshh, there, there … sleep time’ – in a low, calming voice. Just a few words so that baby doesn’t feel alone and is reassured by the sound of your voice, which he will already be used to, having heard it in the womb and since birth.

  Still hasn’t settled? Repeat the procedure by going quietly into baby’s room or to the cot, and Reassure by tucking him in and resettling him. Repeat the procedure for as long as is necessary each and every time baby cries for an extended period. The time needed to resettle will quickly become less and less, until after a few nights (no more than five), the baby will settle within moments of being put to bed and go back to sleep after being fed.

  What not to do at night

  The above assumes that baby isn’t sleeping in the same bed as its parents, which is true of the majority of Western homes. I have never practised or encouraged baby sleeping in the same bed. It can be a difficult habit to break, and parents need some privacy, given that the rest of their lives have been taken over by the new arrival. It is also unnecessary to have baby in the same bed if baby is resettled and reassured by using the 3Rs.

  I have never, and would never, leave a baby to cry itself to sleep, and this is something I feel most strongly about. Not only is it distressing for the baby not to have its needs met by being reassured and resettled, but it is also very distressing for parents to listen to their baby crying. No caring parent could happily turn over and go back to sleep with a baby shrieking in the room next door. Not having its needs met can engender insecurity in a baby, and guilt in the parents for not meeting its needs. Some mothers report feeling physically sick if they hear their baby cry and don’t answer its call. After all, Mother Nature has designed the cry to be responded to and it’s far easier (and loving) to get up and Reassure baby than lie there trying to blot out the shrieks.

  Some of the saddest cases I have seen as a foster carer have been when babies were left to cry themselves to sleep, before they came into care, often as a result of the parents being too drunk or drugged to hear or answer their baby’s call. After a while the baby stops crying, completely, having learned there is no point: its needs are not going to be met, there’s no one coming, so it may as well shut up. These babies lie almost lifeless in their cots, in absolute silence, staring at the ceiling with blank expressionless eyes. Even when you go into their rooms they don’t look at you or smile.

  Extreme cases, yes, but if you ignore baby’s cries for long enough, baby will stop crying – you wouldn’t keep asking for something that never ever came. I’m not suggesting you rush in at the slightest murmur – baby may turn over and go back to sleep. But if baby is crying for no obvious reason, then resettle using the 3Rs.

  Daytime routine

  Don’t be surprised if you have to resettle baby occasionally even after you have established a routine and baby is settling straight after feeding or being put down for a rest. Babies vary greatly in the amount of reassurance and sleep they need, and also to the degree to which they are affected by external stimuli. While one baby might sleep through an entire house party, another might be woken and become anxious by a door closing. Baby literature that continually quotes a norm – for example, at four months baby should be sleeping for x amount of hours – should be viewed with caution, as any parent will verify. One baby I looked after slept fourteen (unbroken) hours a night from two months old. Another only ever managed seven (broken) hours until she was two, but using the 3Rs she did learn to lie in her cot contentedly until I went in. The length of time needed to resettle a baby decreases each time you use the 3Rs, until eventually baby realises that its needs will be met and there’s no need to panic and scream.

  That’s night-time. So what happens during the day when baby won’t settle? You apply the same 3Rs technique. You will be organising your day to suit your lifestyle, and baby will slowly be fitting in. Play with baby, and give him or her lots of kisses and cuddles. You can’t give a young baby too much attention, despite what some baby gurus suggest; you can’t and won’t spoil a baby, so enjoy him or her during the day when he or she is awake – babies thrive on love and attention. But when it’s time for baby to sleep, or settle in the cot, while you get on with something else or just have a coffee, baby needs to learn what is expected. So use the 3Rs approach.

  I would always suggest settling baby for a daytime sleep in the cot he or she sleeps in at night, rather than on the sofa or in the pram. It reinforces the idea that the cot and room equals sleep/quiet time. Make the room as dark and quiet as possible, as it is at night. Request baby to go to sleep by going through your routine of laying him down and tucking him in; then come out of the room just as you did at night-time. If baby doesn’t settle, then go in quietly and Repeat by resettling. Come out again and Repeat for as long as is necessary. Investment of time now (as at night) will soon be well rewarded. Try not to pick up baby if he’s supposed to be settling in his cot. There will be plenty of other times during the day when you can pick him up, cuddle and play with him (as indeed you should), but if you want baby to go down for a nap, Reassure and resettle, then come out. It can be very confusing for a baby to be continuously picked up and put down; he or she will become unsettled by your mixed messages, and won’t know what you want. Request, Repeat and Reassure gives baby a clear message which he or she will soon follow.

  If you establish the routine and ground rules right from the beginning, so that baby knows what to expect, your role as a parent will be that much easier as the child grows. Request, Repeat and Reassure equals security and routine for babies, and in due course well-adjusted, loving and respectful children who are a credit to your parenting.

  Toddler and the Terrible Twos: 1–3

  If you were surprised by just how much of a personality and mind of its own baby had in the first year, it’s nothing compared to what happens now. To your absolute delight, baby crawls, begins to talk, toddles and then walks confidently. He or she is now able to explore a whole new world, which had hitherto been out of reach. With this mobility comes limitless possibilities and choices; and the toddler makes more demands, becomes increasingly assertive and challenges you.

  Toddlers are inquisitive and naturally want to explore the world around them; they also want to take responsibility for their own lives – more so than they are capable of. They want to be liked, which is a great bonus for parents (and carers), as a young child can quickly learn that cooperation puts them in a favourable light and makes their parents happy. During these early years the child also imitates the behaviour of those around them – particularly those he or she spends most time with (parents and carers) – and uses their behaviour as a role model. This imitation is another bonus in socialising the child and achieving acceptable behaviour, but just as a young child imitates positive behaviour so he or she will also copy negative behaviour.

  Dr Spock (a 1960s child psychologist) asserted that the key to a child’s good behaviour was positive guidance in a loving
family. Agreed. But even in the most loving of families there will still be plenty of instances where a young child behaves unacceptably. Often this negative behaviour takes the parents by surprise, as it appears to have come from nowhere, and is not generic in the family’s behaviour. Outbursts of negative behaviour are a natural part of a young child’s development, as he or she begins to test the boundaries of their autonomy, but this unacceptable behaviour still needs addressing; otherwise it will develop and become the norm.

  Terrible twos

  The ‘terrible twos’ is a term which sums up the little individual who, having discovered his or her autonomy, has developed very strong views on many issues, and clearly believes he or she knows best. This stage can start before the child’s second birthday and extend long after, and is regarded by many parents as the most trying time in a child’s life. With the toddler’s liberation from the cot and pram he or she has gained a tremendous feeling of freedom: freedom to explore, make decisions and leave his or her mark on the world. And although this is a wondrous and amazing discovery for a very young child, it can also be very frightening if left unchecked.

  Freedom is fantastic as long as it is controlled and moderated by someone who knows better than the child and has the child’s best interests at heart. This is the reason we, as parents, put in place boundaries that set limits on the freedom of behaviour, beyond which the child may not go. Boundaries of acceptable behaviour show the child how to behave and take his or her place in both the family and society at large. During the process of putting in place boundaries, the young child will be encouraged to do certain things and stopped from doing other things – by example, through verbal direction and ultimately by the parent’s action. If, as the parent, you Request your child to do something, or stop doing something negative, then you must see through your Request – Request, Repeat and Reassure, where Reassure becomes Reaffirm as you make the toddler do as you have asked.