Speaking of Boys by Michael Thompson PhD

Author:Michael Thompson, PhD [Michael, Thompson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49120-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Little Boy Angry about Time-Outs

Q: Why does my four-year-old son get so angry when I try to send him to his room? For example, sometimes he runs around the TV room and jumps on the furniture and knocks things over. If I have spoken to him several times and he hasn't stopped, then I go into the den and stop him and tell him he has to have a time-out in his room. He cries and says he does not want to go. When I insist, he swears and throws things. His behavior going into a time-out is almost always worse than the misbehavior that got him the time-out in the first place. How should I handle this?

MGT: I know that time-outs are the modern recommended punishment. I have recommended them myself and have used them with my own children. But they do not work with all children, nor do they work for all children of all ages. I think your son may be too young for a time-out. It may panic him to be away from you when you are angry with him. The fact that his misbehavior escalates after you tell him about the punishment suggests to me that he is experiencing some separation anxiety from you. My best guess is that the idea of being in his room alone is more than he can bear at the age of four. How big is your house? How far away is his room? Does he panic when you give him some other kind of punishment?

Mastering anger is the big issue for four-and five-year-old boys. They very often greet our authority with confrontation, puffing out their chests or shouting in an effort to bowl us over. Their ferocious behavior often successfully hides the fact that they are scared. Boys experience the same need for attachment and nurturance that girls do at the same age. A time-out can be scary for a boy if he believes that he is being abandoned or that you have withdrawn your love. I have known boys who have been deeply frightened to be sent to their rooms; it feels like exile to them.

We have to be careful not to be taken in by the tough-boy mask that our sons sometimes show us. We have to understand that two things can be true at the same moment. A boy can be trying to frighten you and he can, at the same time, be quite easily frightened himself. The best book on boy anger is Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are. Remember Max? The little boy who dressed up like a wolf and told his mother, “I'll eat you up!” She sent him to his room and he then became totally filled with anger and went off to the land of wild things and said, “Let the wild rumpus begin.” But when the monsters tried to make Max the king of all wild things he said “no.” He wanted to be back home where people loved him best of all (and his dinner was still warm).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.