Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Paolo has had his exams and we've gone to the school to get his 2nd quarterly grades and now, in a couple weeks time, it's gonna be his 6th birthday. Those were what have happened since last time I posted.

It's not difficult to discipline Paolo. What's hard is for himself to remember the things that he has to do and those he has to do at a later time. But for us, we tell him what to do and he does it. I think from his point of view there is still no clear anticipation of the logical consequence of the choices he make at a given time. For Paolo what is important is still the "here and now."

Take for example doing his assignment after coming home from school. We've already told him that when he gets back from school he could either take a nap first or, if he doesn't want to, he could go ahead and do his assignment. That's before watching tv or going to the neighbor's house and playing with Amos. But over and over that's not what he does. When Paolo gets home at around 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon he changes out of his uniform and goes to play with the 3 year old boy neighbor, Amos. Later that evening, when I heard about that I punished him by spanking his hand. It was what we agreed on. Before I left in the morning I told he was gonna get it if doesn't do his assignment first before playing after coming home from school. He knows me that I keep my word especially when it comes to him getting some punishment for breaking a rule or a promise.

What's challenging me now though is that it seems spanking him is not as effective anymore as it was when he was younger. After getting spanked he was even proud to tell me that he wasn't crying even though tears were welling in his eyes. One thing I wanted him to learn is to control emotions, especially anger and to tolerate some hurt. And he has done that. The concern, however, for me is that I'm not getting the reaction I was hoping for. So what I did was I made him write in three (3) sheets of paper the rule, "I will study first before playing." Sure enough, after one page of doing that he broke and promised not to forget that rule.