Children Behavioral problems

I hear what you're saying and agree with it for the most part. What I'm doing now with my children is trying to terach them about good decisions and bad decisions. They get to choose what they are going to do but say it's a bad decision. I'm not going to just let it go and say they will do better next time. For example the child has hit their sister because they wanted the toy the sister has. Bad decision.. Well the consequence is sitting on the stairs for 7 minutes. the child refuses to do this. I give the child one last chance and say to him you have to choices you can either sit in timeout for 7 minutes and then go back to playing or you can decide not to sit in time out and then lose other privalledges. that way the child has a decision on what he does but realizes that each action that he takes has a reaction... I learned this in family counsiling it's actually very effective because you do this with almost every situation, not only when they are bad but also when they are wanting to do something you help them learn to weight the pro's and con's. Another example you decide you are going to take your child somewhere fun for the day but your going to leave the decision up to the child. You have a budget and have a couple places the child can go. One is the movies and the child can take a friend, two is chuckee cheese without the friend, and three is roller skating and then maybe stop for ice cream on the way home. This way the child see they have many choices.. Like I said giving them choices and them teaching them to list the pros and cons will stay with them for life. Because as they get older they don't need you to point out the pro's and con's they just start to automatically think about it. As for teenagers they can get very moody but I'm going to attempt the approach my aunt did. I will let you wear what ever you want to a degree, and let you express you individuality however you want within reason. My cousin was a great kid she was very well behaved but you would look at her and see a punk for a couple of month and then a goth for the next she was constantly changing her hair color and style and her clothing style as well. And heck if my kid wants to wear chains dye his/her hair blue and wear black nail polish so be it as long as the grades are up and they aren't making off the wall stupid decision. Because that was the way my aunt was with my cousin she told her she was free to express her self but she had to maintain good grades in order to do so and make good decisions. So I'll give it a try I have a while til i hit the teeneage yrs with my oldest who is 8..

Yeah now adays people mark a lot of stuff of as a phase but maybe it's not. It's always best to make sure that you constantly know what is going on with your child and that if they have violent tendencies that you try and get them help. You have to be on top of everything now adays you can't let anything that might be significant go by an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If we catch the troubled behavior early and treat it we might be able to keep it from getting anyworse...