Book Review: “Don’t Swear with your Mouth Full!” by Cary S. Chugh, Ph.D

I received this book at the beginning of the summer, while life was somewhat laid back, and before all the tension of extended school, new school, meetings, IEPs, and more work than I’ve had in a summer season. Without further ado, allow to review “Don’t Swear with Your Mouth Full! When conventional discipline fails unconventional children.” The I read the subtitle, I thought, Wow, that applies to my household!

I have good children, but their behavior breaks down when I’m home alone with them.  In the crazy time between work and dinner, behaviors ramp up as I try to find time to unwind, clean up, and start dinner so I was eager to this book. It explores, in great deal, conventional discipline techniques, particularly time outs, and why they might not be working on your child.  In the past, a few minutes in the corner made her contrite and she would not repeat the behavior the rest of the night or maybe even for a week or two.

Since the summer, she’s been pushing boundaries and time out’s are increasingly ineffective.  Just last week she put herself in a time out to escape real discipline. Enter Dr. Chugh’s book.  It introduces the idea of using an unpleasant discipline so that the child will remember and avoid it.  Back in the day, when you messed up you got put to work: hard, awful work, just like the scene in “Little Mermaid 2”, when the king makes Ariel clean all the barnacles off of, well, half the sea floor it seems.

A key element of this punishment, however, is that it must relate to the “crime”, and it is also critical that your child feel like they can control their time out length. The best punishment I could think of was to make Amelia understand was to clean the playroom, which is usually a disaster. Amelia has been hitting, and at first, I was stumped by how to make two seemingly disparate things connected, until a week ago. She was in a “I don’t wanna” mood.  The family room and playroom lay in ruins, the sink was full of dishes, and I had  to cook.  I needed help – and there was only one person around to do that.  After a few attempts to bribe Amelia into cleaning up toys, I threatened a time out, with a countdown.  When I got to “3”, approaching her to lead her into time out, she landed a firm “smack!” on my arm.   I marched her directly into the corner, and rather than set a timer or keep her there indefinitely, I told her, “If you clean the family room and toy room, you can come out.  Otherwise, stay in the corner.”  This was appropriate because she hit me because she was disobeying my order to clean her toys, and because she was in control of when and how the punishment ended. After a few minutes, I asked her if she wanted to come out.  She nodded as I reminded her what she had to do.  She got up and went into the playroom as I supervised her clean up.

Success!  While I still have a lot of disciplining choices to make, I recommend this book to parents. Not only does Dr. Chugh explore the techniques of disciplines and come up with new, helpful ideas, he also offer suggestions for corrections, tips for talking to your child about discipline, and specific ideas for toddlers and teens. Take your time in reading it and digest it, then come up with a plan that works for your child.  Dr. Chugh very kindly answered some of my questions personally, and you can visit his site as well at www.carychugh.com.