There are a few things which helped me get better at parenting:
* Timeouts rarely work. Try to respond with something which makes sense. Like if your kid throws around things, they need to clean up (with your help).
* If things get out of hand, I stay with or hold my kid until the situation gets better and then discuss/explain the current situation and how we will act next time.
* It's always good to figure out how your kid feels in a bad situation. Like: "I guess you're feeling <a>, because of <b>?" Sometimes kids do not understand their own feelings and telling them helps them cope better.
* Try to stay calm, always. Sometimes it's hard or even impossible. But getting loud or angry never helps. If I can keep control of myself I usually can control the situation and respond appropriately.
* Your job as a parent is to provide your kid with all necessities of life and with love. Everything else is extra, like toys, sweets, leisure activities. Sometimes it helps to tune down the extras if necessary.
* Admit your errors and say sorry if appropriate.
There's a youtube channel which I actually enjoyed while my youngest one was a bit smaller. It's a bit strange to look for help on parenting stuff on youtube, but a lot of his advice was actually quite good I tought: https://www.youtube.com/user/LiveOnPurposeTV/featured
I don't think the two options you present in your first point are mutually exclusive. Cleaning up the mess is not a "consequence", it is simply the expected behavior. Failing to clean up the mess is what results in the timeout. We frequently use "timeout until you clean up the mess". The consequence ends as soon as the appropriate behavior starts.
A timeout can also a good way to allow emotions to cool (on both sides) and facilitate a better discussion. Each of my kids tends to "lose it" in a different direction (anxiety, sadness/crying, anger), and it's definitely important to support them as they work on getting their emotions back under control. This is going to look different for every kid though. My daughter needs space, one of my sons needs physical contact, the other needs a lot of verbal reassurance. It's important to help them find the ways they can work through their "big feelings" in a healthy way.
Your last point is critical. My father had a lot of strengths as a parent, but one thing I _never_ saw him do was apologize (not to me, not to my siblings, not to my mother). It's one thing I have really focused on "doing better" (something my father frequently encouraged me to do)
The way you describe a timeout makes sense. There can only be a meaningful interaction among both parties when emotions are under control. I also tell my kid to take a minute off and calm down first if necessary.
There was a german parenting TV show a few years ago where the host repeatedly made children of various parents sit somewhere alone until they cooled off. This is the first thing I thought of when cooldown was mentioned. It's somehow easier to be consistent that way: Yelling, hitting, swearing, whatever. The child will know what will happen next and hopefully avoid it.
But cooldown alone stops making sense, when it is used for everything. I think it's better to respond with a consequential task which makes sense according to the cause. Even though it is harder to find and follow through sometimes.
I think there are two major categories of situations where a correction is needed. Times when an excepted behavior is not taking place ("Clean up that mess") and times when an unacceptable behavior has already taken place (Sibling A hit Sibling B).
In the first case, emotions may not be that high to start out with (and my never get that high). The timeout is a "self-inflicted" punishment that lasts until they do what's expected of them. There are certainly times when the "Do a thing!"/"No!" loop has spiraled out of control, and in that case the timeout first serves as a cooldown, then a conversation can take place laying out the expectations more clearly.
In the second case, tempers have generally already flared. There is generally an action that needs to take place in the short term ("Apologize to your brother"), and there generally needs to be some sort of punitive consequence. In that case the timeout a) gives tempers a chance to cool, and b) serves the same self-inflicted punishment as before ("You're going to be in timeout until you apologize to your brother"). The other (major) benefit is that it buys time for me to decide on an appropriate punishment outside the heat of the moment.
> There was a german parenting TV show a few years ago where the host repeatedly made children of various parents sit somewhere alone until they cooled off.
I'm not a huge fan of being "alone" as a punishment. For me the concept of "timeout" and "alone" are two separate things. There may indeed be times when being alone is what the kid needs to cool down before they can talk (my daughter is absolutely this way), but I think it's important for that to be their choice (and it's equally important for them know it (can be) an acceptable and healthy choice). For other kids (like both of my boys) being alone is just going to work them up more. I generally spend the first few minutes of a timeout sitting right next to them (or with them on my lap) until they have been able to calm down and we can have a conversation.
It's probably also important to note that we're all just talking about the "ideal" here. I'm sure none of us meet our own ideals as consistently as we'd like...
I've always been bothered by the "Apologize to your brother" idea.
In general, it is totally fake, and everybody knows this. I'd rather not encourage dishonesty. Granted, dishonesty may be a useful skill, but I think kids can figure it out without parental encouragement.
It establishes the expected behavior. You're absolutely right that it doesn't teach sincerity, but that's not the point. It builds the habit, and it forces acknowledgement that another party was harmed (even if they lack the empathy to care about that yet, empathy starts with awareness).
Sincerity is largely learned by example. It's important for parents to model sincere apologies when they screw up. To each other, to their kids, etc.
I agree with this sentiment but I think "apologizing even when you don't feel like you did anything wrong" is the kind of dishonesty that's absolutely necessary to get by in society and that you should definitely teach your kids.
It’s also about showing the sibling that was hit that you as a parent consider the behavior unacceptable. They need to feel that grownups react, even if they realize the apology is fake.
Absolutely not: it's essential, because all but psychopathic people learn how to do things for real by going through the actions. This is essential training.
> Cleaning up the mess is not a "consequence", it is simply the expected behavior.
If you are directing the behavior due to the child’s action (or it's effects), it's a cobsequence.
A common term for consequences that are nonpunitive but instead correct or mitigate undesired effects of the behavior is “natural consequences”, and there is quite a lot of parenting literature favoring them as generally preferable to other consequences, especially for young children.
You have a choice. You can clean up the mess now or in five minutes. If you clean it up now, I’ll start a timer and I will help for one full minute. If you wait five minutes, you have to clean it yourself.
It’s their mess and their responsibility but there is no reason I can’t help. And these types of choices very often work for us.
I'm realizing I'm apparently a fan of decoupling parenting...
In my case I'm happy to help if asked politely (and if it's not being abused). That's separate from the rest of the process though, and applies regardless of how we got to the cleaning up in the first place.
> My daughter needs space, one of my sons needs physical contact, the other needs a lot of verbal reassurance. It's important to help them find the ways they can work through their "big feelings" in a healthy way.
For the two kids that need 'coaching', what happens when you're not around? Will you at some point leave them alone to deal with things solo?
Yeah, for context, they just turned three (twins). I don't expect them to have perfected emotional coping skills at this point (though they're certainly both well on their way).
I'm sure every kid is different, but in the case of our daughter, her emotional maturity really seemed to develop around the time she turned four.
Yeah, stuff like this is bad. As a parent you need to stop this. Gets harder the older they are. But how?
A few steps:
- Control yourself emotionally. You're a role model for your child. Your child can't control their emotion and you can't change their emotion either. But you can control yours.
- Set a firm limit. "I won't let you hit anyone else".
- Stay calm. There is no way your child can calm down if you aren't.
- Connect to your child. There's a reason your child does the thing it does. Why? Figure it out! Be empathic. Acknowledge their need.
- Model them appropriate actions. Show them the best way how to handle a situation like this from now on.
I'm just reiterating things from the youtube channel in the top post. Stuff like this takes time. But it's also normal. Kids simply do not have all the strategies and emotional control to handle some situations appropriately like adults do.
But, be sure that you know. Control yourself. Be a model to them and show them, how it's done. Sooner or later they will (hopefully) adapt your strategy.
And that's why I'm against timeouts. They are not an appropriate response. Imagine getting a timeout of your boss when you get angry with a bug of your co-worker. That would not be an appropriate response either. Your boss would need to show you a strategy, how to handle conflicts now and in the future. Be the same to your kids.
The "timeout" is not a punishment in response to an action, it's a way to defuse the situation and facilitate the sorts of conversations you're describing.
Modulo the differences in kids and situations: I’ve seen timeouts intended as punishments and I agree they typically don’t work (not that punishment “works” particularly well either).
But it can be great as a way to defuse a situation when the participant(s) is/are amped up to the point where they can’t think rationally can not only be useful but be welcome. Adults do this too: they get angry or ovwrstimulated and take a walk to “cool off”. Kids can get amped up by all sorts of emotions, not just anger (which appears to be uncommon in most young kids).
As for punishment: I think it’s mainly for the benefit of the one administering it (something that also carries through to the criminal “justice” system). However facing the consequences of your actions is useful (when the milk spills in your lap you need to change your clothes because sitting in wet sticky clothes is no fun either...so learn. It to spill things). And as kids get older (8+...?), their requirements become more abstract so can the consequences as well. But ideally still connected to the infraction.
The purpose of a timeout for toddlers / small children is to have a negative (but not harmful) consequence they understand so they can make a choice as to whether to continue a certain behavior or not. There are very few appropriate negative consequences available that a toddler will understand.
Punishment does have its place in behavioral training but is not the first or even third method to rely on. Parents should be first prioritizing on rewarding positive behaviors.
The criminal justice system is a terrible example of punishment used effectively. Punishment in behavioral training is best used in a very tight feedback loop (immediately after action, not after 5 years of court cases) and reliably.
> The purpose of a timeout for toddlers / small children is to have a negative (but not harmful) consequence they understand...
Looks like we disagree.
In general I am opposed to punishment (obviously one cannot be absolute on such a matter) but in particular: the younger the child the less agency and less ability to connect cause and effect, so I consider punishment pretty much ineffective for toddler ages.
But society is a huge parallel processing system so my opinion need not be universal.
I see timeouts as a chance for emotional thinking to subside and return to more rational thoughts. They intervene during undesired behaviors, and provide a place to complete the behavior (tantrum).
I completely agree regarding the criminal justice system.
As used in this thread starter, "time out" means being sent away as punishment. Going to "cool off", or to use physical separation to end/prevent conflicts, is a not a punishment "time out".
A good test is whether going away is for the goer's immediate benefit. It should be.
* Better to maintain a "allowed list" VS an "off-limits list" when setting boundaries. 1) The latter is simply not doable and everything you missed legitimately becomes allowed. 2) When in doubt your kid can come to you and ask if something is on the allowed list (something that doesn't make sense with an off-limits list).
* Try not to say "no!". Approach things positively. Better to ask "What are seats made for?" as opposed to "Don't stand on the seats!". When your kid is curious about something that's not allowed say: "This is not made for playing but we can have a look together."
* Timeouts may not work. But you can always cancel the activities with bad behavior.
It basically boils down to teaching a "why yes?" attitude VS "why not?". Make your kid think about what makes sense as opposed to trying out nonsensical things (like coloring the walls etc).
With my daughter, if I have to say "no" or "not now" I always try to provide an explanation, which ranges from "we don't have time now because we have <some time/date/location> to get to" to "I think that's too dangerous <explanation of risks>". I've done that every since she could speak. She's 10 years old now and I still do it. That being said, I don't often tell her "no". If she wants to do something that involves risk of injury (or something similar, like making a huge mess), I walk her through what she wants to do and get her to see where she needs to be proactive. She doesn't always listen.
For example (when she was younger), I have a four-wheeled cart for moving things which she wanted to ride in the driveway. I pointed out that she definitely would fall off and land on the concrete at some point, which made her understand she needed to wear protective gear (knee/elbow pads, wrist guards, and a helmet... basically skating/skateboarding gear). Of course, one time I came home from work and my wife told me my daughter needed to tell me something. That something was that she rode the cart without the gear and fell off and injured her hands and her chin by falling face first into the concrete (luckily it was only a minor injury). I don't think she ever tried to ride the cart again, though I wasn't opposed to it (with the proper gear of course).
This is just an anecdote to sort of "illustrate the process" I suppose. I hope it is at least moderately useful. And this makes it sound easy, which it is definitely not. It's tough, but so far it seems to have worked well.
As opposed to "no" or "not now" you can also say "wait a moment" or "I'll help you later". No need to explain. Just make sure there's a way forward. She just needs to hold on a bit. Giving "no" even with an explanation as to why not might not yet show a way forward.
My daughter always comes with all kinds of questions when it's bedtime (and she doesn't want to sleep). Simply answer: "Let's talk about that tomorrow. Now it's time to sleep."
Telling children what you want them to do rather than what you don't want them to do puts the focus on the desired action. A positive outcome is more likely.
It's fascinating how those communication skills you learn as a parent can be used in everyday life. Everything you said also applies if you fill in a leading role in a company.
> * Timeouts rarely work. Try to respond with something which makes sense. Like if your kid throws around things, they need to clean up (with your help).
I usually find timeouts to be more of a cool-down period; both for my kids as well as me. They're never long (I have young kids) so we're talking on the order of a couple of minutes. They provide a good break from whatever it is they were doing and give them a chance to re-approach the situation.
This is entirely opposite of my experience. We do timeouts for harmful things (like hitting newborn baby brother, running into the street) or if he is having a tantrum and isn't cooling down.
We have had great success with positive parenting (I think there is a book of that same name). Instead of timeouts we focus on calming and identifying emotions. It is empowering for children to be able to self-identity overwhelming emotions and handle them appropriately, which is a skill more adults would learn as well (myself included!)
Simple tricks are to tie physical actions to images to help them calm down. "Smell the flowers" then "blow out the candles" instead of "take deep breaths". We ask him to identify his emotion: "Are you frustrated?" "No, I'm sad!" Leading to a chat about the source of the reaction and not just deal with just the physical event.
Instead of a timeout we ask if he wants to go calm his body then come back when he is ready. Our 4 year old has been saying things like "I need to go calm my body!" when he gets upset, which is amazing. If he is in a situation in which he needs to be removed actively we don't treat it like punishment we say "let's go calm our bodies before coming back."
Having a GOAL to the timeout gives your child agency and helps them navigate emotions.
Presumably they're now in school and have bitten, hit, scratched, pushed, or otherwise physically harmed others (most kids do particularly in the transition from parallel to cooperative play; greed is a very strong instinct). What's your spin on that? You just suggest that the child removes themselves if they feel like it?
I'm not hippy dippy over here, just applying empathy and learning to time-outs. Instead of punishments for bad actions they are a chance for him to communicate what's wrong and a chance to teach him how to handle his emotions. It is a long ass road for sure, and I certain don't leave him to handle physical situations himself. It is only occasionally he gets upset about something and notices he needs to calm himself down. Most of the time, he needs guidance.
His preschool is actually where most of these techniques come from and they spend a bunch of time identifying feelings and keeping things positive/productive and do things like have the kids jump on a mini-trampoline to burn off excess energy.
If he is hitting someone, I immediately move him away and try to work him through talking/breathing/etc. Most really bad situations can be avoided by putting him in a position to succeed. That just means stuff like don't keep him out until 11pm and don't drag him around unhappily if we can help it. He is only 4 but we try to respect his personhood - he doesn't make the rules but we consider his wants/dislikes and warn him when we know he is going to need to do something he won't like. In turn, he tends to behave better in those situations - he has been on a 13 hour flight with no drama. In his life, has only required a kicking/screaming drag away response maybe once or twice. A lot of that is simply avoiding those situations before they develop.
All kids push boundaries so we try not to set fake goalposts, (i.e. No cake for you if you do this! But then give him the cake anyway.) We only threaten things we are willing to go through with, even if they mean shittiness for everyone. We've left stores before we wanted to, left dinners early and left parties early to avoid meltdowns. While it sucks, those are big events that prove we aren't making empty threats but informing him of real boundaries. When we know we can't uphold something we simply don't threaten it.
He also has a younger brother (2 yrs) and of course they fight over toys often. The progression goes from: "Did you ask or just grab? Can you share/take turns?" If the younger one is grabbing from him (which is more common): "Can you trade/offer him an alternative toy? Can you ask him to wait instead of fighting for it?" If none of that works, I take the toy away for a while and say "that's the rule". It's great to blame the "rules" because they can't argue against them.
I'd say the difference is that "timeouts" are putting the kid in a corner to cool down vs. taking them aside to actively calm them down. I think when most people say timeouts they are talking about separating the child and letting them stew for a while.
We ran into this problem. Our oldest would just hit him again 5 minutes after the timeout. It got to the point where she would hit him, say "timeout!" and go to her timeout spot. She hated the timeout (she cried during it), but she decided it was worth it.
She basically took every chance she could to hurt him. If she was walking by him, she would purposefully step on his fingers. Or hip check him. Or smack him on top of his head.
We tried pretty much everything, and nothing worked. Ultimately she grew out of the behavior after about 8 months.
We did the timeout when our 2 yr old first hit new baby and it reduce the behavior short term, but we also had our 2 year old start holding the newborn (with assistance) while giving a lot of praise. That replacement of the negative behavior with the positive really helped the 2yr old's attitude towards new baby.
I'm curious as a future parent: How old was she, and how do you think she would have responded with an explaination of what was going on: She's jealous because she sees the baby getting more attention than she is, and explaining when she was a baby, she got just as much attention and that you love them both equally.
She was about 2 and a half when they were born. To be more specific, we actually had twins. And she only did it to one of them. Explaining things are what we tried first - its always our first goto - explain, redirect, etc.
When we tried to explain things, she would mostly just ignore our words and change the subject. There was even a period of time where even mentioning "baby" would cause her to yell "NO BABY!".
BTW, you might have heard of the "terrible twos". But the "threenager" stage was much worse for us.
Some of the defiance is kinda funny, depending upon your sense of humor. Like when my wife said "I hope when you get older you call mommy to tell her how much you love her", and she said "I'm going to call you to tell you how much I don't love you."
It's a lot better now, but she has always been pretty persistent and strong willed. At the end of the day, you get what you get. We have some friends with the most amazingly behaved first child that didn't care for our kid's behavior and some of the stuff we just let her do. Then their second kid was more like ours and after that they had more sympathy.
Worked first time to stop a child running on to the road for me, never needed to repeat it. Other kids in my care have learnt without that necessity, thankfully.
Often timeouts work because it separates the kid from the stimulus and gives them an opportunity to cool off and let their conscious mind reassert itself over their emotions. Not necessarily because they think of it as a negative consequence to be avoided.
Often when young kids do harmful things they are not really "thinking" in that moment. Sometimes it is hard for them to even recognize it as something "they did" as opposed to something that happened to them. Strong emotions, to a little kid, are things that happen to them, not things they do. They don't understand why they do things, sometimes.
The heart of raising a young kid to behave properly is teaching them to understand and manage their emotions. We tell our kid, "you feel angry, and that's ok. It's ok to feel angry. However, you're still responsible for how you behave." And we give her appropriate options for dealing with feeling angry. One of the tools we've taught her is a cooling off period, but we don't label it a "time out" like a punishment. As she has gotten older, she gives them to herself sometimes!
Some kids are distraught when separated from the family, others are quite content. IME timeout can be far more emotionally damaging than smacking. A well timed smack is a punishment for action; a "timeout" appears to be a desire for separation originating with the little-person's most loved-ones. A short-cut to the brain telling it that a behaviour is unwanted (smack) vs. an emotionally loaded action telling them [seemingly] their loved ones don't want them around.
I've smacked and ended self-destructive behaviour immediately and permanently (with ongoing reinforcement); done timeout and simply made a child distraught and supremely insecure.
Horses for courses, as they say. [That is, people vary and what works for one person will not work for another.]
Slight aside, isn't all correction for "harmful things" just at different levels of harm? I don't for example correct my children's "poor manners" in putting their elbows on the table because I don't consider it harmful in any substantial way; presumably my parents found it harmful enough to chastise me over otherwise why would they do so. My presumption is that they felt I'd be somewhat excluded by polite society for failing to adopt societal norms of table manners.
I don’t have kids but when I get really angry and step away from the situation I often get into a loop and my emotions spin out of control.
Say I’m really angry at my wife. If she leaves me alone after an argument I might go crazy for hours, throwing things at the wall, and cursing for a long time. It’s like my brain gets into an infinite loop and without new stimulus, I am just stuck there.
What works better is if she try to talks to me maybe 10 minutes after the incident. I don’t want to get into a loop and want to get out but can only do it with help or some new stimulus.
Does this happen with kids? I remember this happening when I was sent to my room as a child, but I’m bipolar so maybe it’s just me.
If you are angry for hours maybe try going to exercise or meditate(fixing this issue is actually one of the goals of meditation) or something, but that is above my pay grade.
With my kid, he sometimes does not cool down during a tantrum until he goes in his room for timeout for a few minutes, and he is always measurably calmer after timeout. The recommended timeout time is 1 minute per year of age - it's not like they're abandoned for hours.
With my kids they are always allowed to "get some space" if they want to, but we never force isolation on them (we may suggest it, and often that suggestion is accepted, but it's clear that we're available to talk if they want to).
I've found that giving my kids the vocabulary for describing what they feel has a huge impact on their behavior. Once they can name the problem, they are much more likely talk about it than lash out.
Timeouts worked great for us; the trick we found was just to be deterministic about them. We gave our kids a countdown warning and then invariably applied the same consequences when the countdown expired. After a couple applications of a 3-2-1 countdown followed by a timeout, our kids reliably responded by "2".
The other observation I made was that it doesn't take much of a consequence at all to make this work. My initial intuition was to scale the "punishment" by the severity of the incident, but really, a 5-10 minute timeout does just as much good as a longer one, and is much easier to apply. Anything you can do reliably and without effort would, in my case, almost always work; the point is to avoid the power struggle.
One of the children in my care always pushes the issue to a power struggle, regardless of how much one seeks to avoid it. They're very clever and try to manipulate the situation to apportion blame to the care-giver when it should rest with themselves. Frustrating and impressive in equal measure.
We scale timeouts according to age, 1min per year. Truly longer timeouts (for us) just result in punishment then ending up focusing on the timeout and the subject's failure to abide by the rules of timeout; which causes escalation.
A lot of what you've described is covered in detail in the book:
"Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting"
I have not used YouTube yet for parenting but I would imagine it's a great resource. That book is kinda lengthy but I think YouTube, podcast is easy to consume for busy parents. I haven't finished that book yet and I got it a few months ago grin.
timeouts work better if you call it naughty step instead. i've seen a few supernanny episodes where parents used timeouts before and it didn't work, and then she introduced naughty step and it works a charm
My experience doesn't match up with that reality TV anecdote... Assuming there is an actual change, and it's not just scripting and editing, my guess is there are a large number of factors involved, and not simply changing the name.
But you're right, the biggest thing was consistency. The kids were being given "timeouts" but if they moved out of them or cried the parents simply gave up. She essentially had the parents follow through and be consistent. Ditto with bedtime routines and similar. The name wasn't meant to be significant.
It is "reality TV" but the core of her method is pretty old school and simple. I actually WOULD recommend watching it (particularly the UK version, US one has janky editing) if you can find it. Except for the dumb voice-overs it was a pretty straight forward/to the point show that simply repeated the same basic concepts with different families.
what i liked most about it is how it shifted parents perception from being helpless victims to empowering them by shifting the blame for the child's behaviour completely onto the parent.
and yes, the american version is edited "for dramatic effect". the uk version is more educational
I was a skeptic about the supernanny too and I don’t watch the show but her book has a technique to help reluctant sleepers adjust to staying in their own beds that really worked for my kid. He’s a teen now and still has a hard time falling asleep, it’s just how he’s wired.
I'm not skeptical of supernanny, I'm skeptical that simply changing the name from "timeout" to "naughty step" was the primary cause of any observed effect (rather that the whole slew of other, more meaningful, changes that were introduced at the same time)
I've applied naughty step with my kids and it has worked really well.
the idea is not to make it some cool sportsy thing called "timeout" but to put stigma on it and to apply it consistently
>* Timeouts rarely work. Try to respond with something which makes sense. Like if your kid throws around things, they need to clean up (with your help).
I think people use timeouts wrong. Timeouts are not for my kid, they're for me. So that I can get a handle on how I'm feeling and actually respond in a way that is appropriate, and not with anger.
You also have to recognize that kids are different. My son, for instance, will not clean up unless threatened with punishment (taking games away, stuff like that, not paddlin'). The textbook stuff doesn't work at all. Won't do homework, won't shower, won't brush his teeth, not to mention cleaning up his room (unless I threaten to throw his shit out; mom is too chicken to enforce anything).
We had a once-a-week cleanup rule when the kids were little. We all cleaned up the house for the weekend, kids just had to pickup their rooms. When they didn't (as is perfectly normal, pushing boundaries), I would tidy up by throwing everything into a big garbage bad and putting it up high in the garage (sort of a timeout for their belongings). Set a timer at the start of the process so they have a chance to do it themselves. After a few times, they got the message, but there were some times at first when they would lose their shit - that was pretty harrowing.
Yep, I've done a variation of that as well, to ensure compliance. One time a full garbage bag full of toys got thrown out.
But the meta-point is: kids are all different. Parenting advice happens to be mostly written by people whose children are already pretty well behaved and don't need much (if any) correction. These people think that they're really great at parenting, but in all likelihood the larger reason is that their children aren't shitheads to begin with. Not everyone is lucky like that, and humans are _very_ hard to debug. This is particularly annoying if the parent wasn't a shithead him/herself: there's this implicit assumption that the kids will be just like parents, but there's no guarantee whatsoever that it'll turn out like that.
In fact anecdotal evidence from my friends would suggest that very few people are "lucky". Only two kids (out of something like 30 in my circle) are what I'd call "good kids". One is a really smart girl (good at math, plays chess, in general just tends to do what's good for herself), and another kid has mild Asperger's, so he's in his own world: does super well in the accelerated program in school, knows how to code, but doesn't know how to interact with people, at all, and has no friends, or desire to have friends.
* Timeouts rarely work. Try to respond with something which makes sense. Like if your kid throws around things, they need to clean up (with your help).
* If things get out of hand, I stay with or hold my kid until the situation gets better and then discuss/explain the current situation and how we will act next time.
* It's always good to figure out how your kid feels in a bad situation. Like: "I guess you're feeling <a>, because of <b>?" Sometimes kids do not understand their own feelings and telling them helps them cope better.
* Try to stay calm, always. Sometimes it's hard or even impossible. But getting loud or angry never helps. If I can keep control of myself I usually can control the situation and respond appropriately.
* Your job as a parent is to provide your kid with all necessities of life and with love. Everything else is extra, like toys, sweets, leisure activities. Sometimes it helps to tune down the extras if necessary.
* Admit your errors and say sorry if appropriate.
There's a youtube channel which I actually enjoyed while my youngest one was a bit smaller. It's a bit strange to look for help on parenting stuff on youtube, but a lot of his advice was actually quite good I tought: https://www.youtube.com/user/LiveOnPurposeTV/featured