Parents, how do you disicpline your childrens?

In the beginning, it's redirection, then when it's appropriate to age-time out's, loss of privelages and of course an explanation of why this is happening. Sure beats what happened to my husband growing up, a pop on the butt for every little thing he did without knowing what he did wrong.

We have found that time-out from playing their favorite video games is the most effective punishment so far for our family. Spankings certainly didn't help and I hate them anyway since I grew up in an abusive home myself. Sending them to their room didnt' work cuz that's the fun place to be anyway. The time-out chair didn't seem to work so well, the restriction didn't work, well it seems like we tried so many things that I can't remember right now but they didn't seem to work. Oh, talking to the kids and telling them that their behavior disappointed us was a total joke. They didn't care at all. That idea was from one of the parenting magazines that I read looking for ideas and hints on child-raising. I am helping my adult daughter to raise her children and I want to be a decent parent but it's hard. I was a so-so parent with my daughter but with counseling for me, I am a better one now but I wanted to be a better one for the three boys too. It really is very very hard to discipline the kids. It seems like everyone we know has advice to offer us and sometimes it is BAD BAD advice. I mean evil advice even. One mean guy even told me that to get control over the kids that I would need to spank them often and be very very stern, actually mean to them so that I could "break" their spirits so that we could control them! OMG, who can come back from a broken spirit? My parents did that to my brother and I and we are majorly messed up. It's not cool to be super mean to the kids!

That might depend somewhat on the age or your child or children. I have never spanked my girls very hard. It never has come to that. I have popped them when necessary after they have been warned. What works best for mine is taking some privilege away such as the TV, toys, playing, etc. It has worked well for us.