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Raising a child as a single parent can be one of the toughest jobs you will ever have. There are so many things to deal with just being a parent, but then you have to also add any emotional trauma the child may be dealing with not having both parents. Plus, if both parents are still alive, you may have disciplinary differences and different rules for each house. And getting cooperation from an ex-spouse can be a trial in itself.

I am a single father who has been divorced for 3 years. I have full custody of my son, and things have gone from great to crazy in under 20 seconds too many times to number. I think I tried every possible punishment scheme I could come across. I also tried the diet changes and the bedtime changes, but nothing seemed to work. I tried the punishment system, I tried the reward system, I even tried to bribe him, yet nothing seemed to work as well as I needed it to.

The first thing I tried was punishment. I tried spanking him for his behavior, but that really didn't work. He forgot about the spanking soon enough that he wasn't even concerned with getting them any more. I started making him only drink water when he couldn't keep is hands to himself, but that did nothing, he loves water. I did come across the best punishment system that I had seen, and it works especially well for children that find themselves distracted by outside influences when they are in time-out. I have a spot on my front door where I have my son place his nose. It's sort of like standing in the corner, but he can still see some of his surroundings, without being able to participate, but he can't move his nose. This works better than the nose in the corner, because they aren't tempted to turn all the way out, because there is still some stimulation there. I still use this method when I need to.

The next thing that I found that worked was when he had a particularly bad day, I cleaned out his room. I took all the toys he loves to play with, and he had to earn them back. This worked amazingly well, up to a point. He was so interested in getting his favorite toys back, that he had excellent behavior for about two weeks, till he got everything back, that is. Then it worked okay as a threat to take them away if he was bad, but it eventually failed altogether.

Finally I came across something I could do all the time, with no extra effort of taking things away, and it would be ongoing for as long as I needed to. It also gave me the option of extra rewards that didn't cost me

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