Need Advice. Daughter disciplines granddaughter by spraying vinegar in her mouth.

[PareAnoya]

My daughter has recently started disciplining my 3 year old granddaughter by spraying malt vinegar in her mouth. This seems abusive to me. My granddaughter is very good mostly. For me, when she's being naughty, I can explain to her why her actions are wrong and either send her to time out or take a favorite toy away. This works for me. This takes time, of course and my daughter has little patience with her. Am I overreacting or is this just wrong?

[Annie Mac]

It's probably not abusive in the call the authorities sense, but it seems mean, somehow, and not likely to be effective long term. Creative though. Like a cross between washing a kid's mouth out with soap and spraying a cat with water to keep it off the counter. I've never heard of anyone doing that before. Is your daughter receptive to hearing other ideas? If so, it couldn't hurt to sit down and talk with her about alternatives to the vinegar.

How does your gd react to it?

[Brittee]

I second Annie, it does seem mean. Especially if it is a reactionary discipline. ie. you threw a tantrum so vinegar, or you didn't clean your room so vinegar. At the very least it is an alternative to actual spanking.
My mom used to make us take spoonfuls of cod liver oil, but only as a bad language punishment. This practice stopped when she gave some to my sister and it made her sick. The bottle had apparently expired.
Vinegar is essentially an acid. Maybe you could bring up your concerns about acid on her developing teeth?

[squimp]

Vinegar is acidic and I would think that would really hurt and be irritating to sensitive mucus membranes. Particularly the spraying part - it would be aerosolized and move into her nose and sensitive membranes. Probably hurts her eyes too.

Many use vinegar as a cleaning agent, and even then they dilute it so it won't damage wood floors, etc.

[Drummer's Wife]

Yuck, that sounds awful. I hope your daughter learns some other ways to discipline your granddaughter. I can't imagine using that as a tool when parenting. Maybe you can model for her some more appropriate and effective ways to get through to her 3 yr old?

[lynsage]

Straight vinegar can cause tooth enamel erosion and digestive problems. I personally have vomited from trying to take apple cider vinegar straight.

I'd be concerned about where she's getting her parenting advice- the only people I can find advocating that behavior are the "hot saucing" people and they're scary, IMO.

[Magali]

I can't imagine spraying vinegar in my 3 year old ds's mouth. I don't think you are overreacting at all.

[heartmama]

Actually it is illegal in some states to put anything in a child's mouth as a form of punishment. Children can and are harmed by soaps and other irritants used as punishment. How is she going to feel if her child becomes ill and she has to go tell a doctor how it happened? She could lose custody.

[happysmileylady]

Depending on how the whole thing is going on, I don't really think it's abusive...after all, vinegar is edible. It's rather nasty on it's own, but it's a food and it's not something that's going to cause pain, like chewing on a pepper or something. In it's most basic sense, I don't know that it's any different than punishing a child by making her eat whatever food she hates the most. Now, if she's making it so that the child is choking on it or something awful like that, yeah, that's abusive, IMO. As a discipline technique, I don't know that it's much different from most other punishment type of discipline.

[ssh]

Originally Posted by heartmama

Actually it is illegal in some states to put anything in a child's mouth as a form of punishment. Children can and are harmed by soaps and other irritants used as punishment. How is she going to feel if her child becomes ill and she has to go tell a doctor how it happened? She could lose custody.

This approach might get your daughter to consider trying something else. Also acidic things can harm teeth. A dentist could also report her.

Does your daughter have any other children? Are there new behavior issues that are making things more difficult? My oldest DD1 has had discipline issues because she feels overwhelmed with an infant and 3 year old. She found herself being reactive instead of doing things to prevent misbehavior. She was just yelling and punishing too much (timeouts and "go to your room"), but she felt she wasn't being the parent she wanted to be and also felt she was becoming disconnected from her older child. Criticizing what's my DD1 was doing would have just make her more stressed. Sympathizing about the overwhelming aspects of her situation and the annoyingness of my granddaughter's behavior while offering advice later when things were calmer does help. Sending her a few of my favorite parenting books was useful too. Talking about how she did some of the exact same annoying things when she was little along with how my younger almost five year old DD2 does completely different annoying stuff helps too. LOs usually save their worst behavior for their primary caregiver. So your DD may be seeing more misbehavior than you do. Advice coming after expressing sympathy is more likely to be heard.

[EdnaMarie]

Originally Posted by PareAnoya

My daughter has recently started disciplining my 3 year old granddaughter by spraying malt vinegar in her mouth. This seems abusive to me. My granddaughter is very good mostly. For me, when she's being naughty, I can explain to her why her actions are wrong and either send her to time out or take a favorite toy away. This works for me. This takes time, of course and my daughter has little patience with her. Am I overreacting or is this just wrong?

Don't forget that your granddaughter will test limits with her mom that she won't with you.

I don't approve of your daughter's actions, but I also have a child that will do wonders for others even when she tests every limit with me. So while she might act up rarely for my mom, I have to face that same behavior 20 - 30 times even if I'm doing something really fun with her.

SO do keep that in mind. My mother would tell me to "just explain" but then also had flashbacks to her own parenting of me... I was put in time-out, I was occasionally restrained due to tantrums, and yes, she did yell occasionally and use passive-aggression ("Do you want people to think I'm a bad mom?"). "Explanation" may work for the grandparent, but you may need to get more creative if you want to help her with ideas.

That said, as I said earlier... spraying vinegar is a physical, pain-based punishment. I don't know if it legally counts as abuse but it crosses a line I wouldn't cross.

[Ruthla]

Would your daughter be interested in reading books about gentle discipline? If you think she'd take the time to read them, I'm sure others on this board can recomend some good titles.