We’ve never spanked the boys. I know for a fact that I’ve wanted to.

With Leo, most of the punishment was tickling him until he would submit. I think the results were the same, but without teaching him that hitting is acceptable.

I read someone’s take on spanking and it has stuck with me for years: Spanking your kids or hitting your wife is like keying your own car. I cannot fathom even hitting a spouse or what would bring someone to attack their lifelong partner, and I try to categorize spanking kids as the same way. You wouldn’t just start hitting people in your office when they aren’t listening to you, so why would you hit your own kids?

Joji is either defiant or thick. When it is time to go to brush teeth/eat/go somewhere/take a bath/do almost anything he’ll likely continue running around until he hears his name 5+ times. We didn’t have this issue with Leo, but the boys and their personalities are quite different – Leo is a scholar, Joji is an athlete.

We sometimes need to put the boys in timeout, which concerns me because they might cry (Joji) or cry and kick the floor (Leo), and I don’t want any complaints from the neighbors. I think timeouts work well unless the boys are tired, in which case they can exacerbate the issue and cause further mental instability.
A few times I’ve put the boys into one of my large shirts and called it the “get along shirt” and they usually start laughing and enjoying that, which makes me happy that they are happy, but also makes me worried since they might be enjoying the “punishment” too much.

In the past when Leo was much younger, he was being a bit obstinate when it came to eating his dinner. I warned him that he needed to eat in order to get dessert. I cut up some strawberries, put them in clear view, and told him that they were Leo’s strawberries but I was going to eat them if he was too slow. What resulted what a lot of whining and crying but not a lot of eating, so I popped one into my mouth and started eating. Of course Leo lost his shit further so I laid out the rules again; if he eats his dinner he gets dessert.
More whinging and 3 minutes later I ate another strawberry.
I ended up eating all of the strawberries and dealing with the fallout suuuuucked, but the next day was better.

Punishment is required even if it isn’t easy, otherwise you’ll end up with little humans who have learned that being annoying is the best way to get what they want.