Every parent grapples with this issue (Positive Parenting). If you have children, you know that every single moment is a struggle if your child doesn’t behave. Even the most patient and nurturing parents can sometimes “lose it” while facing a defiant little kid.
Consider this: A preschooler is throwing a tantrum because Dad poured the gravy on her turkey instead of letting her to do it herself. She started screaming and crying for what seems like hours. Out of frustration, the Dad shouts “Stop it NOW!”
Positive Parenting: How to discipline effectively?
Does it sound familiar? I myself feel guilty of having done this more often than I’d like to admit. So how should we make our children behave without falling into such a “Do as I say, not as I do” trap?
Positive Parenting
Here comes Positive Parenting. It is a parenting and disciplinary philosophy based on the work of Viennese psychiatrists, Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs. In recent years, Dr. Jane Nelsen Ed.D. has refined and championed this method in her famous series of books and made it well known.
Positive discipline emphasizes mutual respect and use positive instructions. It focuses on learning to avoid the committed mistake for the future rather than punishing what has been done in the past. Studies consistently show that using positive discipline achieves better results in terms of the child’s behavior, emotional growth, academic performance and mental health.
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8 steps on practicing positive parenting
Here are the 8 steps on practicing positive parenting :
The First Step: Focus on the Reasons behind the Action
There are always reasons why children misbehave. It is reasonable to the child and that’s why they behave that way. If parents can address the cause directly, even if they don’t get what they want, children would feel that their needs are acknowledged. They can then move on without the need to misbehave.
They may still be grouchy, but they do not need to act out once they feel understood.
Being aware of the reason behind the misbehavior can also help parents avoid them next time. For instance, a child hit his brother. The reason could be that his little brother annoyed him one way or another.
As a result, he was frustrated. Therefore, Knowing the reason behind your kid’s negative behavior teaches makes you aware of how you will deal with her\him
If your child doesn’t listen to you, one possible reason is that your expectation is not reasonable. Does what you ask your child to do/not to do have a good reason? Is it necessary for the well-being of your child?
The second Step: Kind and Firm Discipline
Be kind to model how to be kind and respectful to others. Children learn through mimicking others and parents are their primary role models. When a parent shouts, humiliates or calls a child names aggressively, the child learns to do the same when he’s upset.
The converse is also true. When a parent is kind, calm and respectful despite being upset, the child learns to deal with difficulties with composure and respect. Being calm helps your child to be receptive to reasoning and more likely to cooperate.
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Being tolerant and a loving parent don’t mean giving in. Many parents mistakenly confuse kindness with permissiveness. This is simply not true. You can kindly tell you child that she\he cannot have what she\he wants.
There is no need for yelling, using a mean tone or talking in a stern voice. A nice and calm “NO” is as good as, if not better than, a loud and mean NO.
Moreover, be kind in setting limits and enforcing consequences so that the child knows what to expect and what to base his future’s actions on. Practicing decision making through this soft method helps children grow their cognitive thinking.
The Third Step: Time-Out Yourself
Yes, you heard that right. You have to take a time-out yourself when needed. It is inevitable that sometimes parents are just exhausted and angered by children’s wrong behavior. But this is the true do-as-I-say-AND-as-I-do moment if you can calm yourself down and speak in a respectful and nice way.
Think about this: if something doesn’t go your child’s way, do you want him to blow up, Or do you want him to have the ability to control his own emotion and remain respectful?
This time-out strategy works very well. When you feel that you are about to lose control of the situation, tell your child that you need a moment by yourself. Tell him you are upset and then go into another room. Walking away allows you to calm down and remind yourself about your goal in discipline, which is to teach.
While there, you take a few deep breaths and clear your mind for a second. This time-out technique also gives you more time and some breathing room to think of ways to deal with the issue at hand. When you return, you are refreshed and ready to tackle the challenge again.
The Third Step: Be Non-Punitive. Be Creative:
According to Dr. Jane Nelsen, in her book Positive Discipline: The First Three Years cruel punishment produces Four Rs that do not help a child learn “Resentment, Rebellion, Revenge and Retreat”. Keep in mind that punishment doesn’t stop bad behavior as it also doesn’t teach good ones.
A positive, non-punitive response is much better at settling an over-stimulated child and engaging her\him in learning new behavior. One such response is to use positive time-out.
Positive time-out differs from conventional time-out because it is non-punitive. It is not a punishment. The child is removed from stimuli that creates or aggravates the misbehavior and put into a place to cool off and feel safe.
The method of time-out is invented by the behavioral psychologists Arthur Staats when he was raising his own children. Its full name is Time Out from Positive Reinforcement. The idea is to take the child out of the environment where the problematic behavior occurs to remove the “reinforcer”.
Eventually, the child calms down and learns to diminish or stop the undesired behavior. Unfortunately, many parents misuse it; they put it in the form of punishment. They isolate and restrict the child’s movement during the time-out and add a secondary punishment by chastising and blaming the child afterwards.
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Here are some key points how to use time-out properly:
- Set your expectation and consequence clearly ahead of time. Your kid needs to realize that he can choose the consequence as the result of his own action. This process helps him accept the time-out, learns to make choices and develop cognitive thinking.
- If he chooses to carry out the unwanted behavior, calmly tell him or take him to a quiet, safe place. Don’t call him with bad names such as “you’re a bad boy”, scold him, look hatefully, or be mean to him. That is, be kind and firm when using time-out.
You have to let your child play with toys or roam around if that helps her\him calm down. Sometimes, when she\he is very upset, you should even sit and cuddle her\him. Bear always in mind that it is not a punishment.
Afterward, talk nicely to her\him about how inappropriate the previous action was and help her come up with a better response the next time she\he feels like acting out.
Positive time-out, in the scheme of Positive Parenting, doesn’t work in all the situations. It is not easy to come up with a positive outcome in every situation. Positive Discipline A-Z: 1001 Solutions to Everyday Parenting Problems, also by Nelsen is full of good advice and recommendations on how to discipline positively.
Probably, you can’t remember all 1001 solutions or always have the book handy when you need it. So it’s important to be creative and flexible.
The Fifth Step: Be Clear, Be Consistent and Follow Through
Decide and explain the consequences of violating limits clearly to your kid. Adding to that, parents need to be consistent and follow through on them. If a parent is not consistent, there will be confusion. The child will keep testing or challenging the limits to see what else can happen.
The Sixth Step: Understand Brain Development and Age-appropriate Behavior
Children under the age of three cannot reason because the part of their brain (prefrontal cortex) responsible for understanding consequences and making sound judgment has not yet developed.
So for children in this age group, redirection instead of reasoning or giving consequences should be used.
For older children, you help their cognitive development by reasoning and giving them choices.
The Seventh Step: Make it a Learning Opportunity
When kids are old enough to the reason (more than 3 years old), they are able to turn every misdeed into an invaluable life lesson. For example, what is the lesson of breaking a toy? It means that the child cannot play with it anymore.
Tell her\him that If she\he didn’t like the toy, he should have given it to a friend or donate it so that others could enjoy it… This way you are helping him improve his communicative skills at the same time.
Tip 8: Be Patient and Don’t Despair
Positive discipline, most likely, won’t produce the behavioral change you want immediately. It is not about getting overnight results. It is about indoctrinating behaviors that parents want their children to adapt over time.
It might take longer to see changes in reality because children sometimes need time to learn. It can be weeks or even months before your child starts to get it. But when that happens, it will be very rewarding and the benefits will last a lifetime.
Positive Parenting is an effective method through which you can raise your kid. It is helpful in terms of inculcating the good values which will insure a successful life for your child.
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