Discipline and Your Child: 27 Discipline Tips
In my attempt to synthesize all the basic tools of attachment-sensitive discipline I came to the realization that I was writing a book, a long winded, convoluted, confusing book, at that! In desperation, I have decided to lay it all out in bullet format. It isn’t as pretty to read this way, but, hey, DISCIPLINE IS NOT PRETTY!
The Most Effective Parenting is the Preemptive Parenting: Preempting misbehavior is always more effective and pleasant than dealing with it after the fact. Treating the cause of misbehavior is the key. Children, particularly young children, have a natural desire to be pleasing in the eyes of their parents. If your children are contrary all the time, there is an underlying reason, a need that is not being met. And if children grow accustomed to feeling “wrong” inside long enough, “being contrary” may become habit. So, what to do?
Preempting the Adversarial Relationship: The idea is to avoid the creation of an adversarial relationship from the very beginning. Let me repeat that: Never allow an adversarial relationship to develop in the first place! Habitual use of a loving tone of voice goes a long way. It is so important for you and your child to stay in love with one another! Give regular love, verbally, demonstratively, freely and unconnected to any action on the part of your child. Never send the message that love is a payment for good behavior. If love becomes a commodity in your house, your child will learn use it as a power tool against you and everyone loses.
Keep Tabs on the Basics: If your child is hungry, tired, bored or under-exersized you are asking for trouble. S/he can not be responsible for his/her behavior under those conditions.
Consistency: Follow through with consistency, every time, starting day one. Consistency, consistency, consistency. In my view consistency is the key to easier discipline. If you say you are going to do something, do it. If you always back your words with appropriate action, your child will believe you when you speak to him/her and trust you. Never make a pronouncement that you are unwilling to carry out. And do not make rules that your partner will not back you up on. To do so is to train your children to be sneaky and manipulative.
Be Willing to Change Your Mind: (What?! But you said “consistency, consistency, consistency”?!) Consistency is vital, but once you have gained the reputation for meaning what you say, you now have the luxury of, no the duty to, change your mind when you are in the wrong. If you come upon some piece of information that indicates you have made a bad choice vis-a-vis your children, it is extremely important that you model “being able to change your mind”, not “saving face”. In that way do you teach your child that everyone makes mistakes, and there is no shame in correcting the error. Modeling appropriate admitting of wrong creates a foundation of trust that will open a channel for your child to come to you later on if they are in trouble. It also lays the foundation for a life path that is open to possibility rather than stunted by the fear of making mistakes.
Never Argue with Your Kids: Don’t go there! Listen to them, validate their feelings, and collaborate on boundary-creation: YES. Argue? NO! You are the adult. Arguing with your children undermines your credibility. Two good ways to avoid further arguing is the use of the following two phrases: “Never the less” and “Regardless of that.” “Mama, I must have THESE shoes! I want them! I neeeeeeed them!” “I understand that you want them very badly. Never the less, with the money we have to spend, we can buy these ones over here.” If the child continues to argue, you can repeat your “Never the less...” in a calm and even tone, or ignore him/her, as you see fit. “Dad, I want ice cream for dinner. If I can’t have ice cream, I won’t eat anything!” “You are free to make that choice, and regardless of that, you may not eat ice cream for dinner.”
Create a Positive Family Structure: Responding to “No” is not something children need to practice. Structure an environment in which the need to say “No!”, “Stop!” and “Don’t!” doesn’t come up too often. The more often you say “no”, the less meaning it has. Just as the more you yell at a child, the less impact it has. Rather than telling kids what not to do. It is far easier and more successful to tell them what to do. For example, instead of saying “Don’t draw on the wall!”, say “We only draw on paper. Let me get you some.” Or instead of “Stop pouring water out of the tub!”, say “Water needs to stay in the tub. Here is a bucket you can pour water into.” If you save “no” for things that really warrant “no”, your child will be far more responsive when you do use the word.
Not having to say “no” means baby proofing your house until it becomes a baby friendly place, a place that encourages exploration. It also means not taking your child to environments that are stressful for everyone involved. (ie. a knick knack shop, a candy store, etc.) Well meaning busybodies will tell you, “But he has to learn sometime!”. That is true. Sometime. A five year old just naturally has better impulse control than a two year old.
Know Your Child: Different children have different requirements. My son used to become stressed and over stimulated in large, busy groups, so I avoided them when I could. When that was not possible, I tried to structure his experience to minimize the problem by encouraging him to stay close by, and by bringing quiet, single user, toys for him to focus on: puzzles, books, magnadoodle etc.. I know other mothers with high metabolism children who travel everywhere with a passel of snacks in little containers. You get the idea.
The Importance of Modeling. One of the basic rules of developmental psychology, absorbed from my college days, is that 90% of what a child learns is modeled on the behavior of other people. More specifically, YOU, especially in the case of young children. Your child will learn to behave the way s/he sees you behave, NOT the way you tell him/her to behave. If you don’t want your child to grow into a person who hits, do not hit. (Spanking is hitting.) If you don’t want your child to grow into a yeller, do not yell. If you want your child to treat you with respect, treat him/her with respect. Model “I’m sorry”, not “saving face”. Model “please” and “thank you”. You don't have to force things like "I'm sorry" and "thank you". Children will eventually pick all the these things up from you, as long as they are the norm in your family.
Letting It Slide: “It is the nature of childhood to be immature, and unable to control one’s impulses. That’s what adults are for: to help children deal with impulses they eventually learn to control themselves.” - Eda LeShan
What is really important? The answer to that question will be different for each family. Are matching socks important? Is it really important that a child be out of diapers by the age of three? Is it really important that a child sit quietly at the table until everyone is finished, and eat all his/her food at one sitting, three times a day? We get hung up on so many things that do not really matter in the grand scheme of things. My former husband still wears unmatched socks on a regular basis. It doesn’t seem to have hampered him greatly in his career, or quality of life. I can almost guarantee that by the time your child leaves home s/he will be out of diapers. And with the passage of time, fidgety little people will develop the patience to sit through a complete family meal. Is it really worth the aggravation, and the rift created in the relationship to spend energy fighting the things that do not matter?
Developmental Appropriateness: Recognize that a lot of undesirable behavior is normal at different developmental stages, and goes away by itself with time. Don’t go to fancy restaurants with two year olds. They are not capable of sitting still, or being quiet. Don’t expect two three year olds to simultaneously share one toy. Most are not capable of it, and taking turns works much better. Most four year olds are going to need some encouragement and company when it comes time to put away the toys before bed.
By the time your kid leaves for college, s/he will no longer bite people or whack the cat, or sing loudly at the art museum, or take off all his/her clothes and run around Gramma’s house yelling, “NAKED! NAKED!”
Sense of Humor: I just want to put in a plug for keeping things light. If we are having a terrible day, and I can pull myself out of my internal downward spiral (I AM the adult here.) long enough to remember to joke, things get a whole lot better quickly. Laughter is the best distraction for children and one of the best ways to help everyone remember that “we are all on the same side”. It is particularly useful after kids stop nursing.
Respect: Treat your child with the respect you would give any other human being. That means saying “please”. Not taking things without asking. Not taking food off of his/her plate. Listening to his/her side of the story, and not interrupting when s/he is talking. Listen! If you are respectful, your kids will learn respect.
Notice and Reinforce Good Behavior: I always make a point of verbally noticing when I am particularly impressed with my son’s behavior, and saying thank you. “Thank you for being so quiet so I could get the baby down for her nap.” “Thank you for being so patient when we had to wait so long at the post office.”
Give the Child the Choice: “If you throw that one more time, I will put it away”. If s/he then chooses to throw it, it is s/he who is accountable for the result. Giving the child the choice can also be used as a distraction tactic. For example: If your child does not want to go to the car, you can say, “Never the less, we are going to leave now. Do you want to wear your blue shoes or your brown shoes?” And before your child knows it s/he is enmeshed in the shoe quandary, and has forgotten all about the car quandary.
State Your Expectations in Clear, Concise, Complete Language: Don’t use too many words with small children. Keep it short and simple.
Get the Child’s Input Before Setting Rules in Stone: If children feel they have some say in the making of the rules and the consequences, if they feel that it was a collaboration, children are far less likely to be resistant to the rules.
After the fact:
“Punishment refocuses the child’s feelings of anger towards the parent, so contrition gets short circuited. Being hurt or deprived of a privilege has no natural relationship to the offense; it simply reinforces the child’s awareness of the adult’s superior strength and power. In this context “getting away with something” ... becomes like a victory over an opponent, and guilt, one of the most educational of natural consequences, is canceled out.”
- Mary Liston Liepold
Many adults utilize punishment as a way to sooth their own negative feelings, and fulfill their own need for retribution. Do you want to set up a situation in which your child views you as the opponent? Earlier I emphasized the value of avoiding the creation of an adversarial relationship between parent and child. Do you want to set up a dynamic in your relationship in which you are each trying to “win”, battle after battle?
The fact is that punishment, particularly punishment that is unrelated to the infraction, as a means to shape behavior, is not particularly effective. It may work in the short term, but what it has a tendency to do is drive a behavior underground as the child learns to become adept at circumventing your control by sneaking and hiding. Any first year psych class will teach you that positive reinforcement is a lot more effective than negative reinforcement, when it comes to long term retention of a learned behavior. It is also true that ignoring a behavior (one that is not self-reinforcing) causes it to extinguish faster than punishing it. That is true in lab rats, and it is true in human beings. So what to do? Natural consequences are a good place to start.
Natural Consequences: Perhaps the most basic attachment oriented discipline tool is “natural consequences”. There is some disagreement within our community as to what is actually meant by that term, and how far to take it, but the basic idea is that the parents let the child learn the negative effects of negative behavior by allowing him/her to carry out the behavior and experience the effects. For example: Mama says “If you break your toy, you will feel sad.”, but she does not stop the child from breaking it. The child breaks the toy and learns that Mama was right, breaking toys is not the best course of action. Mama does not need to punish the behavior, because the child punished himself, in essence. "If you dump your cereal on the floor, it will be all gone and you won't have any left to eat." The child dumps. The cereal is not replaced and the child learns not to repeat the behavior.
Restitution: One sort of extension of the natural consequence principle is the concept of restitution, or making amends. In order for the restitution to be effective as a natural consequence it should fit the crime as much as possible. For example: If you steal candy from the store, you have to take it, and give it back to the clerk. If you have already eaten it, you have to go and pay for it. If you don’t have the money to pay for it, you borrow the money from Mom and Dad, and then pay them back in some form later. If you draw on the walls, you help clean up. If you break
someone else’s toy, you replace it with one of your own.
Note: I am not a fan of forcing a child to say they are “sorry” when they are not sorry, particularly if s/he is really young and doesn’t even know what it is s/he is saying. It doesn’t make sense to me even if it is “the right thing”, to have a child verbalize a feeling they are not experiencing. It is sort of like teaching him/her to lie. I think “sorry” is something we model for children ourselves, and encourage them to do, but do not force. I think being forced to say "I'm sorry" sets up resistance in the child to a natural development of a sense of contrition as s/he ages. If you want to foster that sense start asking your child questions like "How do you think it feels to be <the wounded party> right now?"
Some people might say, “Well, what is the difference between a punishment and a natural consequence? The child experiences both as a negative consequences imposed by the parent.” In my view, there is a world of difference. The natural consequence is a natural progression of events, a learning experience. It teaches that in life when we do wrong, we are accountable to set things right, to the best of our ability. There is a logical progression at work, not an unrelated penalty imposed an authority figure flaunting his or her power.
“Time out” as a natural consequence: I would like to say a few words in defense of “time out”. There has been a big movement in the AP community lately to stamp out the practice of “time out”, as an overly punitive, not very effective, method of discipline. I will agree that if it is used as a consequence for an action unrelated to the offense, that it too becomes just another form of infective punishment, but I also think it has its uses.
First let me say that when I use the phrase “time out”, I am not referring to the practice of putting a child in his/her room to endure time alone. I think as with most forms of punishment, that practice simply short circuits the child’s “analyzing the event” thought process, and replaces it with self-pity and anger toward the parent. Also, I think it sends the wrong message to the child: “When you behave badly, you will be isolated from the family and left to deal with your negative emotions alone. I don’t want you around when I am angry with you.” I think this form of time out sets up a dynamic in the family in which children are reluctant to come to their parents when they are in trouble and need help. “Mama only wants to be around me when I am good.”
“Time out”, in our home takes place in one of two places: either the lap of a parent, or in the same room, off to the side, but within full view of everything.
We use “time out” as an extension of natural consequences, and only in instances of aggression, or in some instances when an over stimulated child simply needs to calm down. In the first instance, if a child is hurting someone or something else, say a cat, the real natural consequence (the cat running away) actually becomes a re-enforcer. It’s fun to scare the kitty! In that instance, “time out” becomes a sort of “quasi natural consequence”. The message is sent this: “If you hurt the kitty (or the dog, or a person) you need to sit over away from potential victims because no one wants to be in reach of you when you intentionally hurt.” I used a similar principle when my son went through a biting phase at the age of fourteen months, a phase that simply would not stop! I finally resorted to climbing on top of the dining room table every time he hurt me, sending a message that “If you hurt Mama, Mama will stay out of your reach”. It worked like a charm! At fifteen months he was sophisticated enough to get that message.
The other instance in which I use “time out” is when my son gets so over-stimulated, or out of control that his brain shorts out and he can’t hear me. This usually happens in large, busy, group settings. In those instances I generally take him onto my lap, or seat him next to me until he calms enough to be able to listen.
One more thing: If you find you are using “time out” all day long, it is not working. It is time to try something else.
Aggression: One effective method of dealing with aggression is the practice of giving all the attention to the victim. This is particularly effective with small children, who tend to view parents as personal property. When your child hurts another, rush over and instead of swooping up your kid to reprimand them, ignore him/her and make a big fuss over the victim. “Oh ouch! Did Joey hurt you? Little sweetheart are you ok?” If the child is comfortable with you and won’t freak out, you can hold and cuddle him/her. After the message is sent, you then turn to your child and say something in a very even tone like. "Hitting hurts people. We don’t hit.” The practice of giving all the attention to the victim is a good way of deflating the coursing adrenaline in a little body, and of bringing the energy down.
Avoid Escalation: Bringing the energy down is a particularly effective tool to use after a negative episode. It is often the case that emotions and adrenaline are running high in a child who is misbehaving, leaving him/her even less able to reason than children are even ordinarily. Adding a high energy, parental response, like yelling, just adds fuel to the fire, spinning the child higher and more out of control as the adrenaline surges again. I like to bring the energy down. There is never really a reason to yell unless there is imminent danger that must be checked immediately. ( ie: running into the street, or your kid is about to bite someone etc.) It is far more effective to adopt what I refer to as my “sagging tone”. My sagging tone is just as effective a method of conveying parental disapproval as yelling, but it doesn’t add fuel to the fire.
Change the Venue: Changing the venue is another excellent tool that avoids escalation. A child in a busy, out of control, environment may be hard pressed to switch gears and start listening. Get an over stimulated child out of the situation to a quiet place alone to talk. Then speak quietly. Changing the venue is particularly important as your kids get older and “saving face” becomes an issue. The average adolescent will endure a firestorm of reprisals from a parent to avoid being embarrassed in front of their peers.
Fairness: While I generally do subscribe to the idea that “if you don’t want your child to learn to grab, don’t grab stuff from them”, I am not someone who will negotiate forever. Fair is fair. If my kid grabs a toy from someone else I will ask him to give it back. If he doesn’t, I will tell him that he has a choice: he can give it back or mama will give it back. If he doesn’t give it back, I get it, using whatever means necessary, and give it back. I am sending the message that other people have equal rights under the laws of our family, and members of our family must be fair whether they like it or not.
Appropriateness: Be surprised when your child acts inappropriately. Children want to be appropriate, particularly when they start edging up towards three or four. They want to act the way “people are supposed to act”. My son hit me one time, one. He was two and a half. I was hosting a holiday party at my house that evening when I broke up an argument over a toy by putting the toy away so no one could have it. My son hit me in the face. I was so derailed with party nerves anyway, and so surprised and honestly hurt that someone I loved so much would hurt me on purpose, that I burst into tears. “Through my sobs, I managed to choke out, “We don’t hit people in our family!” He never has done it since.
Don’t Carry It Past Logic. Don’t rebuke a child for something, and then proceed to withhold comfort because s/he cried when s/he was rebuked. It isn’t logical. It’s mean. Instead model "I still love you when you make mistakes, even when I am angry."
Don’t Encourage the Bottling of Emotions. If I hear one more parent at the park or the mall say, “Stop crying!”, I am just going to scream! It is important and healthy for children to experience their emotions, and to learn how to deal with them in a manner that is not destructive. Emotions are not, in themselves, negative. What is negative is the way in which they are sometimes acted on in a manner that hurts people or property. Teach your children how to channel them. “It is not ok to hit people when you are angry. If you are angry with me you can hit pillows, or you can tell me with words.” “If you need to cry that is ok, I’ll sit here by you until you are finished, and then we can talk about it.”
I know a lot of parents who make a practice of never allowing their children to see them experiencing negative emotion, but I feel it is very important for children to see parents dealing with negative emotions, so children have the opportunity to see adults model acceptable ways to handle them. Let them see you get angry and go for a run, or talk out and work through problems with your partner. Let them see that relationships have their rough spots, spots that can be worked through successfully.
In the final analysis:
There are times that you will not like your child’s behavior, but it is very important that you make a distinction between the child and the child’s actions. It is vital that you never say to your child, “You are a bad boy! You hurt your sister! “ Instead say “When you hurt your sister I feel angry and sad. We don’t hit people in our family.” And for older children: “What would it be like to live in a family where everyone hit each other. Would you like living in a family like that?”
Children are so quick to take on a script, or label, imposed upon them from the outside and internalize it. Don’t create a negative persona for your child to slip into or live up to. You may not be able to help them take it off again.
Gregory Bodenhamer, Back in Control
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Mary Liston Liepold, “Parenting Without Punishing”, Mothering, May/June 1998
Eda LeShan, “Please Don’t Hit Your Kid”, Mothering, Spring 1990
William and Martha Sears, The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby From Birth to Age Three
In my attempt to synthesize all the basic tools of attachment-sensitive discipline I came to the realization that I was writing a book, a long winded, convoluted, confusing book, at that! In desperation, I have decided to lay it all out in bullet format. It isn’t as pretty to read this way, but, hey, DISCIPLINE IS NOT PRETTY!
The Most Effective Parenting is the Preemptive Parenting: Preempting misbehavior is always more effective and pleasant than dealing with it after the fact. Treating the cause of misbehavior is the key. Children, particularly young children, have a natural desire to be pleasing in the eyes of their parents. If your children are contrary all the time, there is an underlying reason, a need that is not being met. And if children grow accustomed to feeling “wrong” inside long enough, “being contrary” may become habit. So, what to do?
Preempting the Adversarial Relationship: The idea is to avoid the creation of an adversarial relationship from the very beginning. Let me repeat that: Never allow an adversarial relationship to develop in the first place! Habitual use of a loving tone of voice goes a long way. It is so important for you and your child to stay in love with one another! Give regular love, verbally, demonstratively, freely and unconnected to any action on the part of your child. Never send the message that love is a payment for good behavior. If love becomes a commodity in your house, your child will learn use it as a power tool against you and everyone loses.
Keep Tabs on the Basics: If your child is hungry, tired, bored or under-exersized you are asking for trouble. S/he can not be responsible for his/her behavior under those conditions.
Consistency: Follow through with consistency, every time, starting day one. Consistency, consistency, consistency. In my view consistency is the key to easier discipline. If you say you are going to do something, do it. If you always back your words with appropriate action, your child will believe you when you speak to him/her and trust you. Never make a pronouncement that you are unwilling to carry out. And do not make rules that your partner will not back you up on. To do so is to train your children to be sneaky and manipulative.
Be Willing to Change Your Mind: (What?! But you said “consistency, consistency, consistency”?!) Consistency is vital, but once you have gained the reputation for meaning what you say, you now have the luxury of, no the duty to, change your mind when you are in the wrong. If you come upon some piece of information that indicates you have made a bad choice vis-a-vis your children, it is extremely important that you model “being able to change your mind”, not “saving face”. In that way do you teach your child that everyone makes mistakes, and there is no shame in correcting the error. Modeling appropriate admitting of wrong creates a foundation of trust that will open a channel for your child to come to you later on if they are in trouble. It also lays the foundation for a life path that is open to possibility rather than stunted by the fear of making mistakes.
Never Argue with Your Kids: Don’t go there! Listen to them, validate their feelings, and collaborate on boundary-creation: YES. Argue? NO! You are the adult. Arguing with your children undermines your credibility. Two good ways to avoid further arguing is the use of the following two phrases: “Never the less” and “Regardless of that.” “Mama, I must have THESE shoes! I want them! I neeeeeeed them!” “I understand that you want them very badly. Never the less, with the money we have to spend, we can buy these ones over here.” If the child continues to argue, you can repeat your “Never the less...” in a calm and even tone, or ignore him/her, as you see fit. “Dad, I want ice cream for dinner. If I can’t have ice cream, I won’t eat anything!” “You are free to make that choice, and regardless of that, you may not eat ice cream for dinner.”
Create a Positive Family Structure: Responding to “No” is not something children need to practice. Structure an environment in which the need to say “No!”, “Stop!” and “Don’t!” doesn’t come up too often. The more often you say “no”, the less meaning it has. Just as the more you yell at a child, the less impact it has. Rather than telling kids what not to do. It is far easier and more successful to tell them what to do. For example, instead of saying “Don’t draw on the wall!”, say “We only draw on paper. Let me get you some.” Or instead of “Stop pouring water out of the tub!”, say “Water needs to stay in the tub. Here is a bucket you can pour water into.” If you save “no” for things that really warrant “no”, your child will be far more responsive when you do use the word.
Not having to say “no” means baby proofing your house until it becomes a baby friendly place, a place that encourages exploration. It also means not taking your child to environments that are stressful for everyone involved. (ie. a knick knack shop, a candy store, etc.) Well meaning busybodies will tell you, “But he has to learn sometime!”. That is true. Sometime. A five year old just naturally has better impulse control than a two year old.
Know Your Child: Different children have different requirements. My son used to become stressed and over stimulated in large, busy groups, so I avoided them when I could. When that was not possible, I tried to structure his experience to minimize the problem by encouraging him to stay close by, and by bringing quiet, single user, toys for him to focus on: puzzles, books, magnadoodle etc.. I know other mothers with high metabolism children who travel everywhere with a passel of snacks in little containers. You get the idea.
The Importance of Modeling. One of the basic rules of developmental psychology, absorbed from my college days, is that 90% of what a child learns is modeled on the behavior of other people. More specifically, YOU, especially in the case of young children. Your child will learn to behave the way s/he sees you behave, NOT the way you tell him/her to behave. If you don’t want your child to grow into a person who hits, do not hit. (Spanking is hitting.) If you don’t want your child to grow into a yeller, do not yell. If you want your child to treat you with respect, treat him/her with respect. Model “I’m sorry”, not “saving face”. Model “please” and “thank you”. You don't have to force things like "I'm sorry" and "thank you". Children will eventually pick all the these things up from you, as long as they are the norm in your family.
Letting It Slide: “It is the nature of childhood to be immature, and unable to control one’s impulses. That’s what adults are for: to help children deal with impulses they eventually learn to control themselves.” - Eda LeShan
What is really important? The answer to that question will be different for each family. Are matching socks important? Is it really important that a child be out of diapers by the age of three? Is it really important that a child sit quietly at the table until everyone is finished, and eat all his/her food at one sitting, three times a day? We get hung up on so many things that do not really matter in the grand scheme of things. My former husband still wears unmatched socks on a regular basis. It doesn’t seem to have hampered him greatly in his career, or quality of life. I can almost guarantee that by the time your child leaves home s/he will be out of diapers. And with the passage of time, fidgety little people will develop the patience to sit through a complete family meal. Is it really worth the aggravation, and the rift created in the relationship to spend energy fighting the things that do not matter?
Developmental Appropriateness: Recognize that a lot of undesirable behavior is normal at different developmental stages, and goes away by itself with time. Don’t go to fancy restaurants with two year olds. They are not capable of sitting still, or being quiet. Don’t expect two three year olds to simultaneously share one toy. Most are not capable of it, and taking turns works much better. Most four year olds are going to need some encouragement and company when it comes time to put away the toys before bed.
By the time your kid leaves for college, s/he will no longer bite people or whack the cat, or sing loudly at the art museum, or take off all his/her clothes and run around Gramma’s house yelling, “NAKED! NAKED!”
Sense of Humor: I just want to put in a plug for keeping things light. If we are having a terrible day, and I can pull myself out of my internal downward spiral (I AM the adult here.) long enough to remember to joke, things get a whole lot better quickly. Laughter is the best distraction for children and one of the best ways to help everyone remember that “we are all on the same side”. It is particularly useful after kids stop nursing.
Respect: Treat your child with the respect you would give any other human being. That means saying “please”. Not taking things without asking. Not taking food off of his/her plate. Listening to his/her side of the story, and not interrupting when s/he is talking. Listen! If you are respectful, your kids will learn respect.
Notice and Reinforce Good Behavior: I always make a point of verbally noticing when I am particularly impressed with my son’s behavior, and saying thank you. “Thank you for being so quiet so I could get the baby down for her nap.” “Thank you for being so patient when we had to wait so long at the post office.”
Give the Child the Choice: “If you throw that one more time, I will put it away”. If s/he then chooses to throw it, it is s/he who is accountable for the result. Giving the child the choice can also be used as a distraction tactic. For example: If your child does not want to go to the car, you can say, “Never the less, we are going to leave now. Do you want to wear your blue shoes or your brown shoes?” And before your child knows it s/he is enmeshed in the shoe quandary, and has forgotten all about the car quandary.
State Your Expectations in Clear, Concise, Complete Language: Don’t use too many words with small children. Keep it short and simple.
Get the Child’s Input Before Setting Rules in Stone: If children feel they have some say in the making of the rules and the consequences, if they feel that it was a collaboration, children are far less likely to be resistant to the rules.
After the fact:
“Punishment refocuses the child’s feelings of anger towards the parent, so contrition gets short circuited. Being hurt or deprived of a privilege has no natural relationship to the offense; it simply reinforces the child’s awareness of the adult’s superior strength and power. In this context “getting away with something” ... becomes like a victory over an opponent, and guilt, one of the most educational of natural consequences, is canceled out.”
- Mary Liston Liepold
Many adults utilize punishment as a way to sooth their own negative feelings, and fulfill their own need for retribution. Do you want to set up a situation in which your child views you as the opponent? Earlier I emphasized the value of avoiding the creation of an adversarial relationship between parent and child. Do you want to set up a dynamic in your relationship in which you are each trying to “win”, battle after battle?
The fact is that punishment, particularly punishment that is unrelated to the infraction, as a means to shape behavior, is not particularly effective. It may work in the short term, but what it has a tendency to do is drive a behavior underground as the child learns to become adept at circumventing your control by sneaking and hiding. Any first year psych class will teach you that positive reinforcement is a lot more effective than negative reinforcement, when it comes to long term retention of a learned behavior. It is also true that ignoring a behavior (one that is not self-reinforcing) causes it to extinguish faster than punishing it. That is true in lab rats, and it is true in human beings. So what to do? Natural consequences are a good place to start.
Natural Consequences: Perhaps the most basic attachment oriented discipline tool is “natural consequences”. There is some disagreement within our community as to what is actually meant by that term, and how far to take it, but the basic idea is that the parents let the child learn the negative effects of negative behavior by allowing him/her to carry out the behavior and experience the effects. For example: Mama says “If you break your toy, you will feel sad.”, but she does not stop the child from breaking it. The child breaks the toy and learns that Mama was right, breaking toys is not the best course of action. Mama does not need to punish the behavior, because the child punished himself, in essence. "If you dump your cereal on the floor, it will be all gone and you won't have any left to eat." The child dumps. The cereal is not replaced and the child learns not to repeat the behavior.
Restitution: One sort of extension of the natural consequence principle is the concept of restitution, or making amends. In order for the restitution to be effective as a natural consequence it should fit the crime as much as possible. For example: If you steal candy from the store, you have to take it, and give it back to the clerk. If you have already eaten it, you have to go and pay for it. If you don’t have the money to pay for it, you borrow the money from Mom and Dad, and then pay them back in some form later. If you draw on the walls, you help clean up. If you break
someone else’s toy, you replace it with one of your own.
Note: I am not a fan of forcing a child to say they are “sorry” when they are not sorry, particularly if s/he is really young and doesn’t even know what it is s/he is saying. It doesn’t make sense to me even if it is “the right thing”, to have a child verbalize a feeling they are not experiencing. It is sort of like teaching him/her to lie. I think “sorry” is something we model for children ourselves, and encourage them to do, but do not force. I think being forced to say "I'm sorry" sets up resistance in the child to a natural development of a sense of contrition as s/he ages. If you want to foster that sense start asking your child questions like "How do you think it feels to be <the wounded party> right now?"
Some people might say, “Well, what is the difference between a punishment and a natural consequence? The child experiences both as a negative consequences imposed by the parent.” In my view, there is a world of difference. The natural consequence is a natural progression of events, a learning experience. It teaches that in life when we do wrong, we are accountable to set things right, to the best of our ability. There is a logical progression at work, not an unrelated penalty imposed an authority figure flaunting his or her power.
“Time out” as a natural consequence: I would like to say a few words in defense of “time out”. There has been a big movement in the AP community lately to stamp out the practice of “time out”, as an overly punitive, not very effective, method of discipline. I will agree that if it is used as a consequence for an action unrelated to the offense, that it too becomes just another form of infective punishment, but I also think it has its uses.
First let me say that when I use the phrase “time out”, I am not referring to the practice of putting a child in his/her room to endure time alone. I think as with most forms of punishment, that practice simply short circuits the child’s “analyzing the event” thought process, and replaces it with self-pity and anger toward the parent. Also, I think it sends the wrong message to the child: “When you behave badly, you will be isolated from the family and left to deal with your negative emotions alone. I don’t want you around when I am angry with you.” I think this form of time out sets up a dynamic in the family in which children are reluctant to come to their parents when they are in trouble and need help. “Mama only wants to be around me when I am good.”
“Time out”, in our home takes place in one of two places: either the lap of a parent, or in the same room, off to the side, but within full view of everything.
We use “time out” as an extension of natural consequences, and only in instances of aggression, or in some instances when an over stimulated child simply needs to calm down. In the first instance, if a child is hurting someone or something else, say a cat, the real natural consequence (the cat running away) actually becomes a re-enforcer. It’s fun to scare the kitty! In that instance, “time out” becomes a sort of “quasi natural consequence”. The message is sent this: “If you hurt the kitty (or the dog, or a person) you need to sit over away from potential victims because no one wants to be in reach of you when you intentionally hurt.” I used a similar principle when my son went through a biting phase at the age of fourteen months, a phase that simply would not stop! I finally resorted to climbing on top of the dining room table every time he hurt me, sending a message that “If you hurt Mama, Mama will stay out of your reach”. It worked like a charm! At fifteen months he was sophisticated enough to get that message.
The other instance in which I use “time out” is when my son gets so over-stimulated, or out of control that his brain shorts out and he can’t hear me. This usually happens in large, busy, group settings. In those instances I generally take him onto my lap, or seat him next to me until he calms enough to be able to listen.
One more thing: If you find you are using “time out” all day long, it is not working. It is time to try something else.
Aggression: One effective method of dealing with aggression is the practice of giving all the attention to the victim. This is particularly effective with small children, who tend to view parents as personal property. When your child hurts another, rush over and instead of swooping up your kid to reprimand them, ignore him/her and make a big fuss over the victim. “Oh ouch! Did Joey hurt you? Little sweetheart are you ok?” If the child is comfortable with you and won’t freak out, you can hold and cuddle him/her. After the message is sent, you then turn to your child and say something in a very even tone like. "Hitting hurts people. We don’t hit.” The practice of giving all the attention to the victim is a good way of deflating the coursing adrenaline in a little body, and of bringing the energy down.
Avoid Escalation: Bringing the energy down is a particularly effective tool to use after a negative episode. It is often the case that emotions and adrenaline are running high in a child who is misbehaving, leaving him/her even less able to reason than children are even ordinarily. Adding a high energy, parental response, like yelling, just adds fuel to the fire, spinning the child higher and more out of control as the adrenaline surges again. I like to bring the energy down. There is never really a reason to yell unless there is imminent danger that must be checked immediately. ( ie: running into the street, or your kid is about to bite someone etc.) It is far more effective to adopt what I refer to as my “sagging tone”. My sagging tone is just as effective a method of conveying parental disapproval as yelling, but it doesn’t add fuel to the fire.
Change the Venue: Changing the venue is another excellent tool that avoids escalation. A child in a busy, out of control, environment may be hard pressed to switch gears and start listening. Get an over stimulated child out of the situation to a quiet place alone to talk. Then speak quietly. Changing the venue is particularly important as your kids get older and “saving face” becomes an issue. The average adolescent will endure a firestorm of reprisals from a parent to avoid being embarrassed in front of their peers.
Fairness: While I generally do subscribe to the idea that “if you don’t want your child to learn to grab, don’t grab stuff from them”, I am not someone who will negotiate forever. Fair is fair. If my kid grabs a toy from someone else I will ask him to give it back. If he doesn’t, I will tell him that he has a choice: he can give it back or mama will give it back. If he doesn’t give it back, I get it, using whatever means necessary, and give it back. I am sending the message that other people have equal rights under the laws of our family, and members of our family must be fair whether they like it or not.
Appropriateness: Be surprised when your child acts inappropriately. Children want to be appropriate, particularly when they start edging up towards three or four. They want to act the way “people are supposed to act”. My son hit me one time, one. He was two and a half. I was hosting a holiday party at my house that evening when I broke up an argument over a toy by putting the toy away so no one could have it. My son hit me in the face. I was so derailed with party nerves anyway, and so surprised and honestly hurt that someone I loved so much would hurt me on purpose, that I burst into tears. “Through my sobs, I managed to choke out, “We don’t hit people in our family!” He never has done it since.
Don’t Carry It Past Logic. Don’t rebuke a child for something, and then proceed to withhold comfort because s/he cried when s/he was rebuked. It isn’t logical. It’s mean. Instead model "I still love you when you make mistakes, even when I am angry."
Don’t Encourage the Bottling of Emotions. If I hear one more parent at the park or the mall say, “Stop crying!”, I am just going to scream! It is important and healthy for children to experience their emotions, and to learn how to deal with them in a manner that is not destructive. Emotions are not, in themselves, negative. What is negative is the way in which they are sometimes acted on in a manner that hurts people or property. Teach your children how to channel them. “It is not ok to hit people when you are angry. If you are angry with me you can hit pillows, or you can tell me with words.” “If you need to cry that is ok, I’ll sit here by you until you are finished, and then we can talk about it.”
I know a lot of parents who make a practice of never allowing their children to see them experiencing negative emotion, but I feel it is very important for children to see parents dealing with negative emotions, so children have the opportunity to see adults model acceptable ways to handle them. Let them see you get angry and go for a run, or talk out and work through problems with your partner. Let them see that relationships have their rough spots, spots that can be worked through successfully.
In the final analysis:
There are times that you will not like your child’s behavior, but it is very important that you make a distinction between the child and the child’s actions. It is vital that you never say to your child, “You are a bad boy! You hurt your sister! “ Instead say “When you hurt your sister I feel angry and sad. We don’t hit people in our family.” And for older children: “What would it be like to live in a family where everyone hit each other. Would you like living in a family like that?”
Children are so quick to take on a script, or label, imposed upon them from the outside and internalize it. Don’t create a negative persona for your child to slip into or live up to. You may not be able to help them take it off again.
Gregory Bodenhamer, Back in Control
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Mary Liston Liepold, “Parenting Without Punishing”, Mothering, May/June 1998
Eda LeShan, “Please Don’t Hit Your Kid”, Mothering, Spring 1990
William and Martha Sears, The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby From Birth to Age Three
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