Wikis tagged with discipline

  By Sheryl Paul   Just as I’m about the pour a splash of vanilla into the shake I’m making for my son, I hear two blood-curdling screams followed by the sight of my older son, Everest, tearing around the corner with his 3 1/2 year old brother, who has transformed into the Tazmanian devil, close behind. Everest dashes behind my back to create a blockade between him and Asher. Asher runs full-force toward his brother, but finds himself in my arms instead.   I carry him to the couch and hold him tightly. Contained in my arms and against the warmth of my skin, the flailing in his body...

By Katharina Sandizell   Have you ever told your child the same thing again and again, but haven’t been able to get him or her to stop hitting a sibling, shouting at you, or ignoring your requests?  Do you sometimes wish your child would listen or be more respectful?  Do you ever wonder if and when the tantrums will stop? Well, I think most parents face these and many more challenges with their kids.  Often parents can feel helpless and alone when it comes to handling and correcting their children’s behavior.  Many people may not have learned how to parent effectively from their...

So there you are one afternoon, at the end of your rope with an out-of-control three-year-old. You know you won’t spank him, and you have become mindful of avoiding shame-based measures, so what’s left? Is “Time Out” the answer? At risk of bringing on the wrath of parents everywhere, my answer is no.   Time-outs were conceived as a more humane alternative to spanking, but the problem is, they land a blow to the brain and psyche rather than to the bottom. Right at the moment when the child is overwhelmed by a flood of emotions he cannot manage, and he most needs the regulating presence --...

By Jessica Williams www.LoveParentingLA.com I picked my newly five-year old son up from his first day of summer camp and the longest school/camp day he’d ever had. As he got into the car, he looked for the snack bag that he had left in the car. I had removed the bag from the hot car so as not to spoil. I offered him an apple or crackers instead. He burst into tears. He threw himself onto the floor of our car, cried, screamed and hit his fists. He was beside himself with upset and fury that his snack bag was missing. My other two children were in their car seats looking at their...

One of the most frequent questions I get is, How do I get my child to listen to me? What lingers in the roots just beneath this question is, How do I get her to respect me? The two are intimately entwined. As so often happens with Life’s sticky questions, sometimes we can unstick things a bit by turning the question around: rather than How can I get my child to listen to me, we can get far more traction with How can I make myself more “listenable”? The fact is, you can never “make” your child do or be anything! Oh sure, we’re lulled into the comforting illusion that we can during the...

I talk a lot in my lectures and coaching sessions about the child’s need for our calm, loving authority as parents. Let me clarify loud and clear that I mean authoritative parenting, not authoritarian parenting! In the authoritarian style of parenting, children’s unquestioning obedience is the goal — a short-sighted approach on every level, including optimally healthy development of the child’s social brain, which is the polestar of parenting for peace. Authoritative parenting takes a longer view and is marked by the parents’ decisive yet respectful leadership role and their focus on...

I still remember when one of my aunts, furious at her son’s defiant and impolite behavior, ran into the bathroom to grab a hairbrush so she could spank him with it. I was downstairs playing. I cowered behind the couch in the living room, trying to make myself as small as possible, trying to disappear. She went back upstairs with the hairbrush. I didn’t see her spank my cousin but I heard him shrieking. I’m not sure how old I was, maybe four? My parents did not hit me when I was a child and I felt confused and frightened by my aunt’s rage. Before I had children, hitting a child...

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m not much of a shopper. I don’t take my kids shopping very often, except to the grocery store. But have you ever noticed how even a routine jaunt to buy grapefruit and tomatoes can turn into a power struggle extraordinaire? Though my kids are pretty well-behaved (in public anyway), I find that our shopping trips–even just to the market–always go much more smoothly if I’m upfront about how I expect them to behave. The key to successful shopping with kids is to make sure you talk to them before you enter the store. (NB: These rules work at the...

Many parents with young children tack on “Okay?” at the end of their sentences, turning what is intended as a statement of fact, “We need to leave the park now,” into a question, “We need to leave the park now, okay?” Adding this question to the end of the statement presumedly creates a dialogue about the leaving. The problem is the parent often didn’t intend to discuss whether or not leaving was to the child’s liking. The “okay?” is a set up because it implies that the child has a voice in the decision but resistance from the child (“I don’t want to leave!”) is often met with...

I dial a friend’s number and when the phone is picked up I say hello. There’s silence on the other end. Than a small voice, an under-eight-year-old voice, says, “Who is this?” Maybe it’s the question, or maybe the inflection, but it sounds rude. The appropriate response to “Hello” when you call someone is almost always “Hello.” Right? But kids don’t know that unless they’re taught. And telling your kids about good phone manners isn’t enough. In the moment they might feel shy on the telephone, or uncertain what to say, so you actually have to practice with them. When the kids...

Why They Whine: How Corporations Prey on our Children By Gary Ruskin Web Exlusive Cheryl Idell knows a lot about nagging. She has written reports for major corporations with such titles as the "Nag Factor" and "The Art of Fine Whining." She tells her clients that nagging spurs about a third of a family's trips to a fast-food restaurant, to buy children's clothing or a video. Idell, who is chief strategic officer for Western Initiative Media Worldwide, a major market research firm, speaks with the cold precision of a physicist. "Nagging falls into two categories," she explains. "There...

If your kitchen’s immaculate and your house has never looked like Hurricane Wilma came through it, don’t read this. This post is not Martha Stewart approved, it won’t make the Fly Lady happy, and it’s not for the homemaker who keeps the floors so clean you can eat off them (though I like that homemaker and I want to be invited to her house for dinner. Tonight. Please.) Full disclosure: I hate dirty kitchens. I find it rather painful that the floors in our kitchen can be eaten off of because there’s enough gunk on them to constitute a tasty (albeit dehydrated) meal. Here are nine ways...

Illustration by Etsy seller: dertigdecember Read your post from this morning and have a question for you regarding how you handle the sibling rivalry that you were describing.  My kids, 4.5 years and 1.5 years, pretty much fight all day long.  It’s really frustrating.  Basically every single situation plays itself out like this: Ella grabs toy from baby, baby screams bloody murder, I yell at Ella and demand that she gives it back, she cries hysterically and insists that SHE was playing with that toy (or was about to).  I’ve tried explaining a million ways that she just can’t...

I saw a mother smacking her 2 year old on the bottom when he ran near the road yesterday.  It made me wince then it made me sad.  Where is the sense in hurting a child to stop them hurting themselves?  There is always another way to keep them safe.  Although smacking has been proven to be an ineffective form of discipline, many of us still believe smacking, or spanking, is a necessary evil. Why, in our modern world full of human rights, is it deemed unacceptable to do to an adult, but not a child? A 200lb man can smack a small child as often as they like as long as it is their own! You...

Even those of us who are against smacking will routinely use other discipline techniques to control and mould our children’s behaviour from a very early age. Below is a list of non-physical discipline measures in common use today that come highly recommended by ‘experts’, and a description of what is really going on psychologically for the child. Time-out – Removing a child from a situation for inappropriate behaviour for a set number of minutes. Often an apology is required before the time-out can end. When our children behave ‘badly’ they are either reaching out in some way, they...

Yes, I spanked my son. It was almost twenty years ago but I still remember it vividly. Ian was six or seven and was stubbornly, defiantly ignoring me right to my face. (About what? Now that I cannot recall!) Something primitive inside me uncoiled and I was suddenly spanking him. I regretted it immediately and ever since -- not just for the obvious reason of having been violent with him, but also for the sliver of his respect I lost in that moment.   We lose the admiration of our children when we “lose it.” It’s a mammalian thing: all animal behaviorists know that our ability to have...

By S.K. Valenzuela   Though Valentine's Day has already come and gone, the whole month of February always seems to me to be dedicated to love. It gives us a fabulous excuse to reflect on what love really is and to assess our growth in love.    I teach Baby Care classes at an area hospital, and one of my goals is to help parents to understand the fundamental relationship between responsiveness and trust. It's a cycle that begins from the very first moments after birth and continues...well, frankly, I don't think it ever ends. The basic premise is that responding to your child's needs --...

By Lisa Hassan Scott         “Well, when you come to visit, I can try to see if I can get a portable crib.” My husband and I were planning our first visit to his parents’ house, and my in-laws were really excited.  “That won’t be necessary,” I said, “the baby will just sleep with us.”  A silence.  “With you?  But won’t you roll on top of her?”  And so began a conversation about parenting that has been going on for ten years.  At first, I felt uncomfortable and defensive of our choices.  Everything we were doing was so, well, different from the choices our parents had made.  Heck,...

Thank you to Dr. Laura Markham and Perigree Books for sharing this exclusive excerpt of Dr. Markham's new book Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting.   How to Set Empathic Limits Setting limits is an essential part of parenting. Limits keep our children safe and healthy and support them in learning social norms so that they can function happily in society. And if we set limits empathically, kids are more likely to internalize the ability to set limits for themselves, which is otherwise known as self-discipline.   How are you at setting limits? Does...

                      “Tantrums” are normal reactions from kids that almost every parent deals with at some point.  They can be frustrating and scary for us, particularly if we do not have the tools to guide our children through them in a healthy way.  Understanding where they come from can be endlessly helpful.  Tantrums are urgent, overwhelming panic responses in a child’s brain.   The valuable and insightful book The Science of Parenting: How today’s brain research can help you raise happy, emotionally balanced children by Margot Sunderland states, “A distress tantrum means that...