Intelligent Discipline

(RaisingX.com) Discipline is not the most fun topic to think or write about but it is an important one. Discipline can be good and important for safety, growth, and development or it can create severe problems effecting safety, growth, and development. The best place to start this conversation is with how discipline should be used – always with love.

Why discipline is important

At a basic level parents have a legal duty to protect their children. But most of us know we need to do more than just avoid legal issues. We want to protect our kids so they can grow up to be healthy happy adults. There is joy in seeing them learn something new. Part of their learning and growing involves understanding what may hurt them and what happens when they make choices. Discipline is an essential tool to help.

What we believe (so you know how we think)

Angela and I believe discipline should be about teaching not punishing. The point of discipline is to help them make better decisions. We want Xavier to grow up happy and healthy. We want her to be compassionate thinker who challenges her beliefs and the world around her. But, this doesn’t just happen overnight. It starts with little lessons as infants and continues into adulthood as they mature. It is our role to facilitate this growth and our discipline techniques can help or hurt this effort.

Timeout is our discipline method when needed. It allows for more teaching and less punishment, when used correctly. We did just read an interesting article about the negative effects of timeout, though. The author had some good points about how it can be misused. We will expand more in a later post.

We don’t believe in using spanking for discipline. Though it certainly can produce results, it doesn’t modify behavior in a positive way. Spanking also complicates the development process about right and wrong. You are reinforcing violence as a solution. Knowing kids learn an immense amount through imitation makes it hard for me to advocate for spanking my child.

Keys when disciplining:

1) Isolate the behavior from the child – meaning the behavior was bad not the child. A very important distinction to make; you do not want to hurt their development of self-worth and self-esteem. They should always be valued and loved little people regardless of their actions.

2) Focus on their choice – drawing is great. But they made a bad choice in where to draw. Their picture is beautiful it just doesn’t belong drawn on the wall. This will help preserve their desire to learn and be creative, within your limits.

3) Use timeout as a consequence – Timeout is our discipline of choice, but it also must be used intelligently. Using timeout as a consequence for their choice reinforces their ability to control and correct the situation and illustrates the concept of actions and consequences. Much of life is about choice and choices come with consequences good or bad. Helping them to understand this concept will help them make better as they become more independent.

4) Always show your love – no matter what necessitated discipline always reinforce your love and show your affection for you little person before, during, and after discipline.

Reasons parents discipline

We think that drivers for discipline are on a continuum. The needs ranges from the immediate (don’t run in the street) to the long term (make good choices). When we think about discipline in this way the immediate needs appear to be protection needs, in the middle there behavior changes, and the long term focus on choice.

- Protection: As parents we use discipline to help protect our kids. They need to know that playing with the propane tank on the grill is dangerous and they should not do it. We also use it to protect others. They need to know that hitting hurts other people and is not acceptable. These are immediate changes needed.

- Behavior changes: We discipline children to change their behavior. We want to stop them from throwing our shoes off the balcony, or from standing in the dog’s water. They are not immediate changes but are more short term focused. Here parents need to use discipline intelligently as it can have an unexpected effect.(explained below)

- Choices: We also use discipline to help our kids make better choices. Here discipline is a tool to help children understand that their choices affect others. It is also a method for teaching values. The goal is to help them develop the ability to discern good from bad and right from wrong.

Protection

Discipline for protection is the most basic. It is needed for their protection and the protection of others. They can be seriously hurt by many things and at an early age need to understand what some of those dangers are. Nature tends to label its dangers; poison dart frogs are brightly colored and rattlesnakes rattle. Unfortunately most of our dangers don’t come labeled and but instead are often inviting for little kids. Consequently, we have to teach our little ones about those dangers.

Discipline here should be focused on the reason discipline is being used: they will be hurt if they continue. For Xavier we have found that role playwas the most effective method. She was not drawing the connection between timeout and playing with electrical sockets, or timeouts were worth the fun, so we tried to make the consequence more real. Daddy explained that outlets were dangerous and cause hurts/ouchies. To illustrate, I went to touch the outlet and pretended to get hurt, shaking my hand and yelling ouch. The sockets no longer have any draw.

For issues like hitting the focus should still be on the hurting aspect of the behavior. Hitting is generally a reaction to control their situation; the intent is not to hurt. Emphasizing that hitting other people hurts them is a way to help your little one understand the result of their actions. Enrolling them in helping to console the child/person they hit can also help them understand this. Timeouts should be used after this process reinforcing their choice to hit hurt someone and has consequences, going to timeout.

Behavior Modification

This area is not as straight forward as disciplining for protection. There is no immediate danger so we are trying to shape how our little ones think. As parents, we have to be careful in how we use discipline to change their behavior. It is important to remember how young children express their needs; they cry out, act out, or as they get older may start to articulate their needs. Be sure to take a moment to step back and try to understand the root cause of their behavior.

Not understanding the cause can lead you to make it worse. For example, your child is screaming or acting out around other people. If they are crying because they are feeling insecure and need your reassurance, attempts to change the behavior through discipline will be harmful. Discipline here doesn’t allow them to be comforted and feel more secure, but removes them farther from you physically and emotionally. This doesn’t mean don’t discipline. It means use discipline intelligently. As we said before it is one tool to be used in conjunction with listening, understanding, love, etc. Understand what behaviors you are affecting. Make sure you are sending the right message.

Influencing their Choices

I know it is somewhat odd to think about a 2 year old making choices but they make many. They make choices on how to play, where to play, what to play with, whether to listen or not, to take off their diaper and pee on the floor, etc. Their behavior demonstrates their choices. But just trying to address the behavior doesn’t help them develop. To grow they need to understand that they made a choice to do something and that has consequences, good and bad. Remember, praising good choices is more important and effective than disciplining bad ones but both may be necessary.

Most of their life at this stage is play so most of their choices involve it. But play is their gateway to the world so this can be tricky. One of the biggest challenges we face in this area is finding the balance between encouraging creativity and exploration while maintaining important boundaries. Sir Ken Robinson, in his book, Learning to Be Creative, believes children are innately creative and we, as parents and teachers, educate it out of them. So Angela and I try hard not to discipline the creativity out of X…Creativity is a great thing, but not necessarily so great as a mural on your living room wall. Finding the balance is key.

We try to provide many forums for creativity, exploring, and learning. It’s like having a puppy. A simplistic analogy, but follow me. The puppy is full of energy and needs to play and chew. If you don’t provide any toys or bones, the puppy will find the couch, your shoes, etc. I am not saying your child is a puppy, but the analogy holds; you have to give kids a way to occupy their insatiable desire to explore. So, focus on teaching before discipline is necessary. Teaching how they can be creative and explore within the boundaries you set.

Drawing on the walls, not cool. But, using your crayons on your cardboard house; okay. This gives you a baseline to discipline from. So, if they do still choose to draw their rendition of Blue’s Clues or Big Bird on your wall, you can discipline intelligently.

If you take away nothing else, remember:

Discipline is important but it should be used as one, and we stress, ONE, tool to help your child grow. Disciplining intelligently will help your little one develop in a positive way.

www.raisingx.com