discipline: guidelines for a more positive approach to parenting
by Liz Kennedy
Encourage your child to feel good about themselves
- Perhaps the most important principle behind all discipline is to find ways to build your child’s self esteem.
- Give them positive messages about their strengths and assets. Help them to build on skills and set goals for improving their behaviour.
- A successful child that feels worthwhile is less likely to misbehave and will enjoy better relationships with others. Praise behaviour you’d like to see more often
- As a first step to discipline find ways of encouraging your child to follow the rules you’ve set for your family.
- Acknowledge any attempt your child makes, for example, to follow your instructions the first time, cooperate with their brothers or sisters, resist the urge to have a temper outburst or do their homework on time.
- By giving more attention to this kind of positive behaviour your child will learn to co-operate more often.
Decide on a discipline plan ahead of time and set out logical consequences for breaking the rules
- Try to have a discipline code that all members of the family agree on to reduce the likelihood of arguments when problems arise.
- Negotiate fair and reasonable consequences of behaviour problems with your children as well as rewards for good behaviour.
- Don’t go overboard with punishment by threatening consequences you’d never carry out. Simple, immediate consequences that relate to the misbehaviour are most effective.
- Once your child understands your house rules they can choose whether to follow them or not.
- It’s normal for most children to test the system at some stage. They might refuse to do what’s expected of them or argue with you about the rules. Refuse to enter into an argument. Let the consequences of their actions be the deterrent for breaking rules in the future.
- Be clever in also granting them privileges for their good behaviour. For example, most children of this age love the idea of earning extra time up after bedtime.
Parenting can be a frustrating and stressful job at times. But with patience, persistence and lots of positive thinking you’ll enjoy nurturing your child through these years - giving you just enough breathing space to cope with the next stage...adolescence!
Liz Kennedy is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice at Miranda in Sydney. She is co-author of Every Kid: Parenting your five to twelve year old, published by Double Bay 1993.
