Looking at the Why and How of Discipline

Discipline is the process of teaching your child what type of behaviour is acceptable and what type is not acceptable. In other words, discipline teaches a child to follow rules. It sounds so straightforward, yet every parent becomes frustrated at one time or another with issues surrounding children and discipline.

Parents run up against some barriers when trying to teach good behaviour to their children such as Children who are disrespectful and don’t listen; where you seem to repeat things a thousand times and Children who do listen, but defy or deliberately disobey your request for good behaviour.

Accept the Challenge of Establishing Discipline

Your responsibility as a parent is to help your child become self-reliant, respectful, and self-controlled. Relatives, schools, churches, caregivers and others can help. But the primary responsibility for discipline still rests with the parents and you set the guidelines.

Some Discipline Techniques

The discipline techniques you choose may depend on the type of inappropriate behaviour your child displays, your child’s age, your child’s temperament, and your parenting style.

  • Reward good behaviour – Acknowledging good behaviour is the best way to encourage your child to continue it. In other words, “Catch him being good.” Compliment your child when he or she shows the behaviour you’ve been seeking.
  • Natural consequences – Your child does something wrong, and you let the child experience the result of that behaviour. For example, if a child deliberately breaks a toy, he or she no longer has that toy to play with. Natural consequences can work well when children don’t seem to “hear” your warnings about the potential outcome of their behaviour. Be sure, however, that any consequence they might experience isn’t dangerous.
  • Logical consequences – This technique involves describing to your child what the consequences will be for unacceptable behaviour, here you have to spend time explaining. The consequence is directly linked to the behaviour. For example, you tell your child that if he doesn’t pick up his toys, then those toys will be taken away from him.
  • Taking away privileges – Sometimes the consequence for unacceptable behaviour may be taking away a privilege. For example, if a child doesn’t complete her homework on time, you may choose to take away television privileges. This discipline technique works best if the privilege is something the child values and is taken away as soon as possible after the inappropriate behaviour (especially for young children)
  • Time outs – Time outs should be a quiet, boring place — probably not the bedroom (where the child can play) or a dangerous place like a bathroom. This discipline technique can work with children when the child is old enough to understand the purpose of a time out — usually around age 2 and older, with about a minute of time out for each year of age. Time outs often work best with younger kids for whom the separation from the parent is truly seen as a deprivation.
  • Spanking – Spanking done within the right context can be and is very effective. I believe what the bible says that “Don’t fail to discipline your children, they won’t die if you spank them”.

Tips for Maintaining Discipline

Sometimes it is good to notice repeat bad behaviours or discipline issues. These explanations don’t excuse the behaviour, but trying to understand why bad behaviour occurs can help you and your child find ways to prevent the behaviour from happening again and again. For example IF a child acts up when they are hungry or have had a long commute you can make necessary adjustments.

Be consistent

The main thing is to remain consistent. If you punish a bad behaviour sometimes and not sometimes then you don’t build credibility and your child won’t learn. Any technique will fail if you don’t follow through or enforce consequences consistently. If more than one adult is responsible for the child’s discipline, be sure you agree about the approaches you will use.

Adapted from WedMD

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