Can Positive Discipline Help Your Child?
As human beings, we’re all social animals. It only makes sense that our children are born with a desire to connect with others. And the more connected our children feel to the world around them, the more likely they’ll respect both themselves and others.
Discipline can be vital when it comes to helping our children establish and grow this healthy connection with others and the world around them, allowing them to grow up to become well-adjusted, successful adults.
However, not all types of discipline are equal or equally effective at helping our children form a healthy connection to peers, family, friends, and the larger community.
What Is Positive Discipline?
As the name suggests, unlike “negative discipline,” which focuses on punishing a child for “bad” behavior, positive discipline is encouraging and focuses on a child’s positive behaviors.
Positive discipline, which has been studied and practiced since the early 1920s and is the most common approach used by educators and therapists today, is based on the concept that there are only good and bad behaviors, not good and bad children.
Positive discipline focuses on treating children with respect so that they mirror this respectful attitude with others, and helps children develop healthy self-esteem as well as learn the important social and life skills that will help children become respectful, responsible, and resourceful members of their communities.
How Does Positive Discipline Work?
Practicing positive discipline is pretty straightforward…
Simply speaking, positive discipline involves helping your child express, understand, and handle their feelings and emotions without fear of punishment.
The foundation of positive discipline is built upon five key criteria that are necessary for parents to effectively discipline their child…
Does Positive Discipline Involve Specific Techniques?
There are far too many ways of practicing positive discipline with your child to name them all here, but all of the techniques used in positive discipline fall under one of the key criteria discussed above. Some of the more common positive discipline techniques include:
Again, there are many more techniques that fall under the positive discipline category. The one’s you choose to use will depend largely on your child’s age and the behavioral issues he or she is exhibiting.
So, Can Positive Discipline Help Your Child?
The short answer is a definite, “Yes!”
Positive discipline can help any child and is already in play the moment your child is born and you begin interacting with them. Your compassionate and consistent responses to your infant child’s needs is critical when it comes to helping your child form a healthy attachment to you and this same compassionate consistency should be mirrored in your responses to your older child.
Consistency and compassion are necessary to help children feel comfortable with their own feelings and, in turn, feel confident about themselves and their own abilities.
The alternative is to create an environment of fear and tension, in which a child will learn by example that these are the emotions that they should use to address their own feelings, as well as interact with others. Perhaps needless to say, but tension and fear aren’t very helpful when it comes to building a child’s self-esteem or teaching them how to build healthy relationships with others.
So, whether you feel like your child’s behavior needs to be corrected or you want to prevent certain behavioral traits from forming in your child, positive discipline may well be the answer.
Positive discipline helps children learn self-discipline, self-respect, personal responsibility, and self-confidence. And, if you love your child or believe that children are, indeed, our future, who wouldn’t want more children to have those traits?!?
Steps You Can Take…
There are numerous resources available for parents interested in learning more about how to practice positive discipline, and a quick Internet search will bring up numerous resources ranging from books, to videos, to classes that will teach you the techniques used in positive discipline.
Whether you’re a new parent who wants to learn more about positive discipline for your family’s future or you’re the parent of tween, teen, or adolescent that is simply looking for a more effective means of interacting and disciplining your child, help is available.
The first step is to do a little research on positive discipline and learn what you can about the methods and techniques involved and the benefits it offers.
After you’ve done some research, start putting what you’ve learned into practice.
And, if you need help, remember that help is available. You can always contact a professional counselor or licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in family counseling and helping parents implement positive discipline.
And, remember, as long as your child is living at home, it may never be too late to start practicing positive discipline… However, the earlier you start implementing positive parenting techniques with your child the more effective they’ll be, both in terms of helping your relationship with your child be the best that it can be and at helping your child become the confident, respectful, healthy, and well-adjusted, and self-actualizing adult you hope they’ll become.
Discipline can be vital when it comes to helping our children establish and grow this healthy connection with others and the world around them, allowing them to grow up to become well-adjusted, successful adults.
However, not all types of discipline are equal or equally effective at helping our children form a healthy connection to peers, family, friends, and the larger community.
What Is Positive Discipline?
As the name suggests, unlike “negative discipline,” which focuses on punishing a child for “bad” behavior, positive discipline is encouraging and focuses on a child’s positive behaviors.
Positive discipline, which has been studied and practiced since the early 1920s and is the most common approach used by educators and therapists today, is based on the concept that there are only good and bad behaviors, not good and bad children.
Positive discipline focuses on treating children with respect so that they mirror this respectful attitude with others, and helps children develop healthy self-esteem as well as learn the important social and life skills that will help children become respectful, responsible, and resourceful members of their communities.
How Does Positive Discipline Work?
Practicing positive discipline is pretty straightforward…
Simply speaking, positive discipline involves helping your child express, understand, and handle their feelings and emotions without fear of punishment.
The foundation of positive discipline is built upon five key criteria that are necessary for parents to effectively discipline their child…
- Teach your child a sense of importance and belonging by fostering his or her sense of connection to others.
- Be both firm and kind at the same time. Discipline should be encouraging and respectful for both parent and child.
- For discipline to be effective in the long-term, you must consider your children’s feelings. What are they thinking, learning, and ultimately deciding about themselves?
- Teach necessary social and life skills that help your child learn how to solve problems and show concern and respect for others.
- Encourage your children to discover their own capabilities by allowing them a sense of autonomy.
Does Positive Discipline Involve Specific Techniques?
There are far too many ways of practicing positive discipline with your child to name them all here, but all of the techniques used in positive discipline fall under one of the key criteria discussed above. Some of the more common positive discipline techniques include:
- Allowing natural consequences to take place,
- Maintaining a positive, healthy relationship,
- Creating a “yes” environment in the home,
- Offering choices to the child,
- Working out a solution together with the child,
- Being sensitive to your child’s feelings and emotions,
- Not forcing empty apologies,
- Trying to understand your child’s unmet needs, and
- Avoiding labeling your child.
Again, there are many more techniques that fall under the positive discipline category. The one’s you choose to use will depend largely on your child’s age and the behavioral issues he or she is exhibiting.
So, Can Positive Discipline Help Your Child?
The short answer is a definite, “Yes!”
Positive discipline can help any child and is already in play the moment your child is born and you begin interacting with them. Your compassionate and consistent responses to your infant child’s needs is critical when it comes to helping your child form a healthy attachment to you and this same compassionate consistency should be mirrored in your responses to your older child.
Consistency and compassion are necessary to help children feel comfortable with their own feelings and, in turn, feel confident about themselves and their own abilities.
The alternative is to create an environment of fear and tension, in which a child will learn by example that these are the emotions that they should use to address their own feelings, as well as interact with others. Perhaps needless to say, but tension and fear aren’t very helpful when it comes to building a child’s self-esteem or teaching them how to build healthy relationships with others.
So, whether you feel like your child’s behavior needs to be corrected or you want to prevent certain behavioral traits from forming in your child, positive discipline may well be the answer.
Positive discipline helps children learn self-discipline, self-respect, personal responsibility, and self-confidence. And, if you love your child or believe that children are, indeed, our future, who wouldn’t want more children to have those traits?!?
Steps You Can Take…
There are numerous resources available for parents interested in learning more about how to practice positive discipline, and a quick Internet search will bring up numerous resources ranging from books, to videos, to classes that will teach you the techniques used in positive discipline.
Whether you’re a new parent who wants to learn more about positive discipline for your family’s future or you’re the parent of tween, teen, or adolescent that is simply looking for a more effective means of interacting and disciplining your child, help is available.
The first step is to do a little research on positive discipline and learn what you can about the methods and techniques involved and the benefits it offers.
After you’ve done some research, start putting what you’ve learned into practice.
And, if you need help, remember that help is available. You can always contact a professional counselor or licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in family counseling and helping parents implement positive discipline.
And, remember, as long as your child is living at home, it may never be too late to start practicing positive discipline… However, the earlier you start implementing positive parenting techniques with your child the more effective they’ll be, both in terms of helping your relationship with your child be the best that it can be and at helping your child become the confident, respectful, healthy, and well-adjusted, and self-actualizing adult you hope they’ll become.
