(Tips from Parenting Expert, Jane Nelsen)

Have you ever felt helpless?

And very tired? And just wanting to go fetch your children from school and come home in peace, and prepare dinner while they go and play on their own, kissing and laughing? A day when you are not running to prepare dinner without burning it while you desperately try to have your child take out his clothes to go the shower??!!!!

Well that what I wanted, but we are not in an ideal world but reality.

I was struggling with my son, soon after he started school (in September 2017). He was again having tantrums (yes it does not just comes with the Terrible Twos), and I was kind of desperate. He would not listen!  For context, it was a huge change starting school (pre-K) and becoming more responsible… and he had the worst teacher… but that I will tell you about it in another post. And my husband was travelling a lot for work, and it was a period where I was pretty exhausted with MS….

If I would ask my son calmly to take out his clothes to go shower, he would just answer also calmly “No because I do not feel like it.”

Then I would lose patience (after a while, meaning at least 30 min of patience) and start yelling.

So I went online to try to find a solution or at least advice and I came across positive discipline.

I found the concept of positive discipline very interesting.

Oftentimes, parents understand the word “discipline” to mean punishment. However, this is actually a wrong way of viewing discipline. In the actual sense, the word “discipline” is a Latin word “disciplina” which means “teaching, and learning.” That is basically what we need to do. We need to correct our kids so that they can learn what good behaviors are and get better.

Discipline as punishment ?

What we want is for our children to learn lessons from their mistakes and not repeat them.

But honestly who has not sent their kid to their room or in the corner and tell them to think about why they are being punished (and of course this is the last thing they will do…). Well, I plead guilty!!!!

If anything, it will make them more decisive to rebel, revenge or retreat, says Dr. Jane Nelsen, a best-selling author, licensed marriage and family therapist and child counselor in San Diego, California.

The Now challenges and their future

Nelsen adds that while still growing up, children are bound to be strong-willed, have bedtime and morning hassles, whine, fight, and lack motivation. They will have homework problems, be addicted to media, have temper tantrums, interrupt, and use foul language. They won’t listen, but they may bite, and be constantly texting. But this will not continue forever or determine who they are going to turn out to be in life.

As they grow further, they are going to start becoming accountable, risk takers, and have the desire to cooperate and contribute. They will have a sense of humor, and learn to be flexible. They will be curious and resilient. And they will learn to have respect for self and for others, to believe in their capability. They will learn communication and problem-solving skills among others.

If this is the case, it means that when we discipline our kids by making them “pay” for their mistakes, we are invariably missing the whole point of discipline.

No one likes to be ordered around. Not even kids.

Punishment can result in power struggles. And believe me it will. Our kids knowing that their bad behavior gets them attention will want to do it more.

Before correcting the child, why not try connecting? Nelsen says that one way to encourage a child who is discouraged is to ask for a hug. This single act changes brain chemistry and behavior. And this brings us to positive discipline.

In trying to understand positive discipline techniques, she further advised that we must make sure that we don’t allow the following when disciplining our children:

• No humiliation
• No shame
• No blame
• No pain
• No rewards
• No permissiveness
• No pampering (rescuing or fixing)
• No praise
• No punitive time-out (grounding)
• No taking away privileges

I was pretty interested by this method.

I took a workshop for parents in positive discipline and this has definitely been helpful. It was so helpful that I will take the full class to teach positive discipline in a near future. There is no magic recipe though. But there are many ways to try to make things change. And if one thing does not work for your child, it probably will for another.

You may wonder what positive discipline for preschoolers or even teenagers involves . You may have read a positive discipline book that teaches otherwise, but ask yourself this question – has the methods written in that book worked for you?

Permissiveness is not healthy for children any more than punishment is.

Many parents think that when we say don’t use punishment on children that it means being permissive.
In fact, won’t you be willing to give up punishment and permissiveness, if you knew there were many other methods and tools you could use that would help your children learn self-discipline, responsibility, cooperation and problem-solving skills?

According to Nelsen, these 5 criteria are pointers for positive discipline:

1. Is it respectful? (Kind and firm at the same time)

   – When you are kind, that’s very respectful to children, and when you are firm, that’s respectful to the needs of the situation. If you are being too kind without being firm, you are probably being too permissive. And if you are being firm without being kind, you are probably being too controlling and disrespectful.

2. Does it help children feel they belong and are significant?

   – Belonging and significance is the primary goal of all people and especially children. And when children don’t feel that sense of belonging and significance, they usually try to find it in mistaken ways. Those wrong ways are usually seeking undue attention, misguided power, revenge, or just giving up.

3. Is it effective in the long term?

   – It’s not like punishment does not work. If all you are interested in is stopping a behavior right now, then punishment will work. But we need to be aware of what children are thinking, feeling and deciding that affects them long-term.

4. Does it teach valuable social and life skills for good character?

   – These are things such as problem-solving skills, thinking skills, and listening skills, communications skills, self-soothing skills, and many other tools that will serve them throughout their lives.

5. Does it invite children to discover how capable they are and to use their power constructively?

   – Positive discipline helps children develop a sense of their own capability, and helps them learn how to use their personal power in useful ways so that they can be contributing members of the society. It won’t hurt to create a positive time-out area with your children.

Now that you have understood what positive discipline is all about, it’s time to change your old methods and try these ones that will yield positive long-term result.

The methods listed in this article are from the best-selling Positive Discipline parenting books by Dr. Jane Nelsen. She teaches that the key to positive parenting is not punishment, but mutual respect.
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