What's your discipline style?
Discipline is one of the toughest challenges of parenthood. It can frustrate, discourage, and humble you. When your toddler throws his 19th tantrum in a week, your preschooler hits her best friend in a fit of pique, or your grade-schooler is caught cheating on a test, you may look back on the gritty baby months with utter nostalgia and wonder why you ever thought feeding and sleeping dilemmas were so tough.
The good news is that you don't have to go it alone. There's a lot of helpful information out there.
The bad news is that there's almost too much information. A trip through the parenting section of your library or bookstore can be completely overwhelming. Dozens of books covered with photographs of smiling children and peaceful parents gleam from the shelves. "There's only one way to do it, and this is it!" they all seem to shout.
Some of the books are so similar that they're almost clones, while others appear to offer the opposite advice. The authors have widely different backgrounds and levels of expertise. Several of the discipline philosophies are well known and have large followings, while others are simply terms coined by a single writer. In short, the discipline field is one big, messy mishmash of information.
In addition, some parenting books contain veiled (and some not-so-veiled) threats that if you don't follow their advice, your kids will turn out badly. The anxiety this causes, combined with the dizzying array of conflicting and overlapping philosophies, is enough to make a parent want to throw her hands up in the air, conclude that none of these idiots know what they're talking about, and buy a juicy mystery novel instead.
This is too bad, because in truth, the right expert advice can be instructive and reassuring. It's a matter of finding a philosophy that fits your personal style. The question is, how do you find it?
First, realize that you don't have to pick just one. You may like certain aspects of several different discipline styles. It's OK to select the things you like and leave the rest.
Second, pay attention to how you feel when you read about a particular style. For example, Brooklyn mom Popi Pustilnik says, "One book made me feel like such a failure that I threw it across the room." She then turned to a book with a completely different approach and felt much more hopeful. "It was a much better fit for me," she says.
Third, learn about a few of the major "categories" of discipline philosophies. Once you get a handle on these, it will be easier to choose books that are a good fit for you.
Although the discipline field is vast, it's not quite as overwhelming as it first appears. This is because many of the discipline books address similar themes. Here are some of the big ones:
1. Aim for the middle ground between being too punitive and too permissive.
2. Don't use physical punishments like spanking and slapping.
3. Don't use psychological punishments such as name-calling and insults.
4. When you or your child spiral out of control, take time to cool off.
5. Offer choices.
6. Learn how to manage your own anger.
7. Provide encouragement and positive feedback.
8. Let your child experience consequences to behavior.
9. Don't hold grudges. Once the behavior has been dealt with, give your child a clean slate.
One expert suggests that time-outs last a minute for each year of your child's age, while another says your child should decide how long the time-out lasts. One book instructs you to firmly tell your child, "No hitting," and another book cautions against using negative words like "no" and "don't." One author promotes the use of rewards, whereas another says rewards are nothing more than bribes.
The wide variety of advice can be frustrating and confusing, but it also proves that there's no one right way to discipline. You are the true expert on what works for you and for your children. While professional advice is helpful, it needs to match your own intuition and ideals.
Take a look at these categories of discipline approaches and see what appeals to you:
1. Boundary-based discipline: Children need boundaries to feel safe. If they don't know where the boundaries are, they'll "test" until they find them. "What happens if I throw my spoon?" a toddler wonders, clanging his spoon noisily onto the floor. "Hmm ... not much of a reaction. How about if I throw my entire plate?" An older child might test limits by leaving her colored pencils in a glorious mess on the rug, or by taking several decades to get ready in the mornings.
Clearly communicate your boundaries (for example, "Please put my things back in my purse when you're done looking at them"). If this doesn't do the trick, follow through with a consequence. Try to make the consequence a logical fit for the behavior. For example, if your child leaves your wallet, hairbrush, and car keys strewn around the living room floor, she loses purse-inspection privileges for a while." Use "natural consequences," too. For example, if your child forgets his lunch box, don't rush it to school. Instead, let him experience the consequences.
Provide "limited choices" to give your child some wiggle room. Suppose your 5-year-old is loudly banging on her electronic toy piano, with the volume on maximum. Through your migraine, you respectfully ask her to turn it down. She ignores you. Offer a choice: "You can either turn the volume down now, or I'll put the piano away until tomorrow." This puts the responsibility in her hands.
2. Gentle discipline: A child can't learn much about behavior when she's screaming and crying. She (and you) can benefit greatly from daily preventive techniques — strategies that reduce opportunities for misbehavior. For example, create routines so that your child feels grounded. Offer choices to give her a sense of control, such as, "Would you like to wear the red pajamas or the blue?" Give warnings before transitions, as in, "We need to leave the playground in five minutes." Frame your requests positively. For example, say, "Please use your big girl voice," instead of, "Don't whine." When possible, use "when ... then" statements instead of outright no's, as in, "When we're done with dinner, then we can go outside."
When misbehavior occurs, turn to diffusion. First see if there's an underlying problem, such as tiredness, boredom, or hunger. Once you address this need, the misbehavior may magically disappear.
If not, turn to what author Elizabeth Pantley calls a "laundry bag" of tricks. This is a large collection, including silly games, distraction, redirection, validation, and self-soothing. You can pull a trick out of your hat — er, laundry bag — whenever it's time to derail your child from the misbehavior train. For example, if he refuses to take a bath, try making the washcloth "talk" to him in a playful voice. If this doesn't work, you can try something else, such as validation and redirection ("It's hard when you have to do something you don't want to do. How about if we see how quickly we can get it done? I'll get a clock.")
3. Positive discipline: Children behave well when they feel encouraged and have a sense of belonging. Misbehavior happens when children are feeling discouraged.
Talk with your child and try to find out what the underlying cause is for her misbehavior. For example, suppose your 3-year-old refuses to bring her plate to the sink. Is she afraid she'll break the plate? Is she trying to get attention? Perhaps it gives her a sense of power. Or maybe she's hurt about something else and is trying to "get you back." Once you know the reason, you give her the right kind of encouragement and work out a solution. For example, if she's struggling with powerlessness, you could encourage her by saying, "We need to get the table clean. Can you help me figure out how to do it?"
In positive discipline, misbehavior is seen as an opportunity for learning, and children are actively engaged in coming up with a solution. It's okay for a child to enjoy the solution — in fact, it's preferable. For example, if your 8-year-old spills soda on the couch and the two of you decide that the solution is for him to steam-clean the stain (using his allowance to pay for the steamer rental), he might enjoy this task. This doesn't mean he'll continue to spill soda on the couch in order to get to use the steamer. It means he's learning how to take responsibility for a mistake — and better yet, he's invested in his own learning.
4. Emotion-coaching: When children can recognize and understand their own feelings, they make better choices. You can teach your child to do this, and it will help strengthen the connection between the two of you.
Know your own standards for what is and is not acceptable behavior. Make sure you're up front with your child about these, and talk with him about some of the feelings he might experience in certain situations. For example, if he's been known to hit other kids and several friends are coming over, you might explain that it could get overwhelming for him. Suggest to him that if he starts to feel frustrated, he can spend some quiet time in his room — but hitting the other children is not acceptable.
Learn the skill of empathy. This means putting yourself in your child's shoes: What are the "real feelings" behind her misbehavior? Reflect these back to her, as in, "It's hard when we really want something and we can't have it. I bet you're feeling really disappointed right now." When your child feels that you understand her, she'll trust you. Within this context of trust, she'll be open to you when you teach her about responsible choices. ("We can't buy candy every time we see it. Too much candy isn't good for our bodies.")
5. Behavior modification: Positive reinforcement helps children increase good behavior and negative reinforcement helps them decrease misbehavior. This approach is similar to boundary-based discipline in that it emphasizes clear limits and backing them up with consequences. But in behavior modification, there's more emphasis on warnings and rewards.
Use warnings to help your child take responsibility for stopping the misbehavior on his own. For example, if your child is arguing with you because you told him he can't have a cookie before dinner, don't get caught up in the skirmish. Tell him to stop arguing about it, and that this is his first "warning." If he persists, give him a second warning, and if he doesn't stop, calmly tell him to take a time-out (these should be brief — just a few minutes long).
For more "serious offenses," come up with a consequence other than time-out. For example, if your child persistently teases the dog and is old enough to know better, you might take away her television privileges for a couple of days.
Rewards motivate your child to do well. This could be as simple as parental praise. In some cases you might want to set up a charting system with more tangible rewards. For example, for every morning that your child is ready on time to go to daycare, she gets a star in her chart. When she racks up five stars, she gets a treat.
These brief descriptions don't tell the whole story, of course. It's not as if boundary-based discipline doesn't include preventive techniques — it does. And gentle discipline includes the use of consequences. In fact, all of these styles overlap. The differences are more a matter of what they emphasize. Think about the primary colors — red, blue, and yellow. They contain no common elements. Discipline philosophies are more like secondary colors (orange, purple, green), which contain blends of more than one hue. Some may have a dash more red, and others may pour on the blue. What color will your discipline style be?
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