Discipline

I picked up this book on discipline a couple weeks ago at the book store and I highly highly recommend it to parents: Discipline Without Distress: 135 tools for raising caring, responsible children without time-out, spanking, punishment or bribery by Judy Arnall. The book changed the way I look at my kids and changed the way I look at my own behavior as a model for my kids.

As i read the book I end up relating to a lot of what the author is saying. Punishment doesn't work because it's unpleasant and parents have a hard time being consistent when doing things that are unpleasant. Also, people (adults and kids) are more likely to improve when given positive feedback/rewards/etc than negative. The book also said time outs don't work well for kids because they don't have the skills for 'reflective thinking' and instead spend the time thinking about being angry because they are in the corner. Often when they repeat the behavior, the punishment gets longer or more extreme, escalating to a power struggle. I'm not 100% on board (yet) with punishments never being appropriate (like the book) but at the same time, I see merit in the book's points that it's better to model the behavior you want from your kids, redirect them to better activities, remove the temptations for bad behavior (IE if you don't want them touching something don't have it where they can touch it), and talk to them about how their feeling so they can express themselves to you and feel safe with you.

I've started to tell myself when I get frustrated that Travis is only two while I'm an adult. I can't expect him to not throw tantrums or express his anger if I'm going to turn around and YELL at him for it. I can't expect him to not tell me 'No' over and over again, if I'm always telling him "No" all the time about everything he's doing that I don't like. After all, I'm the one he's watching to learn his behavior from. I can't expect a two year old to understand that he can REALLY hurt himself by opening the oven - instead of yelling at him, I should just make the oven where he can't open it and if he throws a tantrum because he can't open it then so be it. I can offer him a hug and explain to him that it's not safe and eventually he'll forget, get over it and do something else with his time.