Love & Discipline getting the balance right!

Getting the balance right between love and discipline is much harder than it sounds.  Being a loving parent wiht a firm discipline is learnt over time, often through bitter experience.  Giving in to our children's demands can seem as easy answer at first but we quickly learn that it leads to many more difficulties later on.

No one wants a spoilt child with love or the time you spend together.  However, allowing children to have what they want, buying expensive toys, always letting children win at games etc. is the kind of adult response, which tends to lead to behaviour that most of us would consider is typical of a "spoilt" child.

The golden rule is to always decide if you can say Yes before you say NO.  However, once, you have said No, you habe to stick to your decision.  Many parents make the mistake of saying NO to children's requests only to chnage their minds later.  Settings rules to stick to is usually much easier than simply saying No to children e.g. "We can only have sweets when we have finished our shopping".

Once tou have explained the rule, you can help your child to understand the boundaries of your decision and make sure he understands any exceptions to the rule and why they have happened.  Most children understand that rules have to be accepted and challenge them far less than they would statements from parents.

Be positive - children learn from our approach - if we deal with things negatively by saying "No you can't....", we shouldn't be surprised when they are negative back.  WHEN - THEN is a good strategy.  Explain WHEN she will be old enough to do this for herself and help her to find a way around things until Tehn e.g. When you are 6, then you can ..... Children usually accept clear reasons and time limits more easily than a simple NO.

Children are pre-programmed to cry for what they want - that ishow they told us they were hungry as young babies.  Tantrums are just an extension of this behaviour.  Stay calm and firm,  Tantrums are attention grabbers and usually stop quickly if a parent doesn't hang about.  Remember to reward and praise positive behaviour - try hard to catch children being good.

Children need help to handle their emotions.  they need to be enouraged to talk about how they feel, to learn to label the emotions and begin to understand their difficult feelings.  With young children, puppets and drawings can be very effective ways of getting an idea of how a child is feeling etc.  However, as a parent you need to lead by example and talk about your feelings and how to deal with them.

Being firm does not mean that you can't have fun or that your child will not be happy.  In fact the reverse is true, many children feel unloved if there are no rules to govern their behaviour.  However, the problem for many parents is what to do when children refuse to co-operate.  The removal of privileges is usually the most common form of discipline used.  To make this effective, some simple rules must be followed:

The action you take must be treated as a consequence of the misbehaviour

Appreciating that our behaviour has consequences is an important stage in learning to take responsibility for our own behaviour, thinkin before we act and learning to respect authority.  It is not simply a form of punishment, it goes much deeper that that so the consequence should be carefully linked to the behaviour e.g. a child who repeatedly plays football in the house, when they have been told not to, should have the ball removed for a set period of time.  On the first occasion (or for young children), a short time period should be used which is stated at the time.  As a general rule, short time periods are more effective than long bans because it is easier for the adult to stick to the ban for a day than a week.

The action must be appropriate for the child's age

The younger the childm the more immediate the consequence e.g. tellling a tow year old that something won;t happen tomorrow is no use as the event is too far in the future.  when it happends it is too unconnected with the event to mean anything to the child.  You need to understand the level of maturity of your own child to know what will work and what will not.  For some 3 year olds the prospect that they cannot go to play at a friend's house in the afternoon is fine, but for others it is so far ahead that it has no impact at all.  To help remind yourself, keep a record of how immediate the removal of privileges had to be, to be effective e.g. within 2 hours worked well but over 3 hours, the impact was lost.

Your actions must be consistent

To be consistent, the child must understand the rule and the consequence of breaking the rule.  If the rule is not broken but the child has been annoying, then you cannot remove the privilege otherwise you undermine yourself and the impact of your actions will be lessened.  In that instance you have to inform the child that their behaviour is unacceptable, explain what the consequence of them continuing will be and that they have the choice to continue behaving badly and that by doing so they chose to lose the privilege.

You must be able to see the consequence through each time the rule is broken

If you cannot, then do not use this consequence as the child will realise that sometimes you say things and they happen and other times they don't.  That kind of inconsistency stops children taking responsibility for their own behaviour and tends to create whinging and whining because the child does not understand when their behaviour is considered to be poor and when it it not.