Raven's Guide to Special Education: Parent's Guide to Child Guidance and Discipline

A Parent's Guide to Child Guidance and Discipline

Communicate | Prevent misbehavior | Deal with misbehavior

Being a parent probably is one of the most difficult and yet rewarding experiences you will ever have. Helping your children grow into healthy, successful adults requires that you provide them with guidance and discipline. You can learn effective ways to discipline your children if you are willing to try. Much of the work involves undoing old methods that do not work, learning to communicate effectively with your children, and developing positive relationships with them.

The goal of discipline is to be able to do away with it. The time will come when your children are able to control themselves, that is, they will have learned self-discipline. You can help them become this way by using discipline methods that prepare them to handle their own affairs rather than by keeping them under your permanent control. An essential part of this child-rearing process is to enjoy your children. Do not let discipline become so heavy-handed that it takes away from the fun of being with them.

How to Communicate with Your Children

Parents often emphasize correcting their children - expressing critical, negative feelings, and forgetting to praise their children for doing the right thing. Over time children learn not to talk with their parents. They often say, "My parents won't listen to me. They just wait until I do something wrong, then they punish me." By the time they are teenagers, they may be reluctant to go to their parents with a problem because of their concern that their parents will react with anger and criticism after hearing about the problem. One way to avoid this is to develop effective ways to communicate. Just being able to talk with, rather than talk to your children can solve many problems. Good communication involves a balance between talking and listening. It will not work if either you or your children do most of the talking. Here are some ways you can improve how you communicate:

Be supportive. Do not criticize or insult your children. Instead, show them you love and care about them, even though you may dislike what they have said or done. In this way you can show them that they can trust you and bring their problems to you.

Stay calm. Do not overreact to what they tell you. If you do, they may become afraid to share anything with you. If you become too angry to listen objectively, stop, settle down, and talk with them later.

Listen. Stop what you are doing and give your children your full attention. Talk with them about their interests and concerns. Get to know them better. Restate what they say to you so that they know you are listening and that you are hearing what they are telling you.

How to Prevent Misbehavior

Model the kind of behavior you want your child to learn Whether you intend it or not, you teach your children by the way you interact with them. What you do is much more important than what you say because children learn by what they see and hear you and others do. If you tell your children to do things you do not do yourself, your double standard will confuse them or make them resentful. As a result, they will be less likely to do what you say. Here are a few examples:

If you smoke cigarettes and yet tell your children not to smoke, you are giving them a double message: It is OK for me to smoke, but not for you to smoke. What will they think?
If you would like your children to read more, it is important that they see you reading as well as hearing you talk about the importance of reading.
If your children misbehave and you handle the situation in a calm, reasonable way, you will teach them to handle problems that way. However, if you scream or threaten when they misbehave, you can expect them to follow your example.

Admit your own mistakes. Acknowledge that sometimes you will do the wrong thing. Apologize to your children when you are wrong, even on a minor matter.

Avoid lecturing. Do not lecture your children. Threats, criticism and nagging usually will make them feel worse, not better. Talking with them is important, but be careful that you do not just talk with them when there is a crisis or a problem. Spend more time talking with them when things are going well.

Be clear and consistent. Go over your rules and consequences with your children to ensure that they understand what you expect of them. You should not say one thing and do another; nor should you make a rule that you only enforce some of the time.

Catch them doing something right. Parents are very good at catching children doing something wrong, and parents often ignore children when they do something right. Children want attention from their parents, and if they only get it by misbehaving, they will learn to misbehave even more. To reduce misbehavior, look for opportunities to catch your children doing something right, and let them know you appreciate it.

Have a positive experience each day. Even with a very busy work schedule, you can have a fun experience with your children every day. It only takes a few minutes, and the positive effect on them will be well worth the effort.

Start a family council. A family council is a meeting where family members can discuss and solve problems. Set up a definite day and time each week for the council meeting, and make it part of your family's routine. Ensure that each member has the right to speak and bring up a problem. Work together to solve the problem in a way that is fair. If everyone does not agree to the solution, accept the majority opinion. If possible, rotate each week who will be the leader of the meeting so that no one dominates the meetings. Your family council will be successful if all of you approach each problem as a family problem.

How to Deal with Misbehavior

Even if you take positive, preventive action, there will be times when your children misbehave and you must discipline them. Here are some examples of effective discipline methods you can use:

Be in the right frame of mind. You will be more effective disciplining your children when you do not become emotionally involved in what they say or do. Avoid responding to them when you are angry, upset or out of control. It is your children's choice to make their behavior acceptable or not, and it is your responsibility to give consequences for their choices in a calm, rational way. Remember, you do not have to dislike them because you dislike something they did.

Expect improvement, not perfection. Expect to change their behavior. Their attitude may take longer. At least at first it is all right to have your children doing what you want even if they do not like doing it.

Respect your children. Treat them the way you would like to be treated if you made a mistake. Remember that your goal in correcting them is to have them learn from their mistakes.

Avoid punishment but give consequences. Punishing a person causes them mental or physical pain, and it only brings a temporary change in behavior. It invites the person being punished to retaliate. If it were an effective way to change behavior, we would have few failures in our society. Many irresponsible people have been repeatedly punished throughout their lives with little beneficial effect. A more effective way to discipline children is to give them logical consequences (events that follow behavior) for the choices they make. For example:

If you catch your children stealing, have them replace or pay for what they stole. Spanking a child for stealing would not be a logical consequence and it would not teach the child to refrain from stealing again. It might temporarily stop the behavior, but it also might teach the child to be more clever about stealing or to mistrust or even hate you.
If your teenagers agree to come home by 11:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, but they do not arrive until 1:00 a.m., do not allow them to go out the following Saturday night.

Accept no excuses. An excuse is an easy way to avoid responsibility. When you ask your children why they did something wrong or broke a rule, you are asking them to make excuses. What is important is that they misbehaved, and as a result, they are responsible for a consequence. Give agreed-upon consequences automatically, without arguing, excuse-making, or bargaining.

Use quiet correction. Correct behavior problems before they become serious. Take the least action that will effectively change your children's behavior. Avoid ineffective actions, such as yelling, threatening, or overreacting after letting many small problems build up.

Garrison Keillor

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

Use time out. Most children want to be included and want attention. However, when they are unwilling to behave in a reasonable way even after you have asked them to change their behavior, place them in "time out" until they decide to make their behavior appropriate. Time out might be having to sit alone in a chair or having to go to another room away from everyone else. The lack of attention that time out creates is especially effective in changing the behavior of young children.

Give a fresh start. After you have given your children consequences for misbehavior, expect them to behave properly and treat them as though they had never misbehaved. If you expect them to be a problem, they may live up to your expectation. Holding a grudge only makes you and your children unhappy and uncomfortable with each other.

Make tomorrow a better day. If you have had to discipline your children, plan something to make tomorrow a better day for them.