Further Processing of Positive Discipline

I'm still working through everything I heard and saw the other night at the Positive Discipline seminar in Santa Cruz.

Not necessarily in order of importance, here are some additional thoughts.

Parents talk at their kids too much rather than engage in a conversation with their children. And the kids learn to tune it out very quickly and just wait for the yapping to stop. It is unproductive to just talk at a child, especially a young child (under the age of 3 or so). For one, they don't have the capacity to "get it" and for two, you are training them to pretend to pay attention when they are not. And for three, put yourself in their shoes, would you take the lecture to heart or would you tune it out?

The use of the "Naughty Chair" is detrimental to the development of self-esteem and should be thrown on the trash heap of failed child raising concepts. What do you think a child forced to sit on the naughty chair is thinking about? What got them there? Or whether they are a bad child?

Finger wagging has never been effective.

One important thing to do is to mean what you say and follow through. If you tell your warring children in the car that you're going to pull over and wait for them to stop and you do not do it then you are teaching them that you are either a liar or weak, neither of which will help them.

The basic tenets of the concepts are Don't Tell, Ask and Be Kind and Firm. Also add no rewards, no punishments and that every instance of acting out is an opportunity for you both to learn how to effectively address, deal with and resolve the problem.

The same concepts of Positive Discipline for children can be applied to other social interactions in your life. Such as, oh I don't know, your husband or wife, your boss, your sales team and your neighbors. The concepts do not, however, work on animals.

An Evening of Positive Discipline

We just got home from a couple of hours of Positive Discipline taught by Jane Nelsen. I went in tired and cranky but ended up enjoying myself and learning quite alot about how to make positive changes in how I approach interactions with my children to help them build up self-esteem, a sense of their capabilities and to foster happier, healthier and more complete little human beings.

If I had to sum up the evening in just a single short sentence it would be: Don't Tell, Ask. Meaning that we, as parents, spend far, far, far too much time telling our kids what to do, what they've done wrong, what's going to happen to them and why they need to eat, sleep, sit-up, don't touch, don't hit, don't this, don't that.

Positive interaction with a child can be easily achieved by empowering them, by asking them questions and making them think for themselves. Little Johnny got sent to the principal's office? Ask him what he could do to not have it happen again.

The guiding principle isn't lack of discipline, its a lack of punishment and rewards. The reasoning is that, while punishments and rewards do work in the short term they teach a child to avoid punishment and seek greater and greater rewards. It is short term win but long term fail.

There was some role playing to demonstrate how and why some methods of interaction push the child away and how to convert those interactions into opportunities to build up self-esteem.

I am still processing an awful lot of the information and we bought a book to read about it. But the overall gist of the program resonated quite well with me and the rest of the sold out crowd.

As a parent, we are faced with heading down a road without a roadmap, without signs and without AAA. Positive Discipline offers some quality guidance in helping to raise strong, smart and empowered people. And the world really needs more empowered people.

I will be writing more about the seminar and about the implementation of the practices as we move forward. The first up will be the creation of a Bedtime Routine board that will give us a visual roadmap of the steps we (the boys) need to do to get ready for bed.

I would highly recommend any parent having trouble or just wanting some extra help to look into Positive Discipline (yes, Lujza, this means you!).