Discipline is part of love
Over the past 50 years psychological research has increasingly confirmed what parents have always known – some children are inherently more “difficult” than others. However, it is not the case that parents of these more spirited children should not expect the children to eventually learn more appropriate behaviour. We make it more difficult for these [...]
Now look what you’ve done!!
Last week I had a question from a parent wondering what to do about a five year old girl who ignored her mother’s requests to stop playing with a snow-globe in the home of someone they were visiting. Fearing a breakage, this Mum upped her requests to a clear (and no doubt reasonable) insistence that [...]
The Naughty Step is traumatising our children
This week the participants on my Update Your Parenting workshop were discussing the use of Time Out and the Naughty Step. I was reminded once again of how much Supernanny has impacted parents since she first aired in 2004. Just about everyone attending the workshop was using some version of Time Out. My advice to [...]
Using consequences with a little toy-thrower
Yesterday I heard a great real life example of how boundaries, backed up with fair and reasonable consequences for violating them, provide a sense of safety for children, which results in improved behaviour. Borrowing an idea that had worked for another parent, this Mom told her young boy – who has developed a habit of [...]
When natural consequences are not enough, choose something firmer
After I posted my blog on Nia and the judo lesson, I wondered in the aftermath if it would be a good idea to post a follow-up. Then a number of readers asked me a lot of questions and answering those questions has been a real gift. This story has really exemplified how many things feed [...]
Should you punish disrespectful behaviour?
Yesterday, my daughter taught me another great lesson. If we fail to discipline our children for being disrespectful, we are not serving them well. Nia tried Judo for the first time yesterday. She loved it. However, afterwards, she was cranky and rude to me. I told her that hunger and tiredness were no excuse for [...]
The struggle for consistency
It has been shown that consistency is a vitally important part of parenting. If we are not consistent about following through when our children break the rules of our home or guidelines for their behaviour, then we can expect them to ignore those rules and gradually become manipulative as they attempt to get their own [...]
Handling disrespect and backchat
In our family it’s been a real challenge to find consequences that we can live with and that at least appear to fulfil the requirement of teaching rather than punishing. I realise it’s not difficult to find advice that suggests parents ought to administer a negative consequence for a negative behaviour (i.e punish). Supposedly this [...]
Should smacking be illegal?
So I’m about to wade into one of the most controversial parenting topics there is: should smacking children be made illegal? Here’s the article that has forced my hand: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2y42Xx/www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/spanking-kids_b_1241521.html For the record, I don’t like the tone of this article. My position is that smacking children is wrong. I also think it would be [...]
Stop pestering me!
I heard a good story recently about a Mum who used boundaries really effectively to improve a situation that involved two children, some manner of computer game and a lot of pestering. It seems that this family worked out that the children would be allowed play the games console for a couple of hours on [...]
Audio CDs and MP3s
