The behaviour you feed is the behaviour you strengthen. So, focus on your child's positive habits.
Take 2,000 two to three year old children and interview their parents. Ask them about their parenting practices and their children's behaviour. Wait 6 years when the kids are now eight to nine years old and interview the parents again and the children. The degree to which the parents were more punitive, as defined by spanking and yelling, the more likely the children were to be aggressive with their parents, siblings and friends. Further, those parents who scored high as punitive in the first interview but changed to a more positive parenting style had children whose aggressive behaviour diminished over time. In other words, children's aggressive behaviour is linked to parental discipline and it is never too late to undo the effects of a punitive parenting style.
The challenge for those parents, whose style of discipline is punitive, is to adopt a more positive style. Some parents feel that without resorting to yelling and spanking, they have no other tool with which to shape, correct or discipline their children.
Parents are well advised to learn the riddle of "The Two Dogs":
Imagine there are two dogs inside of you, inside of everyone. Imagine
that one is striped and one is polka-dotted. They are of equal age and
equal strength. They are fighting and fighting constantly. Which one
will win the struggle? Which one will win the fight? .The one you
feed! Why? Because food strengthens the dog, giving it an advantage.
Behaviour works the same way. The behaviour you feed is
the behaviour you strengthen. However, the food of behaviour is
attention. Whatever behaviour we attend to, even if the attention is
punitive, we wind up feeding it. This is why parenting experts spend so
much time suggesting alternate and more positive parenting
strategies such as redirection, ignoring and even time out. When we
redirect a child's behaviour we ignore the misdeed, hence we do not
feed it and yet help the child to then focus on more desirable
behaviour and activity. Some parents
forget that telling a child what not to do, does not mean the child
will know what to do. Redirection to a desired activity is thus
necessary to help a child get on the right track. Once on track, the
parent is advised to feed that behaviour. This is where feedback or
praise comes in. We catch a child doing good and tell them how nicely they are playing or behaving. We feed the right dog!
When we redirect, ignore or even discuss misbehaviour with our children, we demonstrate positive strategies for getting along with others. As we teach, children
learn and pick up on our behaviour and then use our strategies in their
social interactions, be it with us, brothers and sisters or friends or
classmates.
Knowing that children's behaviour is tied to parents' behaviour, we then have a tremendous responsibility to use positive parenting practices. If we want our children to play and get along nicely, we must demonstrate the behaviour that encourages and models acceptable behaviour too.
Name:
Jhanvi
Country: india
we should alway tell our child to behave in good manner. it our duty to make him relize his mistake and take it. if we teach good manners, then tommorrow it will be very helpful for him in his future life. he will become a very good citizen of india...
Name:
FIONA
Country: United Kingdom
i am an early childhood practitioner, working with 3 to 5 year olds and i also have a 7 year old son. i have used positive encouragement and distraction techniques both in work and in my home life i find that it is the only way for me to get the best results in behaviour. i have had many comments on how well my son behaves when out in public from strangers. he has a respect for myself that i haven't have to get through smacking.
Name:
Rachana
Country: usa
first we should think +ve way and also behave like that because the kids are so smart. they will do whatever you are doing. so when we talk to our husband or any other family member we so be so careful about what we say.
if we say to kids don't do this that's not inough, we should say why it's not good to do this or that. always helps when you give them a reason. it's works with me, try it out!!!
-rachana
Name:
Ram
Country: india
whatever has been said in the article is absolutely correct as per my personal experience. whenever my seven year old daughter does something objectionable, i try to gently explain what is right and wrong. over a period of time, i realised that gentle reaction has a more far reaching and long lasting effect that disciplining the kid by scolding and yelling. the old axiom "spare the rod and spoil the child" needs to be deleted from our mindset.
