Below you will find general instructions for good discipline practices that, while not comprehensive, can be very helpful in creating peace and harmony in your home. Please understand that these are general guidelines and that everything stated below has exceptions, or must be modified to some extent, for your specific situation. Nevertheless, it can be helpful to understand just a few key elements of discipline.
Consistency
1. Probably the single most important aspect of parenting an acting out kid is consistency. There are two main difficulties with being consistent.
a. Some parents love their kids too much to see them "suffer" or go without. That is, they do not like it when their children cry or throw a tantrum. These parents will do anything to make it stop. Of course, that leads to the child thinking that he can get anything he wants just by acting upset. Kids learn to use their emotions at an extremely early age. If you know it’s not hurting your child to go without T.V. (or dessert, etc...), then acting like the tantrum is ridiculous is exactly what you should do.
b. Some parents have a hard time agreeing on consequences and thus each undermines the authority of the other. If the father is strict and the mother is not (or vice versa), then of course the children are going to seek out the help of the non-strict parent when they are told "no" by the strict parent. Sometimes parents are simply struggling to be the one in control, in which case both might vary their styles (too strict or too lenient) based on what the other parent is doing. Such wrangling leads to utter chaos with children.
c. Sometimes the problem is a combination of the two above. A loving parent sees her partner as too strict and thus undermines him. Unfortunately, this circumstance leads to even more strict behavior from him, which then leads to even more lenient behavior from her, and so on and so on and so on.
d. In general, kids do better if they feel their environment is predictable. They like to know what to expect from their parents and they will always respond to what they predict will be their parents’ reactions. Your children are better off when t hey know what makes you mad, sad, and pleased. They can only know what makes you mad, sad, or pleased if you act consistently mad, sad, and pleased by the same behaviors.
Consequences
1. Appropriate consequences are a must for adequate discipline.
a. Consequences should always be as short as possible. Taking things away for a long time results in the consequence losing all meaning. With younger kids (1-5) it can be adequate to take things away for ten minutes. With older kids (5-9), typically one day is enough to make your point. With pre-adolescents and teenagers (anywhere from 9-17) usually one week is enough.
b. The chance to win back what has been lost should be made clear. When kids really miss something and then are given an opportunity to win it back, they tend to be highly motivated. The good behavior that is reinforced by getting back what was taken away, should also get reinforced by your praise of what they’ve done to get it back. Just because your child was motivated to get back a privilege, doesn't mean the effort at good behavior is meaningless. If you want that behavior to keep occurring after privileges have been restored, then reinforcing the behavior with praise is crucial.
c. Give praise as often as you can. If your child has had problems that you’re trying to correct, praise them as often as possible when they are NOT engaging in undesirable behavior as well as when they ARE engaging in desirable behavior. In other words, even if you expect good behavior, praise it if you want it to continue.
d. You need to follow through. If you are giving a consequence,and then giving in when you can’t stand your child going without, then your child is learning that consequences are not real. If you give your kids three warnings, then you are teaching your children that they get three warnings. That is really not a problem – stating things only once and expecting compliance is considered too harsh by most parents to be too harsh. As long as you accept that you will always have to give three warnings because that's what your kids expect, then you shouldn't be at all upset until you have to tell them a fourth time.
e. Whenever possible, a consequence should be specifically related to the thing that the child did wrong. If a child doesn’t clean his room, the consequence could be as simple as daily checking of the room. If a child goes outside without permission, he could be prevented from going outside for an hour. If a child doesn’t go to bed on time, the consequence could be reporting to her bedroom ½ hour earlier the next night.
f. Whenever possible, do not use a consequence that is outside your control or one that you cannot observe. Just making room for cheating can often bring about such cheating. Some parents will tell their children that they are not allowed T.V., but then expect the child to govern that behavior themselves while at home alone. Making the T.V. inoperable, or making no attempt to enforce that consequence while you're not home, are both perfectly good ways to handle that dilemma. It is the very rare child, however, who will monitor their consequences themselves.
g. Let consequences, not your mood or attitude, be the reason your child wants to improve. If you are going to let your mood be involved, let the emotions be sadness or being hurt, rather than anger and frustration. Kids feel demeaned, worthless, or angered when parents act frustrated or angry. In contrast, if you are sad, worried, or hurt, kids are more likely to take responsibility for what they've done (please see article, Communication From the Heart).
Corporal Punishment is Unnecessary
3. My view on physical discipline is that it does not work.
a. If your child is responsive to physical discipline, it is because she fears your anger or knows you really mean business when you hit. As stated above, anger is not a good discipline practice. If you can be consistent with your approach and with consequences, you won't need to hit to be taken seriously.
b. If your child needs you to hit to know that you are serious, then you are not following through on consequences.
c. If the only thing your children needed to worry about was the pain you inflict, then spanking would be, by far, the most preferred discipline. Any physical discipline, short of abuse, lasts only a few minutes and then the pain is gone. What lingers in the child's mind is the fear of either your wrath or your disappointment.
d. If it is your mood that is the consequence, then find other ways to let your mood be known – as stated above, sadness and hurt, and even frustration, are much preferable to anger.
Time Out
4. The "time out" is one of the most popular consequences used these days. The idea behind a time out is to take a child away from rewarding feedback for long enough to get them to realize they have done something wrong.
a. Time outs cannot be spent with an adult or anyone else because that is rewarding to the child (even, or perhaps especially, if the child is crying).
b. Time outs do not need to be long. With young children (2-3, I do not recommend time outs with children under 1 ½ years of age) a time out needs to last only 30 seconds. If that doesn't work, probably time out is not the best approach.
- Even with children who are 4-6, a time out only needs to last 2-3 minutes.
d. Don't worry too much about getting the child to see what they've don wrong. Perhaps a short statement from the parent about what the child did wrong is helpful, but trying to get them to see what they have done wrong is almost useless. What a child understands while in a time out is that it would be more fun to get back into a fun situation. This creates pressure on the child to say whatever Is necessary to get out of the time out. Once the child gets out of the time out, you cannot be sure that the child has learned anything except to say the right thing.
e. Until children are capable of much more complicated thoughts your chances of getting them to be "truly sorry" do not increase with longer periods of time. At that point (age 7 and above) time out may well become sending the child to a room where the time out is actually more of a punishment with possible positive side effects rather than an actual time out that is meant to take the child away from rewards.
e. If your child simply cannot do a time out of any length, don’t worry about completely taking them away from positive feedback. But do make the positive feedback non-interpersonal. For example, you can have the child in a time out where they must stay in front of the television for 3 minutes. Although not ideal, such a time out helps some children be successful in meeting your expectations when being completely unoccupied is almost impossible for them. Remember, success needs to be easy. Any action that contributes to your child’s frustration in meeting your expectations takes you one step backward in meeting your goal of creating a responsible child with good self-esteem.
Positive Feedback
5. One other key to good discipline is positive feedback.
a. With children who have had many troubles, it is necessary to try to tell them they’re doing well every time they are not making trouble. Catch them being good and tell them then just how much you appreciate it.
b. Even with good kids, the more often they hear praise, the more likely it is they’ll feel good about themselves.
Reward Systems
6. Reward Systems are the big hitter.
a. When things are really out of hand, quite often it can be helpful to introduce more specific consistency. One way of doing that is to create a reward system. I will discuss a basic structure that can be modified to fit your particular situation (please see articles, Sample Reward System and The Satisfaction Meter).
b. Picking a good reward. Examples include money, stars, and check marks (with small children coins of any kind, meaning pennies, can be as rewarding as the worth of the coins. With older kids it is important to realize that the buying power of the rewards is very important.
c. When using money with small children, it can be a good idea to go with them to the piggy bank to let them drop the money in. One of the reasons stars are as good as money with young children is that it's the process or getting recognition, not the buying power of the rewards, that younger children find rewarding.
d. Charting. Once you have determined what is rewarding to your children, decide what they will need to do to earn the reward and how often the reward will be given. Chart the whole thing on a reusable paper (Sometimes people use a Xerox sheet, so it can be reproduced, and sometimes people laminate the chart and use d ry erase markers).
e. Once the chart has been produced, make sure your children are the one's keeping track (for kids 7 and above, keeping track is typically possible, but if your child seems to have difficulty with keeping track, this is a minor issue). In order for motivation to develop within your children, they have to seek out the reward for themselves. When they have finished what they will be rewarded for, they need to come to you to report that the job is done and ask you to check it and give the reward (this sometimes takes a little training with younger children – those between 7 and 9). Again, it is very important to recognize how much the process of doing the reward system helps to solidify the child's behavior. If they child doesn't have to have anything to do with the chart, the child will always think of the chart as yours. If the chart's accuracy becomes important to them, however (and no matter what age), then they will be very interested in maintaining their chart.
f. It can be helpful to break the day up into parts and allow each part to represent one reward period. A typical number of parts is three for school age kids (morning, school time, and evening) or four for younger kids (morning to lunch, lunch to 3:00PM, 3:00PM to dinner, dinner to sleep). Kids often have a hard time maintaining a whole day. If they can have success one part of the day, then they won't feel like failures for the whole day.
g. Typically each part of the day will have particular expectations, including some activities that need to be completed. If you’re using stars, it works well to use small stars for each of the smaller expectations and a big star for the whole period.
h. In general, the more activities that can be rewarded, the better (thus a star or check system works well).
i. It’s also important to mention that success should be easy at first and slowly become more difficult. That is, at first the reward should be given for half (or maybe even less) of the things on the chart being done.
j. It’s also important to mention that you cannot use "attitude" as something that is rewarded. You can, however, use "said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when communicating," or "rolled eyes at others less than three times," etc…
k. Finally, it’s important to start fresh after each period. If your children did not get the reward for the last period, that should have no bearing on whether or not they get a reward for the next period. They should be made acutely aware of this fact as well. That is, you should tell them at the end of a period (even if they have not sought you ought for the reward since they know they didn’t make it), that they can get the next reward if they do what’s on the chart.
l. If the school day is covered by the reward system, don't hesitate to get the school on board. Teachers and school administrators are typically eager to help out.
