How to Use Positive Discipline
1. Positive Discipline starts by creating a good relationship with your child, so that he responds to gentle guidance as opposed to 
threats and punishment. The most effective discipline strategy is having a close bond with your child. Kids who feel connected to their parents naturally want to please them.
2. Evaluate all discipline based on whether it strengthens or weakens your relationship with your child.
Positive discipline is about Loving Guidance, not punishment.
Punishment is destructive to your relationship with your child and
ultimately creates more misbehavior. Loving guidance is setting limits
and reinforcing expectations as necessary, but in an empathic way that
helps the child focus on improving her behavior rather than on being
angry at you.
3. Start all discipline by reaffirming the connection. Stoop
down to her level and look her in the eye before you tell her she can't
take another child's toy. Suggesting that she practice piano will work
a lot better if you can first tell her sincerely how much you loved the
way she played the piece yesterday. Before you talk with him about that
fender bender, first make sure he knows how relieved you are that he
wasn't hurt.
4. Don't hesitate to set limits as necessary. Limits are a critical part of guiding your child. But always set limits with empathy, which will make them more effective.
5. In any situation posing physical danger, intervene immediately to set limits, but simultaneously connect by empathizing. "The rule is no hitting, even though she made you really mad by teasing like that. Let's sit down and talk about this."
6. If your discipline doesn't work, it's a relationship problem.
If your child does not accept your direction ("I don't care what you
say, you can't make me!"), it's always an indication that the
relationship is not strong enough to support the teaching. This happens
to all of us from time to time. At that point, stop and think about how
to strengthen the relationship, not how to make the child "mind."
Turning the situation into a power struggle will just deepen the rift
between you.
7. Wean yourself off punishment altogether because it undermines your relationship with your child and sets up power struggles.
Many studies show that punishment makes kids feel worse about
themselves, which makes them act worse. Isn't your goal to help your
child feel good and act better?
8. Avoid Timeouts. They create more misbehavior. Timeouts,
while infinitely better than hitting, are just another version of
punishment by banishment and humiliation. They erode, rather than
strengthening, your relationship with your child. They set up a power
struggle. And they only work while you're bigger. They're a more humane
form of bullying than physical discipline.
9. Consequences teach the wrong lesson if you're involved in creating them.
On the face of it, Consequences make sense: The child does (or doesn't
do) something, and learns from the consequences. Which, when it happens
naturally, can be a terrific learning experience. But most of the time,
parents engineer the consequences, and enforce the time out, so that
any child can explain to you that consequences are actually punishment.
If
the parent is not involved in the consequences (for instance, if they
don't study and flunk their test, or they don't brush and get a cavity)
-- and if you can handle the bad result -- kids can learn a lot from
suffering the consequences of their actions. Of course, you don't want
it to happen more than once, or their self image becomes that of a
person who flunks test and gets cavities, and they have learned an
unintended lesson. My own view is that it works better, if possible,
for them to skip such lessons, but as a last ditch strategy, we all
certainly learn from letting things go wrong.
Unfortunately,
most kids whose parents use "consequences" as punishment don't think of
them as the natural result of their own actions ("I forgot my lunch
today so I was hungry"), but as the threats they hear through their
parents' clenched teeth: "If I have to stop this car and come back
there, there will be CONSEQUENCES!!" If parents are in charge of
consequences, then the consequences aren't the natural result of the
child's actions, but simply punishment.
To the degree that
Consequences are seen as punishment by kids -- and they almost always
are -- they are not as effective as positive discipline to encourage
good behavior. Using them on your kids should be considered a last
result and a signal that you need to come up with another strategy.
10. How you treat your child is how she will learn to treat herself.
If you're harsh with her, she'll be harsh with herself. If you're
loving with her while firm about setting appropriate limits, she'll
develop the ability to set firm but loving limits on her own behavior.
Harsh
discipline and punishment, ironically, interfere with the child's
ability to develop self discipline. The problem with internalizing
harshness isn't just that it makes for unhappy kids and, eventually,
unhappy adults, it's that it doesn't work. Kids who are given
discipline that is not loving never learn to manage themselves
constructively.
To the degree that we're harsh with ourselves
because of the way we were parented, we respond to it by rebelling (how
many times do we cheat on our diets?) or martyring ourselves (trying
hard to be good girls and boys but building up resentment and lashing
out at those we love, or not giving ourselves a break and ultimately
breaking down.)
To the degree that we can accept our own loving
guidance because we've learned from our parents to treat ourselves that
way, we are able to set goals and use our self-discipline to attain
them. Ultimately, loving guidance and positive discipline result in the
child's developing the holy grail toward which all child-raising is
aimed: the child's own self-discipline.
