Solano Psychotherapy Associates

All parenting books emphasize the need for consistent love and limits with young children but what does this actually look like?  First consider these 4 research established facts: 

(1)  Children act like they feel.  Also, emotions (all feelings) are a normal and necessary part of human experience.

(2) Children need their feelings mirrored, validated and understood.  These actions become the building blocks for them to verbalize their feelings, a necessary step in self esteem and self control.  When children can verbally express their feelings they don’t need to act them out.

(3)  Children need to learn that other people, beginning with parents, have their own separate feelings and needs.  In other words, it is good for children to see parents have a normal range of feelings as long as the parents are not too frightening or frightened. 

(4) When a child under the age of 8 is criticized, (s)he is unable to learn from it, rather (s)he just becomes frozen with a sense of shame.  The result of being criticized thus becomes the opposite of learning because the child fears trying again.  This can develop into a frustrated parent and a frightened, shamed child who has adopted the stance of “I can’t” with no ability to explain why.

These four basic facts, all established and well documented in research, point the way for parents in “disciplining” their young children.  Rather than criticizing a child for “doing something wrong,” showing children how to do it right while encouraging them works.  This can take a few times because children learn by repetition.  This may seem hard to do for parents leading busy, complex lives, but in the long run, it is the easiest way.  Parents who don’t go to this effort can end up with children who have learned short cuts (throwing their toys in the closet) or substitute behaviors like lying (“I already have”) or procrastination (“I’ll do it in a minute”) that cause problems which only increase tension and can begin to snowball.

 What works best with problem behavior is helping kids understand the problem with the behavior (so they understand the problem is with their behavior and not themselves), showing them the behavior you want and expect, and then helping them learn it by doing it with them several times.  Both rewards and “consequences” have important roles in establishing discipline; however, there are many tricky aspects to giving out rewards and “consequences” for good and bad behavior.  Here are a few short-hand versions: 

Rewards and punishments should match the seriousness of the behavior.  Rewards can be a smile, hug, a verbal at-a-boy, or if a child makes an extended effort the reward could be bigger, such as a favorite food, time playing a favorite video game, etc. 

I believe that calling a consequence a “punishment” throws the emphasis more on the child’s self and less on the behavior.  As discussed above, that can just leave him feeling bad about himself and more prone to “bad” behavior.  There are, however, many effective forms of consequences (remember to help the child to understand why):

Time outs are a good way to help children take in the seriousness of an offense. They should be short, 2 minutes to 10 minutes long, depending on age and seriousness of the behavior being shaped.  Time outs should only be used when a clearly established rule is broken.  If parents break the rules, for instance keeping children up past their bed times, they can’t expect the children to follow the rules, because they are not clear.   If enforcement of the rules is inconsistent, the child will be confused and his behavior will reflect this confusion.  Children with inconsistent or no limits on their behavior will try to understand through repeated testing of these limits with increasingly out-of-control  behavior.

Stopping the activity with which the child’s behavior is problematic, for instance, taking the tricycle away for a while if the 4 year old doesn’t stop from riding it into the street.  Or, separating the siblings for a while if they continue to fight.

Children will take the parents behavior as the rules, not what they say.  Behavior always speaks louder than words to children; this includes the tone of the parent’s voice.  This makes it very important to say what you mean and mean what you say.  Parents who threaten their children with “Punishment” if they don’t stop and then don’t follow through when the child continues, only confuses the child who will then continue the “bad” behavior to try to get some clarity on the real limits.

I hope this has been helpful.