Educating Children with Positive Discipline
In this Article we will discuss how to educating children with positive discipline. Positive parenting is a parenting style based on respect for children, nurturing with love and, above all, non-violent behaviour.
Currently, many parents are willing to raise non-violent children. But they often need support, advice and tools to positively manage the difficulties and conflicts of everyday family life.
What is positive parenting and how do we define it?
It is not always easy to find a precise definition of positive parenting. But no matter what language you speak or where you are, in positive parenting you are working with the same goals and parents share a common vision: using love as a basis for education.
Positive parenting fosters the relationship between parents and children. It is based on mutual respect helping children to develop properly and to be raised learning to interact with others and without violence.
It is important to adopt the right behaviours, set clear standards, listen to children and work as a team. And of course to use positive discipline instead of psychological or physical punishment.
Therefore, positive parenting is parenting that recognizes children as individuals with rights that must be respected.
How to become a positive parent at home
In spite of reading about this kind of education?
If you wish to reproduce this advice at home?
You have to remember that it is above all a way of life. These are beliefs that must be shared and respected in the family and, above all, you must forget about the negative discipline in your home.
- Be a good example. Children need their parents’ example. If your child witnesses friendly and respectful relationships at home, he or she will be more likely to adapt those same values.
- Understand your child’s personality. Every child is different and may need different kinds of advice to adapt to his or her personality. For example, a very active and stubborn child will need a different approach to positive discipline than a calmer, more reserved child.
- Think about the needs behind the behaviour. If your child jumps on the couch, he or she will need to expend energy. Or maybe because he wants your attention because he hasn’t seen you all day. Or maybe it’s just because he’s bored.
- Help your child share his Communication in a family is very important. They will learn to express their feelings and share them before they become difficult to control.
Sometimes we want our children to adopt a certain way of being when they reach preadolescence. But have they been taught or allowed to be that way in early childhood?
Early childhood is the most important stage. It’s where they build character and personality. So we have to start from there to work with them and with ourselves as adults.
One might wonder where this bullying that teenagers have, this anger or resentment towards adults or their own parents comes from. In order for young adults to respect and trust adults and parents, the first step is to educate them by showing them what respect and trust are all about.
Simple Strategies and Tools for Positive Parenting
Simple strategies and tools exist and can be applied. These techniques, once put in place, will allow us to change our perception as well as that of our children. Calm and patience are always welcome at a time when everything is upset and everything goes too fast.
Knowing our children is paramount!
To properly apply positive parenting, here are a few points to apply:
- Knowing our children’s emotions, teaching them how to control and express them. It is complicated when we, the parents, lose our temper and do not always control our level of anger, fatigue or stress.
- Always talk to them at eye level: a horizontal relationship, always.
- Setting important boundaries in the family setting
- Negotiation and positive parenting are reflection and communication between parents and children. Negotiations will therefore be our great allies and can be conducted from about three years onwards.
- Family reunions, to be set up from four years onwards, are an excellent strategy or tool for the whole family, because we are not only talking about children’s behaviour, but also adults’ behaviour. It is time to see what is right, what is wrong, to change the behaviours we do not like and thus bring solutions to the problems of living together.
- When we get angry, it’s best not to talk. It’s better to take a moment alone and when we are able to talk, we will resume the conversation (if our children see us doing it, they will too).
- Learn to breathe and calm down before hurting a family member with words they later regret.
Conclusion
Being a parent is not easy and educating children is not done with a precise instruction manual, but we must do everything in our power to educate them, raise them and prepare them for conditions that we do not know at present.
We therefore give them the tools, skills and capacities for autonomy and, above all, great capacity to adapt to various situations.
Don’t look for perfection, just try to improve every day.
