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What to Do and Things to Avoid When Disciplining Children | Healthy Discipline Strategies

 

 

How to Discipline your kids is a topic that comes up for me all the time.

I know what folks mean by the word discipline, but it is a hard question to answer because discipline might mean different things to different people.  So, I want to break down what I think is meant by people when they ask, “How to discipline your kids”, and then give you some real general pointers to help out.

Want more tips on how to get your kids to listen without raising your voice or nagging?  Click below to get instant access.

So, what is discipline? And how do I answer “how to discipline your kids” without causing more damage to your relationship with your child.

Defining Discipline

First thing we have to do is define discipline.  According to Google: Discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.

Man, that’s an ugly definition.  This can’t be what parents are asking me can it?   I mean, we want our kids to learn to obey important rules and some standards of behavior, but is it our goal to punish and correct disobedience?  What is disobedience anyway?  Do we want children who only obey?  I’d argue a more logical parenting definition for Discipline is, how do we correct mistakes and help our kids to make better choices.   Can we agree to go with this one please?

So, if we define discipline as correcting mistakes and helping kids to make better choices, there is actually a lot we can do. To discipline our children and some of the ways we have to choose from are certainly better than others.  Here are a few ways “how to discipline your children” that I would use and a couple I would work hard to avoid..

First let’s cover ways of, “How to discipline your children”, that you should use.

Ways That You Should Be Disciplining Your Children

  • Stay calm and remind them of rules they’ve broken or used the bad behavior and, if possible, give them a chance to immediately fix their mistake with little to no consequence should they make the fix without complaint the first time.
  • Stay calm and ask them why they might have broken the rule or used the bad behavior. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation you should be willing to hear.
  • Stay calm and find a measured response that is meaningful but a short-term response that involves losing access to something of value or the removal of access to a preferred item.
  • Stay calm and be ready to return access as soon as you are again seeing behavior you will want to reinforce.

If your child escalates behavior during the removal process, stay calm and wait out their disapproval before giving them any chances to change their situation, then when calm, begin looking for things they can do to return access to the lost items.

Bottom line, stay calm.

Now let’s cover ways of, “How to discipline your children”, that I would avoid.

Ways to Discipline Your Children That You Should Avoid

  • Yelling at them,
  • Nagging them
  • Embarrassing or belittling them
  • Hitting them
  • Spanking them
  • Giving additional workload to pay them back for the mistakes they made.

The bottom line is this.  Anything you do to take things away from their environment after bad behavior or broken rules, is better than anything you would add to their environment.  Take away attention don’t add yelling, take way a toy don’t add a spanking, take away an opportunity don’t give them additional work.

If you need to discipline your kids, do it with removals.  Anything you take away can always be given back.  Anything you add like yells, hits, belittling statements, cannot truly ever be undone.

To really learn more about all the reasons why you would want to avoid certain forms of discipline and the many ways you can discipline your child in the context of a positive family environment, click here to check out my 53 minute free video called, How to Get Your Kids to Listen without Raising your Voice or Nagging.

And remember, if you feel the need to discipline and you want to know how to discipline your kids, remember the basics.   Stay Calm, remind them of the rules, give them a chance to fix their mistakes and if need be, remove access or opportunity after the behavior to help reduce it, but always look for positive reasons to return to good interaction again quickly.  Choose this over the techniques you should avoid, like yelling, nagging, hitting, spanking, or adding work to their plates.

When it is time to discipline your child, think about what you can take away or remove and not what you can add or inflict.

And don’t forget about the free workshop at www.just7steps.com/workshop for a ton of additional free info.