Love or fear: How Do You Discipline Your Child?

“You need to wind up right now and do your homework or else...” warned the mother of six-year-old, Riya (name changed)—a warning, which Riya chose to ignore with her eyes still hooked on to the iPad. This disobedience of hers was followed by another and even louder warning, which ultimately culminated in a spanking. The next one hour passed with her scribbling on her notebook to complete her homework, which eventually lay unfinished at the end of the day. This was an everyday scene at Riya’s house!

When parenting becomes a battle, the home turns into a battleground. Sore throats, soaring blood pressures and only hurt feelings remain and of course there are no winners. If this has become an everyday scenario in our houses, we need to look for alternative method to discipline our children minus the punishment component. Read on to find out more.

Tips For Positive Discipline

Here are 7 simple ways to learn to disassociate the negative component associated with discipline and slowly change our perspective about discipline. Let’s us understand the concept of “positive discipline”:

1. Understand root cause:

   Once we understand this simple, basic concept we would be seeing our child from a positive lens
   • Try and understand that something in the child’s environment is influencing her to behave badly
   • The triggers could be many - the child could be hungry, tired, sleepy, upset or unwell
   • Address the underlying need to eliminate the misbehavior

2. Reconnect everyday:

   Switch off your mobile phones, and other gadgets to take out those exclusive 20 minutes for your child every day
   • Listen to what she has to say, tell her how much you love her and what she means to you
   • Snuggle her, tickle her, cuddle her, have pillow fights, giggle with her
   • Be 100% physically and mentally present with her, for her
   • Children who feel connected with their parents indulge in less of misbehavior

3. Model behaviors which you want your child to emulate:

   Never act when you are upset
   • Leave the situation, or take a deep breath or count to 10 to calm down
   • We should not do anything in front of our children that we don’t want them to do

4. Give attention to behaviors you like and ignore the ones you don’t like:

   Children sometimes throw tantrums, whine, lie down on the floor, or throw things to catch your attention. Ignore the behavior or simply walk away to pass on the message that there is a better way to communicate than throw a fit

5. Offer an option instead of saying ‘NO’:

   children who hear no every time, tend to inculcate resentment. Substitute your ‘No’ with an option
   • For instance, a child who is misbehaving at the restaurant might be asked to collect the table napkins and help the parent and the sibling in laying these
   • In this case, instead of telling the child “No, don’t do this”, we show the positive behavior to replace the misbehavior
   • Also, as children grow older, it is advisable to give them an explanation of why you said the no. Just saying ‘No’ point-blank makes them resent the authority

6. Show empathy and respect:

   Understand why the child is behaving in a particular way and empathize with her
   • For instance, if she hits a child who refuses to share her doll with her, we could say, “I understand you really want the doll, but hitting her is not the right choice. Hitting hurts and we do not hit our friends”
   • By connecting and then correcting, half the battle is already won

7. Use logical consequences:

   If a child has done a mistake, spanking or shouting would only make him play defensive and hide his mistake or lie to you next time to avoid your scolding

   • For instance-

     if a child has broken a glass, instead of spanking if we tell him to help you with cleaning, the chance of repeat behavior is reduced
   • In this case the focus is put off the mistake and shifted to taking the responsibility for repairing it

Let’s have a re-look at the same scene (mentioned in the introduction) but with a change in the mother’s way of dealing with the situation. Mother calling Riya and making an eye contact and asking her in a polite yet firm voice, “Riya how much time would you need to wind it up? I am giving you ten minutes for winding up and after which you shall do your homework. Once you are done we can do your favorite activity together. When Riya agrees the mother says, “Riya you have been really good and thank you for lending a patient ear.”

By treating our children with compassion and understanding, we teach them to be responsible and self-disciplined. On the other hand, when we spank, yell or punish, we are teaching them to act aggressively. We don’t want our children to obey us out of fear but out of respect.

Dear readers, please give your valuable feedback and share your inputs on what works best for you when it comes to disciplining your child in ‘love vs fear?’