Discipline Is To Children What Guard Rails Are To Mountain Roads
Discipline is a necessary parenting tool to help our children Stop Fighting and to prevent them from repeatedly engaging in a myriad of undesirable actions. It is to allowing them to discover the natural and negative consequences of these undesirable childhood behaviors. Consequence Parenting is directly related to this concept. It is an outward demonstration of an inward devotion and concern for our children's immediate and long-term well-being. We offer an excellent Free Discipline Guidelines Report that you can download to greatly help you in properly correcting your children. Setting Limits is also an important parental activity needed to lay the groundwork for effective parental expectations and discipline. What we as Parents want are solutions to the negative behaviors and attitudes such as Kids Fighting and arguing. You must possess and use effective Parental Communication techniques to help this come to pass. What our children need from us are examples of more appropriate ways of doing things, and age-specific consequences for those times when they choose to act contrary to our teachings and expectations. Long Distance Parenting shows us that parents can always have a say, and an influence, in helping and disciplining their children. The word DISCIPLINE comes from the Latin Disciplina, meaning to teach, and Discipulus, meaning a pupil or student The word DISCIPLE is a derivative of the word DISCIPLINE. So to Discipline your child is by definition to act as a teacher to your child who will be to you a type of disciple or follower. Share Which Disciplines Or Consequences YOU Use What works in YOUR family? Well that makes sense. It is to train and teach your child; to mold their mental faculty and moral character through an orderly system of rules of conduct (Family Rules and Expectations) that ultimately leads to your child having self-control and other positive character traits. And yet correcting children can often feel like a losing battle. Sometimes it seems like you spend more time repeating yourself than actually being heard. Sometimes it seems like you spend more time repeating yourself than actually being heard (Woops – See what I mean?). In many families parental correction ends up being an exercise in the unknown as parents struggle to find a way to reach their children before reaching the limits of their patience or parental know-how. Just as guard rails help to keep cars safely on the road, so Discipline acts as guard rails for safe and happy living. This parental guidance helps to define for our children what are safe and acceptable attitudes and behaviors versus what are unsafe and unacceptable attitudes and behaviors.
Despite these many benefits, Parents who need to correct and mold their children (and that would include ALL Parents) are often left feeling inadequate or even guilty. It is precisely for these reasons that this Preteen-Thru-Teenage-Parenting-Action-Guide exists. There are many ways to define what we are talking about, including: - Training that molds mental faculties or moral character - Orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior - A system of rules governing conduct or activity - Self-Control It all starts starts with a training or molding process. In essence what we do as parents is to train and mold our children to conform to proper rules of conduct and behaviors. The end goal is to help your child become a healthy, happy and productive adult member of society. It is to help instill an orderly pattern of behavior; a system of rules governing conduct and behavior that will benefit and protect our children. One such orderly pattern can be found in our Discipline Guidelines Page. Packed with lots of useful helps and hints, it's a must read. It has been said that if you fail to correct your children in the home, then society will do it for you when your children are out of the home. That is a sobering thought indeed. Tough Love Parenting is often used by parents whose teenager's are out-of-control, but parents should not wait until it comes to this before they use parenting strategies that are both loving and effective. Life often calls for the need for parental correction and the possibility of an appropriate punishment now and again. Will we actually do the right things for our children when circumstances in the home spin out of control as they often do? How much correction and guidance is too much? Should I spank my child? How about giving my child time outs? Should my children expect consequences when they break family rules or act out of line? What if they don’t respond to my loving correction? What if they give me attitude? The possibilities are endless as every Parent well knows. Discipline, if done properly, elevates and lifts. Just as the string of a kite allows the kite to soar, so also proper parental direction gives lift and upward momentum to the children who learn valuable life lessons from the parental correction they receive.
A fabled kite, if it could think and feel (just as our own children can think and feel), might view the string as a restriction on its freedom to fly as high as it might want to, and the person holding the string could be viewed as a tyrant wishing to control the kite and 'keep it down'. Little does the kite know that it is the string and the person holding the string that allows the kite to be what it was meant to be. Without them both, the kite would never fly at all. The kite is a symbol for our children, the string represents family rules, and we as parents are the person holding the string, helping to establish the family rules which will give the necessary resistance to allow our children to eventually soar. Without the rules and a loving parent to administer them, our children would never gain the Discipline needed for them to be what they were meant to be. Without rules and consequences, our children would never 'get off the ground'. It should NOT be our goal to go around looking for reasons to punish our children, however. That would make for a very unhappy home life indeed. On the contrary, we should catch our children doing the ‘right things’ as often as we can, and give them positive feedback and appreciation at every opportunity that presents itself to us. Parental correction and guidance can and does take many different forms. It can be a word spoken in earnestness, or a stern glance, or even not getting a cookie after dinner. Punishment and positive learning can take the form of washing the dishes, or sitting quietly on a chair for five minutes, or not watching your favorite program on TV. Be creative. Be innovative. Always teach the lesson to your child that the corrective instruction is meant to enforce. Do be kind and loving. Do end your parental correction and teaching with hugs and laughs and tickles and a treat as often as you can. When parents do what they do in love and kindness the need for future correction often vanishes into thin air. Discipline should always be used as a rare spice and not as a main ingredient. There is a lot more parenting wisdom to share. Here is another Discipline thought: If a hidden camera were to record your words and actions in the very act of correcting and teaching your children, would those words and actions demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt the love, devotion, and commitment you have and feel towards your children? May you be able to view your moments of Parental Discipline with peace of mind and clearness of conscience at any time, for any reason, in anyone’s company, over and over again. Discipline, Boundaries, Creative Solutions, Limits, And Appropriate Consequences Are All Part Of A Happy And Healthy Home!
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