Positive Discipline is a method to guide parents and educators in building strong relationships with children. It facilitates the adequate development of self-esteem, confidence, and decision-making. In addition, it helps adults understand children’s inappropriate behaviors and reframes the child’s needs in a way that the parents or teachers can meet them.
What is Positive Discipline?
Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs conducted research in the 1980s that led to the development of Positive Discipline. Dr. Jane Nelsen, Lynn Lott, Cheryl Erwin, Kate Ortolano, Mary Hughes, Mike Brock, Lisa Larson, and others wrote many courses and parenting books to disseminate the information.
Respect and encouragement are the main pillars of positive discipline. It aims to teach children responsibility, respect, and resourcefulness that can then be applied to many social or life events. Positive discipline is not only for children; it teaches adults how to use kindness and firmness at the same time without being permissive or punitive.
Principles of Positive Discipline
According to Jane Nelsen, the presence of these five criteria indicates the application of an effective discipline:
1. Friendliness and firmness at the same time: this promotes mutual respect and encouragement between both parents and child.
2. Creating a healthy connection gives the child a sense of belonging and significance.
3. Long-term effectiveness: teaches skills that will help them thrive by acknowledging their thoughts, feelings, and learning process.
4. Teach important life skills such as contributing to their family, school, community, or society; respect; caring for others, effective communication skills, and problem-solving.
5. It invites you to discover your own skills and promotes the constructive use of personal power and autonomy in order to discover how capable they are.
Tools, concepts, and characteristics
Positive Discipline has key concepts that act as a foundation as well as tools.
Mutual respect: Adults model firmness by showing respect towards themselves and the needs of the situation, while they model kindness by respecting the child’s needs.
Identifying the belief behind the conduct: Identifying the cause behind a behavior makes it an effective discipline since it works towards changing those beliefs—instead, other disciplines seek to change merely the behavior.
It allows the development of effective communication skills and the teaching of healthy problem-solving skills.
Discipline that educates without being permissive or punitive.
Seeks to create solutions with the child, instead of giving punishments.
The use of encouragement allows the adult to highlight the effort and improvements of the child, slowly building their self-esteem and empowerment without praising, which is focused on success and achievement.
This discipline model has unique characteristics that allow it to be successful. For instance:
It uses experimental activities to teach adults and children its tenants, allowing one to learn by doing and practice new skills that have been acquired.
It has consistent programs, which permit parents, teachers, and childcare providers to work together in order to provide a secure and consistent environment for children.
Continuous training and support to teach and guide parents about positive discipline.
A certified trainer can always be found around the world.
The main methods used to apply positive discipline
Create rules with the child: By creating rules together, everyone agrees and feels included, giving the child a sense of mastery and encouraging them to be responsible in following the rules they helped create. Fair and reasonable rules establish limits for the child. Moreover, these rules should be followed by everyone in the household, as well as teachers and tutors, since they are modeling the desired behaviors. When consequences are needed due to breaking the rule, these should be communicated in a kind yet firm way, maintaining trust and respect between the child and the adult.
Encouraging Intrinsic Motivation: Intrinsic motivation comes from internal sources, it derives from the wish to feel good about oneself due to one’s ethics. Therefore, positive discipline allows children to learn to act correctly, regardless of whether they have external rewards or punishments for their behavior.
Recognizing needs: When children misbehave, they are communicating that one or more of their needs are not being met. Children will show or communicate their frustration according to their age and their developmental abilities.
Comprehend the meaning: As mentioned before, misbehaviors are means of indicating unmet needs. Children do not behave inappropriately or show misconduct without a valid reason. They are communicating and doing the best they can. Once the behavior or conduct is understood, emotional outbursts are diminished or can even disappear.
Redirect negative behavior: When a child is repeatedly told “no,” it starts to ignore what it means and thus unwanted behaviors appear. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to redirect unwanted misconduct into positive behaviors.
Conscious discipline requires that the adult be aware of his or her own behavior and emotions to determine what situations have to be consciously managed instead of reacting impulsively.
