Disciplining My Daughter

Discipline has always been a hot spot for me. While I was teaching, it was the one thing I constantly tried to tweak and I felt like a miserable failure half the time. I've always found it very confusing, trying to find that middle ground between being too authoritative and being too lenient. I wanted the kids to listen to me and behave, but I also want them to think for themselves, have a healthy self-esteem and make decisions for the intrinsic benefit rather than doing it solely for praise or rewards. Finding a way to do this, though, is NOT an easy task! I have to admit, while I was teaching, I fell back on rewards and excessive praise because it was better than yelling and saying "no" constantly, but in the back of my mind, I knew that I was essentially resorting to bribery for a short-term fix. The kids were not behaving because it was the right thing to do to keep the classroom functioning peacefully. They were doing it because they wanted a prize from the butterfly box!!

Now my own precious daughter has entered the toddler stage of tantrums and fits and I was caught off guard. I thought that started in the twos and threes. Isn't it too early for her to think for herself?! I didn't really know how to react, so of course, I went and bought about five books on the subject. (Ok, I have to admit I am a complete geek when it comes to parenting books. I have a shelf full of them, and I've actually read the majority of them. I was a big self-help nerd before this, so I'm not straying very far here.) Among them, I found my salvation in a book called "Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline" by Becky Bailey. If it were for the title alone, I never would have bought the book. Seven steps??! Could it get any more cliché? It seemed a bit cheesy, and geared toward real problem children, but I found it recommended on the Mothering.com forum website and then was impressed by the rave reviews. And now, every page I turn, impresses me more.
This lady has basically taken all of the discipline techniques I like, but always found incomplete (positive discipline, logical consequences, modeling appropriate behavior, intrinsic instead of extrinsic rewards...etc) and has put them together logically and in a way that actually makes sense. It's taking me some time to adjust, but I'm getting there.

I'd like to share one example that I found really eye-opening with you.

She offers the story of a little boy at his fifth birthday. He has four friends over for the party and his mom comes out with five cupcakes to share between them. The birthday boy immediately goes and grabs the entire plate and havoc, obviously, ensues. His friends get angry, the moms are giving him dirty looks and his own mother comes up, looking disappointed and embarrassed and says, "You don't need all those cupcakes. You have to share them." The boy holds on even tighter, so his mom goes on "In our house we aren't selfish. We share." He looks at her angrily and takes a step back with the plate of cupcakes, so she continues and tells him that he'll have to go to his room at his own birthday party if he can't cooperate... etc. It ends in disaster. He tries to get away from his mom with the cupcakes, they fall to the floor, he is devastated, she sends him to his room. Bad situation all around.

According to the author, the initial problem here was how the mother automatically assumed her son was trying to be selfish and take all the cupcakes for himself. Bailey talks about how most of us typically assume negative intent when our kids (or even strangers) do something wrong. (For example, a guy cuts us off, he's a thoughtless jerk. The cashier at the grocery store hardly even looks at us - she is just a bitch with no social skills. Your daughter pulls the cat's tale, she's cruel and insensitive... etc). We don't KNOW why people do the things they do unless we ask them. Young children are not able to articulate the motivation behind their actions, anyway, so instead of assuming negative intent, why not just assume it was positive? In essence, we're doing the exact same thing. We can't KNOW why, so why not just assume they have the best of all possible intentions?

When this mother approached her son, she could have just as easily said, "You are afraid that there won't be enough cupcakes for everyone and you want to make sure you get one. You want to have the best birthday ever, and I want you to as well, so let's make sure everyone gets a cupcake and has a good time. There's more than enough for all of us." Here she establishes a sense of trust with her child, meaning he doesn't need to react defensively. When we immediately assume the worst, our children have got to fess up to our accusations, even if they are incorrect. In this example, the boy would have had to admit that he was being thoughtless and selfish if he had returned the cupcakes to his mother.

I thought that was ingenious. It was a totally different way of looking at things. It hasn't been an automatic change because I'm used to just saying "No! You can't do that. You have to do this..." etc. But It really gave me something to think about, and I'm already seeing positive results with Bella. She seems much calmer and happier and has had less fits in the past few days. It's much more time-consuming at the moment, but the thought is that it will require less intervention in the future.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who deals with children on a regular basis. It's not an easy fix, but let's face it, easy fixes don't really exist anyway. Her methods aren't only beneficial to your relationship with children, but for all of the relationships you have in your life. Seriously, I could almost call this book "life altering" if I wanted to surrender and let my cheesiness take over.

Being a toddler has got to be difficult. They are establishing a sense of self - becoming separate beings from their parents. They can't express themselves the way we can, and they don't know how to react to situations when they don't get what they want. It's all very frustrating. Being a parent and not knowing how to react is also frustrating. Having some tricks up my sleeve is definitely helping t0 alleviate some of these situations.