How to Discipline Children

It can be difficult to know how to effectively discipline your child will actually make a difference. Am I being cruel? What is most effective? It could be a minefield. I want to share some insights from my career as a clinical psychologist specializing in children and adolescents. We're going to look at how to best discipline children and take a look at what actually works.

When we think of the word discipline, it usually implies some sort of external punishment we give to our kids when they do something that we don't want them to do. I do think there are some ways you can discipline that will be more effective than others. Let me outline a few of these. I want to talk about a completely different way of discipline that you may have never thought about. When disciplining I think there are three things that you can do that will really help.

1. Be neutral. Develop the skill of being firm but neutral meaning you use a neutral tone of voice. Once you start yelling, now your kids are going to pay attention to you and and you're yelling and not the behavior that you're actually yelling about. Being neutral or I think of it sometimes like being business-like that sort of demonstrates that you mean business and your focus is on the desired behavior. This is hard to do when emotions run high but I think it's a really critical skill to learn .

2. Discipline with empathy. I believe empathy and discipline can and should coexist. It just means that you set boundaries while being neutral and empathetic for the consequences. In a sense you are commiserating with your kids when they're about to suffer and even if you're the one that's about to cause a suffering. We don't want to rescue our kids from consequences but we can commiserate with them. Like you could say "Oh Sarah I hate that you have to miss that there's nothing I want more than for you to go out with your friends. I wish you had done your report earlier". I really do that's commiserating with her.

Before we move on to the next points I want to thank you for watching YouTube video. Are you struggling to communicate with your child or to discipline them effectively? None of us are handed a manual when our kids are born with all the rules and steps that we should take. We learn by trial and error. That's why I've created this channel it's about using my system of correcting and connecting to build a strong trusting and influential relationship with your child. If that's the kind of thing you want to know more about then like my YouTube video subscribe to my channel and share with your friends.

3. I want you to recognize what noise is. Noise is anything that is meant to distract you in the moment so for example when your kid asks you the why questions in response to some consequence. He's not really asking you why and and when you answer the why he's now working on wearing you down. Kids are expert at the practice of engaging parents in meaningless arguments and discussions. Requiring us to give them reasons for everything that we do and so when we fall into this trap thinking that by being reasonable by giving logical explanations they're going to understand all of a sudden and then they'll want to comply.

I would actually say that you should never answer the why question more than once just think of it as noise and don't engage in that conversation. We've talked about a few things that will help when you have to discipline. Let me suggest a completely different kind of discipline that you may have never considered. This is discipline that comes from within the child and not externally imposed by you. Let me share with you a story.

When my daughter was seven years old. I was faced with a situation that was so frustrating. I had just come home from a long day at work and I was exhausted and my wife quickly recounted a problem that Jessica had that day. She informed me that I was going to be the one to deal with it and so Valerie had gotten his call that afternoon from the school informing her that Jessica had kicked one of her peers in the face during recess. Let me tell you a few things about Jessica. She is and always has been extremely independent and capable, this is a trait that I love about her and is a trait that I have always struggled with with her. This phone call from her school certainly was not the first time we had heard from them in fact it was starting to become a pattern .

I'm coming home from work that day and I was in no mood to be gentle with her. I was very frustrated with her but I will tell you that my past efforts in helping her with these kinds of problems they always included me trying to lecture, bribe, threaten, yell, believed with her and I was grounding her any of those kinds of methods but nothing was working. I didn't know what else to do so this time I chose a different path.

The first thing I did was I sat down with Jessica and in a very neutral manner, I asked her to describe for me what had happened that day in school. She was initially very defensive. She literally said "Well you already know because Mom told you." I didn't really love that response but I was determined to stay neutral. I persisted asking only for a description of what happened. I was trying to be like a reporter just gathering the facts and I was specifically not judging and not criticizing. I was only asking for a description of what happened was fact finding. I succeeded in staying neutral. It was hard. I was also being non-persuasive. I was being non-judgmental and she kind of caught on to the fact that this was not going to be our typical adversarial conversation. At that point she actually opened up to me and she did give me a clear description of what happened. She told me this boy was teasing her friend and she decided she was going to kick him in the face and get him to stop and it worked .

So I asked her a few more questions. She made some clarifications and you know we were both actually very relaxed. Then after we talked for a while, I asked her another question and now my goal at this point was to ask her about feelings. Remember we're doing this from the inside out but I wasn't just asking about any feelings. I wanted to specifically ask her how she felt about herself. My question went something like I said "Jessica what you're saying to me is that when you get upset at other people you feel like it's okay to hurt them? Is that right? Hearing it that way so she denied. She denied that it was okay to hurt people. I went back to sort of fact-finding mode and I was just asking for descriptions of her behavior then I came back with this very similar question "When you're upset with someone you feel like it's okay to hurt them?" She denied it again and then I asked one really simple question. I said "Is this the kind of kid that you want to be?" Her response blew me away there were instant tears running down her face. I was stunned by this talk more she admitted to me that she didn't want to be the kind of person that hurt others whenever she was angry .

The beauty of this experience is that Jessica was able to experience her own feelings of disappointment in herself. This was unlike all the other times. I had my discussions with her where the only thing that she would feel was disappointment from me. She's filling it from within herself. I believe that by experiencing her own feelings of self-disapproval that made her naturally want to change. When I share this story with parents, I'm often asked what I did next, what discipline did I impose. I didn't do anything next because what else was there to do I didn't need to give her punishment because the punishment was already coming from within her. Any time we can turn kids inward and recognize their own approval for behaviors that they feel good about or help them recognize their own disapproval for negative behaviors that's the ideal because this means that they can and they will self-correct.

I don't think you can improve on that. I believe that this is such an important principle that I've actually put together a free four-part webinar that will teach you how to do this very thing. I will go into detail and give you practical steps that will allow you to begin parenting your children from the inside out .

Are you looking for more effective way to connect with your child and build long-term positive influence? Maybe your child is misbehaving or going through a difficult phase and you struggle and know how to discipline them or even sometimes how to reach them at all? I've spent the last 25 years as a clinical psychologist working primarily with children, adolescents, young adults and families. I have worked with thousands of families around the world and I've seen the challenges facing families today. That's why I've created this four-part video series that is completely free to watch and available for you immediately. This helps parents become much more effective at bonding with and positively influencing their kids. This system is completely unique and highly effective. I have seen this system benefit my own family and so many others and I want your family to have this too. Just go to the link in the video description or you can go to correctingconnect.com enter your details click the button and I'll send it over to you immediately.