I recently overheard my son say something to his child, and I had the sense that it wouldn’t work out well for them. It wasn’t serious. Just one of those statements we make to our kids, subtly manipulating them to do what we want them to do, often because it’s just more convenient for us.

My son trusts me, so I caught his eye. He stopped, took a breath, and said, “I got it!” And in the flash of an insight, he understood the impact of what he’d said on his child. And we both knew he would find a different approach next time.

The incident reminded me of something I’d read when I was pregnant with my first son – that disciplining a child can be as simple as a look. Not the look that says, “Oh no, not again,” or “Can’t you do anything right?” or “Just wait till I get you home!” But rather, the look that inspires children to correct themselves. How can we make that happen?

UNDERSTAND THEIR NEED FOR ATTENTION

From their first day in the world, our babies need our focused attention. And they learn quickly that they can get it by crying or screaming. In fact, it’s the first lesson we all learn in life: “If I just lie here quietly, I might be ignored. But if I act unhappy, I’ll get attention!”

Life’s fast and full for all of us. But if our kids learn early that, “Positive behavior will get me ignored,” they’ll do whatever it takes to get a response from us. They might even develop a belief that negative behavior is their purpose.

So from day one, it’s all about teaching our kids how to get the love and attention they need through self-supportive actions. And we do it effectively by rewarding their positive behavior with our acknowledgement, always making our love bigger than any other emotion we express to them, while giving our most low-key response to whatever we don’t want them to repeat.

EXPLAIN THE REASONS FOR THE RULES

Teaching our children what does and doesn’t work effectively in life means also helping them understand why. For example, “wrong” can be anything that produces a result that’s harmful. And “right” can be anything that’s beneficial to ourselves and others.

Children will follow rules that they believe are in their best interest. So more important than showing disapproval is teaching them how to recognize, in their own experience, what’s effective and what’s not.

And as they reach a point where what they did is no longer what they would want to do, if they were in that situation again – and they’ve become a person who wouldn’t choose to repeat it, because the behavior doesn’t fit them anymore – they’ve corrected their own behavior.

SEPARATE WHAT THEY DO FROM WHO THEY ARE

Children constantly hear, through society, media, teachers and peers, that their worth depends on succeeding at what they do. They get a message that making the most money, having the coolest house and car, looking the prettiest, and being the smartest is what will make them valuable.

So we need to help our children discover who they truly are and what’s actually valuable. Then they can figure out for themselves what behavior supports that. And by knowing that they’re more than what they do, they’ll be more likely to hold healthy opinions of themselves.

DEMONSTRATE CAUSE AND EFFECT

Consequences are great natural teachers – that actions create results, and that energy set in motion comes back around. By experiencing the results they create and by understanding the cause-effect connection, our children will learn to make decisions based on how they want life to unfold. And teaching them how to think, rather than telling them what they should think, will help them choose supportive behavior as a lifestyle.

When I tucked my sons in bed at night, we reviewed the day. What went well and why. What might’ve worked better and how. We named the actions that led to consequences we liked, we explored better alternatives for actions that didn’t work, and we committed to new behavior.

The goal of discipline is more than changing our children’s behavior. The goal is to help them choose a different attitude – by seeing how they set things in motion, and how they cause the results they’re experiencing, and what they can do to cause constructive change.

CHOOSE A WORKABLE MOOD

Anger doesn’t make discipline work. And trying to train children’s behavior through force doesn’t work. Punishment teaches guilt and resentment rather than better behavior.

So it helps to establish a constructive mood first, before we discipline. Because we bring out the best in our children by expressing the best in ourselves.

GIVE THEM A SAFE PLACE

There are times when my most important success factor is my ability to get to the end of a super-challenging day, and when I finally fall into bed, to still be able to feel good about myself. The same can be true for our children. So one of the best things we can teach them is how to comfort themselves back into feeling good, about themselves and about life, no matter what’s happening around them.

After the encounter with my son, he told me that he got the daddy-insight simply from the look I gave him. So I think the look that inspires children to correct themselves is the look of love.

We want our children to know that we love them, no matter what they do. And we want them to feel safe, no matter how crazy life is in any moment. And that’s the purpose of disciplining – giving our children the tools to feel safe and loved, no matter what.

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