I was at my wits end yesterday with one of my daughters and it got me to thinking about all the different types of discipline out there and which one is the best method?  I was shopping with my girls and I saw a mom hit her daughter on the arm for doing a minor infraction and I was thinking to myself that my girls do not know how patient I am with them.  My oldest daughter is 3 ½ now and she gives me a run for my money.  So which are the best types of discipline especially when you are at your wits end as I am all the time!

Time outs – Personally, I think these are more for the adults than the children.  It gives us some time to cool off and deal with the discipline in a calm manner.  I am sure that I am not the only one that has gotten so upset when their child did something and needed a few minutes to calm down before dealing with the problem and the consequences.

Addressing the problem – In our house there are some offenses that are immediate time-outs such as hitting, biting or talking back, unfortunately I have had to add covering when coughing since that seems to be the new defiance moment.  Mostly, I believe that addressing the problem immediately works well for us.  We had to do major work to get our daughter to understand how to apologize for her actions.  Did I mention how stubborn she is?  Now, when she knows she did something wrong it is say you’re sorry or go to time out?  She mostly will say her sorry immediately and I know when she really means it.  That is another one, I hear children apologize all the time but they just say it.  I do believe it is important to mean what you say so if you believe your child is just apologizing to do it and not really mean it then you might have to take an additional step in reintroducing what saying I’m sorry really means.

Spanking – I believe that violence leads to violence and there is way too much violence around us for myself to be spreading it in our house.  Saying that there are times when you feel the need to spank your child.  Just make sure you are calm when you do it, because if you are not you might regret how you hit and what you are teaching by hitting.  The law states if you leave a mark on your child it is child abuse and you can get into trouble.  Unfortunately it does not apply to the reverse.  If your child hits you that need to be address immediately and you need to work out what is going on and how you can fix the situation before it gets out of hand.  Remember they might be young now, but they will grow and get stronger so the sooner you get a handle on the hitting, biting, scratching, etc. the better for you!

Consequences – My rule of thumb for these are do not make one unless it works for you.  Back to the time out, this is what they are for.  It is so much better to wait to give the consequence or even let your child choose their own consequence.  They usually pick something so much better than you could have thought of.  If you make a consequence, stick to it makes it a reasonable amount of time and appropriate to the action.

Did I leave any discipline methods out?  Let me know in the comment section.