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Tag Archives: discipline
Parenting Styles
I was at Lion Country Safari with my family today and of course being a therapist, I love to look around and see what everybody else is doing. On one side of me, I had a couple who ordered all fried food for themselves and for their children and on the other side I had a husband and wife order kids meals with fried food. Both families let their children sit by themselves while they sat at a different table. It occurred to me how many different parenting styles there are and if one is better than the other?
I believe that we are role models for our children and what we do they do as well. I try to live a healthy life and reflect that onto my children and wonder if others are thinking how their food choices affect their children’s choices.
I also do not believe in making my children finish their food. If they want dessert, it makes me believe that they have room for more food so I do make them finish in that case, but over feeding a child is just wrong to me and I think it leads to more problems in the future. I overheard a mother say to her child today, “You need to sit on your bottom and finish your food or else I have no problem yanking your pants down and spanking you right here.” Okay, so what is the issue for me here. It is actually the forcing your child to finish your food. I was watching this boy and he was full and he was done. So why was he forced to eat? I am not sure. Now, I am sure she was looking at my children who left half of their food and were up from the table throwing out our food and saying, “Gosh, why isn’t she parenting?
So which is right or wrong? The answer is simple, there is no right or wrong, it is just what you know. I can only hope that we all continue to try to be better people for our children so they have the best example to follow. We only know what we have been taught and we are all doing the best we can, but is that good enough? Should we be doing better?
Let me know your thoughts because I would like feedback on this topic.
Discipline
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.