Parenting

 This week we talked about parenting. More specifically, we focused on disciplining your children.
Here's something I learned:

There are three circumstances in which you shouldn't let the natural consequences do the teaching, and you need to discipline your child:

1. Just too dangerous - If your child is using drugs, doing dangerous things with friends, etc.

2. Consequences are too far off in the future for the kid to be able to learn from it

3. Consequence affects other people - ex. shoplifting
 
If the circumstance falls in one of these three categories, then parents should step in and be a part of the learning and teaching process.

Here's the deal with discipline:

You need less structured discipline. If you waste all of your good punishments on smaller things, you'll be out of ideas when it comes to the big problem that they really really really need to be punished for. 

So, start off with polite requests. Respect goes a long way in the long run, and kids and adolescents will be a lot more compliant with respect in the relationship.

If the problem persists after polite requests, go on to using "I" messages. These are the classic, "I feel...." messages. Describing your feelings, rather than yelling them, or not expressing them at all. When you share feelings, you teach them how their behavior affects other people. 

If that doesn't work, move on to a firm direction. It will be much, much easier for you to defend yourself against their claims of calling your action "unfair" or "stupid" if you can come back by saying that you already tried to make a polite request and told them how you feel.

Parenting is hard, I'm sure. I'm not expert and I can guarantee that I'll fall short many, many times, bu we would all do well to remember these things and build a healthy relationship with our children.