When you hold a child's hands you hold the future

A small 20-month old hand holds my right hand whilst wandering forward one small step at a time. A bird chirping, a leaf blowing, and rocks strewn across our path capture his downward gaze. He pauses to examine a pebble. And I think. I hold the future in my hand.

I look down and glimpse the sense of wonder and appreciation a little boy has for our world. In a moment of time I feel hopeful that the future will be brighter if his upstretched hand is ready to grasp the tomorrow as firmly as he grasps the present.

In the early years of a child’s life we hold a child's future in our hands. We do not make all the difference in their lives, but we do make an important difference. For a brief moment in time, our strong hands lift them up when they are weary and hold them close when strange sounds and images trouble their souls. Our hands point them in the right direction, show them how to write, cook, build, and celebrate. 

When the future comes close, our hands grab their shoulders in a hearty well-done embrace. Then we wave good bye. The future is theirs to hold.

Parenting is about deep and caring relationships built one small moment upon another. Respectful discipline flows naturally as parents bridge the gap between the present and the future. This is why I wrote Discipline with Respect. I believe parents hold the key to the future in the palm of their hands. Parents, and all their helpers, enable children to create the future of the world.

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Evidence-Based Parenting 11 Principles of Discipline with Respect

Parents have been raising children to become leaders for thousands of years. Evidence-based parenting is simply a collection of principles that have been tested--tested in current studies and tested over time.

Respectful parenting treats children with the love and respect all people deserve without giving up the appropriate boundary between parents and children.

The world is full of people who are loving, respectful and kind. Parents and children can change the world--even if it is one person at a time.

11 Evidence-Based  Principles included in Discipline with Respect

Introduction: The Principle of Respect     

1. The Principle of Purpose     

2. The Principle of Advertising     

3. The Principle of Leadership by Example      

4. The Principle of Coaching    

5. The Principles of Encouragement      

6. The Principles of Changing Behavior: Guidelines      

7. The Principles of Changing Behavior: Applications      

8. The Principle of the Pure Spring      

9. The Principle of Choice      

10. The Principle of Relationship Repair      

Understanding Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Two Versions of Discipline with Respect

1. Discipline with Respect

2. Discipline with Respect - Christian Family Edition 

          with scriptural examples for each principle

Inexpensive Discussion Guide

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Have You Considered Parenting Time Limits?

Jennifer is a 30-year-old mother. Her daughter Chelsea is three. Jennifer has about 13 years left to help Chelsea get ready for adulthood--that's if you believe 16-year-olds will listed to parental guidance!

Scott has a 12-year-old son, Micah. Scott has about 4 years until Micah reaches age 16.

Sure, parents can continue to advise their children into the adult years. After all, in western cultures, adolescence seems to go into the early 20s.

Parenting has a time limit

When you consider the time available to help children become mature, responsible adults, parents need to decide on their priorities. I'm not saying parents ought to cut back on fun and games. I am saying that if you want your children to learn specific values, atitudes, and skills, then plan to do most of that teaching during childhood and early adolescence.

When children enter the teen years, the parent-child relationshp changes. At some point, children begin teaching parents a thing or two--including values, attitudes, and skills.

Time flies.

It isn't long before your children are teenagers-- busy with school, part-time work, and peer group activities. They may be applying for work or college. You may or may not be happy with their peers. You may wish they had other plans for employment or college. But the chances are, your ability to influence your older teen have diminished considerably.

Why not make the most of childhood?

Think about what you would really like them to know, value, appreciate, and respect.



Do they complete age appropriate responsibilities at home?

Do they complete age appropriate work at school?

Do they show respect for themselves and their personal space?

Do they show respect to you, peers, siblings, and other adults?

Do they share your values?

Your parenting days are numbered. Make the most of them then, become friends for life.

Read more in Chapter 1 of Discipline with Respect

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Available in over 12 countries (English Language).

Also available, Christian Family Edition AMAZON

Chores, Tasks, & Responsibility

In Discipline with Respect, Chapter 1, "The Principle of Purpose," I discuss the importance of building responsible behavior with tasks and responsiblities appropriate for a child's age. It does take more time than doing a job yourself, but parenting includes helping children become mature and responsible adults.

I recently saw a post from the American Counseling Association (ACA) about chores. The suggestions are similar to mine.

Here's a quote from their post.

Having  your kids do assigned chores can be an important factor in helping them develop in positive ways. Chores are a way for a child to feel part of the family, and to gain a sense of contributing toward the family good. These early life lessons make it easier for a person to feel like an active, contributing member of society later in life.

And here is the link to the ACA blog so you can read their Jan 05, 2018 post about  the value of having children complete chores.


Happy Parenting!

Read more about evidence-based discipline strategies in Discipline with Respect -- A book used by schools and recommended by professionals. 

Available on AMAZON Kindle and in paperback.

See the Discipline with Respect website for more information.

Get a FREE sample at AMAZON 

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Full link to the ACA post about "chores."
https://www.counseling.org/news/aca-blogs/aca-counseling-corner/aca-counseling-corner-blog/2018/01/05/getting-kids-to-do-their-chores-doesn't-make-you-a-bad-person

Why did she do that?

When children misbehave, we want to know why they do what they do. But often, children do not know why they did whatever they did.

When we ask children why questions, we may be thinking two things:

    1. I don’t want you (child) to do that again.

    2. I want to know how to help you (child) behave differently in the future.

We may genuinely want to know why a child lost her temper, hit another child, broke something valuable, has difficulty finishing homework, keeps forgetting various items, and many other things.

Answers to why questions can be deceptive. A child may say “I forgot” or “She hit me.” A parent may suspect a child is tired or upset because a child missed out on an activity due to misbehavior or even an interfering event like severe weather.

People in a community may have many explanations for children’s behavior such as deficiencies in various supplements, life events like a divorce or birth of a sibling, birth order, and so forth. Some explain behavior as a matter of bad choices.

Sometimes parents consult psychologists who may suggest the reasons for some behaviors are linked to learning disabilities or the biochemistry associated with conditions like ADHD.

The truth is, we often do not know what causes a behavior in a specific child. There may be more than one cause for any given behavior or behavior pattern. As with many things in life, it is often best to focus on the desired outcome.

Ask not why children behave as they do. 

Ask what your children will do differently next time. 

Ensure they have a clear idea about appropriate behavior and help them achieve that goal using one or more effective discipline techniques.

We usually don’t want our children to answer a why question with something like, “I guess my dopamine levels were low.”

We can avoid helping children search for reasons that can become excuses by focusing on what questions. 

Here are three examples of what questions.

• What did you do?
• What rule did you break (if one was broken)?
• What should you do differently next time?

Read more about evidence-based discipline strategies in Discipline with Respect -- A book used by schools and recommended by professionals. 

Available on AMAZON Kindle and in paperback.

See the Discipline with Respect website for more information.

Get a FREE sample at AMAZON 

Note

There may be biopsychological explanations for some behavioral difficulties but most children won't know those "reasons" for their behavior. In addition, we usually want to help children learn adaptive behavior even when they have conditions that make it more difficult for them than for other children.

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Setting Goals Builds Self-Discipline

In Discipline with Respect, I recommend parents set goals after identifying the behavioral lessons they would like their children to learn by a certain age. Setting goals is a good idea for adults and children. When parents set goals, they also serve as role models for their children.

Anytime is a good time to set goals. So, if you are reading this at the beginning of a year or at another time, the psychological value of goal-setting remains important to helping people make achievable life-changes.

Daphna Oyeserman (USC) and her team studied the effects of measuring time on planning for a future event like saving for retirement. It turns out that the way participants “framed” time influenced their plans to take action. Instead of thinking in terms of years, it might be best to think in terms of days (Psychological Science). And its best to think in terms of months rather than years.

Parents can apply this kind of thinking to behavioral goals. For example, if you want your child to develop financial responsibility by age 16 and your child just turned 12, you might think 4-years is far in the future—and you have plenty of time. But if you think in terms of days (1,465), you might be more inclined to make a list of tasks to improve the odds your teen will have the self-discipline and other skills crucial to responsible financial behavior. Fortunately, many parents help children develop responsible financial behavior before age 12. Unfortunately, some children grow up with a limited understanding.

*****

There are other factors to help adults and children reach their goals. As I mention in Discipline with Respect, goals should be realistic, specific, measurable, and dated. I also recommend working on only 2-3 goals at a time.

1. Realistic goals are those a person can reach with additional effort and encouragement. Most of us can increase our exercise by a small percentage of steps or minutes, decrease our consumption of sugar treats, increase our savings by a small percentage, help one additional person, and so forth.

2. Specific goals are stated in precise language such as units of money saved, pounds of weight lost or gained, words written, pages read, days of temper outbursts, or steps walked.

3. Measuring progress is easy for those goals having natural units as mentioned above. Other goals may require some additional thought. You may come up with a quality rating instead of a concrete number. For example, you could ask for feedback on the quality of a quilting project from expert quilters. I often ask for feedback on my writing projects, which helps me gauge how close I am to reaching publication quality before submitting a paper to a journal editor. The chapter on feedback can help parents give specific feedback to children on their behavior.

4. Finally, we help ourselves when we attach a date to a goal. As suggested in the research study above, we might be better to think in terms of days rather than years. Parents and teachers can help children by thinking in terms of 90 days to complete a project.

You may be able to tell from this post that Discipline with Respect is about developing responsible behavior. Although I discuss the usual principles of how to use consequences in discipline programs, I view discipline as education—all the things we do to help children become mature, responsible, and respectful adults.

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Discipline with Respect Includes Time Out

Some argue against the use of Time Out discipline strategies despite scientific evidence of its effectiveness. Some criticisms of time out are justified. Discipline with Respect involves a commitment to a long-term loving parent-child relationship.

Used correctly, time out is a brief time away from a pleasant activity as a consequence for a child’s unacceptable socially aggresive or destructive behavior. In Discipline with Respect and other programs, parents and educators learn that time out is one of many strategies to help children learn to follow basic rules in home and school settings. The emphasis in Discipline with Respect and other parenting programs is always on creating a positive setting where children are encouraged to be a part of family and peer activities sometimes referred to as “time in.”

Parents and teachers explain time out in advance so children understand the purpose of a brief time away from activities and where they will spend that short period of time. It is best not to discuss the time out procedure or the problem behavior with a child who has not responded to a warning. Discussions can lead to escalation. Discussing the misbehavior can occur after the time out consequence if there is doubt the child does not see the connection between the aggressive behavior and the time out consequence.

Most time out guidelines suggest using about one minute in time out per year of age so 5-minutes for a child age 5 and 10 minutes for a ten-year-old.

Time out is more effective when children are in a chair or sitting on a mat away from the activity where they misbehaved. Time out is more effective when children are not playing with toys or doing other fun activities.

Time out is more effective when children calm briefly before they return to their previous activities.

Encourage positive interactions when the child returns to their activities.

Researchers find time out helps reduce both physical and verbal aggression and destructive behavior in many settings. Again, time out is only one strategy and should be used in the context of an overall positive program. Like other strategies, time out will not always be effective with every child.

Time out is not a strategy for every type of misbehavior. The focus of research is on using time out to interrupt aggressive and destructive behavior, which is often accompanied by anger. The risk of not using time out or other effective strategies is that children will continue to be aggressive as they grow older. Some may be concerned about repressing anger but that concern is not supported by evidence. Parents and teachers can teach the appropriate way to express anger within their culture—for example, using words and taking constructive action.

Some parenting sources advocate holding aggressive children but this is controversial. Parents and other care givers find it difficult to safely and effectively hold aggressive children.

Those who focus only on positive approaches to discipline help engender an attitude of respect. However, most find that effective discipline needs to include consequences for severe misbehavior. For an academic review of research on time out, see the Morawska and Sanders (2011) reference.

Morawska, A., & Sanders, M. (2011). Parental use of time out revisited: A useful or harmful parenting strategy?. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 20(1), 1-8. doi:10.1007/s10826-010-9371-x

  

Shriver, M. D., & Allen, K. D. (1996). The time-out grid: A guide to effective discipline. School Psychology Quarterly, 11(1), 67-75. doi:10.1037/h0088921

Sutton, G. W. (2018). Discipline with Respect in Caring Relationships. Sunflower Press. Available from Amazon.

Discipline with Respect Website

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My Page    www.suttong.com

My Books   AMAZON

FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

LinkedIN Geoffrey Sutton  PhD

Publications (many free downloads)

     Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)

     ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)