take charge of your children. That’s basic. But being a trusted authority figure in your child’s life does not automatically come with the job of being a parent. The child who is told he must obey “or else” may behave, but he does so out of fear, not respect. “Honour thy father and thy mother” is the wise and time-honoured teaching; not fear them. Honour implies both obedience and respect.
How do you get your children to respect you? An authority figure needs to be both warm and wise. First, get connected to your child. Start as a nurturer, a baby comforter. In so doing, you get to know your baby and your baby trusts you. Respect for authority is based on trust. Once your child trusts you to meet her needs, she will trust you to set her limits. One day I asked a mother why she felt so confident as an authority figure. She said, “A lot of my security comes from knowing my children.” Because she understood her children, she was able to guide them wisely and know they would follow. Many parents confuse being in charge with being in control. Instead of directly controlling children, wise authority figures control the situation in order to make it easier for children to learn to control themselves. Children respond with genuine trust and respect rather than fear and rebellion.
4. Set Limits, Provide Structure
Establish rules, but at the same time create conditions that make the rules easier to follow. Children need boundaries. They won’t thrive or survive without limits; neither will their parents. To learn about their environment, toddlers must be energetic and exploring. That’s their job. Environmental control is the parents’ job. This involves both setting wise limits and providing structure, which means creating an atmosphere in the home that makes these limits easier to respect. The limit-setting part of disciplining a toddler is to say no to an exploring child who is headed for trouble; the structure part is to childproof the home to provide busy minds and busy bodies a safe place to play and learn.
5. Expect Obedience
Your child will be as obedient as you expect or as defiant as you allow. When we ask parents of obedient kids why their children obey, they all answer, “Because we expect them to.” Simple as this sounds, many parents let this basic fact of discipline slip away. They are too busy; their child is “strong-willed”; they make excuses: “It’s just a developmental phase.”
In the early years children don’t know what behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable until you tell them. One evening at a kid-friendly restaurant, we observed two families handle the same discipline situation in two different ways. The two-and-a-half-year-old in one family was incessantly climbing over the back of the booth, and she kept this climbing behaviour up until it became disruptive to nearby patrons. Wimpy “don’ts” from the parents did not deter the persistent climber. It was clear this child had no idea that climbing was unacceptable behaviour. She got the message “We prefer that you not climb, but we’re not going to do anything about it.” Another two-and-a-half-year-old got a different message and showed different behaviour. The parent sat the child next to him, frequently acknowledged the child, and kept him involved in the family conversation. As soon as the toddler began to climb, the father immediately redirected him and politely planted the climber back in his seat. With a combination of creative distraction and respectful restraint, the parent conveyed to the child that he was expected to refrain from climbing because climbing would disturb the people in the next booth. The child got the message that any effort to climb the seat would not be all right. The child filed this experience into his memory bank, to be retrieved the next time they went to a restaurant, when, presumably, he would make fewer attempts to climb over the seat.
Was the parent in the second family exhibiting controlling behaviour? Yes, but in the right sense of the term. Abusive control is when you forcibly impose your will upon your child, expecting her to obey, but to the detriment of your relationship. When you insist on obedience and help the child to get control of herself, you are using your power over the child in a good way that helps her develop inner controls. Remember, children want limits so that they don’t feel out of control, and they want parents to stand by those limits. They keep testing the limits to see if you will uphold them. When you don’t the child feels anxious that no one is strong enough to contain her. To a child, that is scary.
In the following chapters we will show you how to plant a cooperative attitude in your child so he will want to obey. Also, we will share with you tips for getting and holding your child’s attention long enough to get your point across. Your child must understand your instructions in order to follow them. Expect whatever behaviour makes your child a nice person to live with, and then help your child to comply. Your child will thank you later.
6. Model Discipline
A model is an example your child imitates. The mind of a growing child is a sponge, soaking up life’s experiences; it’s a video camera capturing everything a child hears and sees, storing these images in a mental vault for later retrieval. These stored images, especially those frequently repeated by significant persons in the child’s life, become part of his personality – the child’s self. So one of your jobs as a parent is to provide good material for your child to absorb.
“But I can’t be perfect.” Of course not. No parent is perfect. While writing this book, Martha and I would often say, “We know all this stuff and we still keep making mistakes.” In fact, it’s unhealthy to model perfection – a goal that neither parent nor child can meet (though many are crippled by trying). It’s the overall impression that your child receives that counts, not the occasional blunders or outbursts. If a parent is habitually angry, anger becomes part of the child’s self. The child learns that this is the way people deal with life. If a parent models happiness and trust, with an occasional angry tirade, the child sees a healthier model: people are happy most of the time, but sometimes, difficulties make you angry. You handle the situation and go back to being happy.
Parents, you are the first people your child knows. You are the first caregivers, authority figures, playmates, male and female. You set the standard for your child’s attitude toward authority, her ability to play with peers, and her sexual identity. Part of yourself becomes part of your child. Yes, much of a child’s behaviour is genetic. More than one parent has been known to remark, “He came wired that way”, but much is also influenced by the child’s behavioural models. Throughout this book we will show you how to provide your child with a disciplined model.
7. Nurture Your Child’s Self-Confidence
A child who feels right acts right. In the first part of this book we will show you how to help your child like herself. The growing person with a positive self-image is easier to discipline. She thinks of herself as a worthwhile person, and so she behaves in a worthwhile way. She is able to forgo some wilful misbehaviour to maintain this feeling of well-being. When this child does misbehave, she returns more quickly to the right path, with less need for punishment.
Not so the child with poor self-image. The child who doesn’t feel right doesn’t act right. His parents don’t trust him, so he can’t trust himself. No one expects him to behave well, so he doesn’t. The bad behaviour cycle begins: the more misbehaviour, the more punishment, which intensifies the child’s anger and lowers his self-esteem, producing more bad behaviour. This is why our approach to discipline focuses primarily on promoting inner well-being in the child from the beginning. Throughout life your child will be exposed to people and events that contribute to his self-worth and to others that chip away at it. We call these builders and breakers. We will help you to set the conditions that expose your child to many more builders than breakers, and, of course, to become a builder yourself.
Builders and breakers.
8. Shape Your Child’s Behaviour
A wise parent is like a gardener who works with what he has in his garden and also decides what he wants to add. He realizes he cannot control the characteristics