When we think we’ve got it all figured out, our lovely children delight in turning our lives upside down with their erratic moods and behaviors. Nonetheless, we must remember the typical disciplinary blunders, particularly when correcting our children in unfamiliar areas, to guarantee that our actions and thoughts are beneficial and that we can stop harmful habits from blossoming.
Read on to avoid these parenting mistakes when disciplining your kids.
Bribing
You might be inclined to use the lure of sweets at the checkout counter to stop your child’s breakdown in the supermarket. This technique might succeed, but only for the time being. Bribing a child for poor conduct is essentially encouraging negative habits, so don’t be shocked if your kid starts whining the next time he or she wants anything.
Actionless
Set boundaries and stick to them, because leniency and counteroffers all imply that compliance is a choice. To encourage children to respect rules, set clear expectations, and intervene when those conditions are not met. Begin with courteous commands if you want your child to accomplish things like pausing computer games and finishing schoolwork. Compliment when they follow through and impose a “penalty” if they don’t.
High expectations
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Young kids have yet to establish impulse control or the etiquette necessary in public areas such as restaurants and shopping malls. When your child deviates from the usual, consider the fact that they aren’t seeking to be a nuisance; they just don’t know what to do in the scenario, therefore exploding won’t help. Because children are born imitators, modeling or calling attention to something we would like them to do can likely help them succeed.
Long-windedness
It is not useful to give an extensive description of your child’s unacceptable conduct. Kids, especially those in primary school who are improving their attention spans, can quickly lose track of talks that go too far in-depth. Make things as simple as possible for your child by breaking them down into fundamentals. Clarify what the conduct was and why it was incorrect with younger ones and address what went awry with older children using various scenarios that may have resulted in better decisions.
Setting a bad example
You advise your teenager not to lie, yet you habitually do so to avoid joining a school volunteer event or attending an insignificant lunch meeting. You scream at your kids and implore them angrily to talk respectfully to one another.
The concern here is that we are frequently blind to our actions and forget that the little ones are watching and learning from us. Be a prime example of the conduct you want your child to mimic as often as possible. If you violate one of your standards occasionally, explain the situation to your kid, discuss how you could have acted differently, and respond with better grace next time.
Getting kids to obey might feel like an impossible endeavor since children are capable of pushing against the boundaries of their environment to learn what is tolerable and what is not. This may be perplexing for parents who feel compelled to constantly raise the stakes to turn every encounter into a teachable moment. Keeping the aforementioned missteps in mind, nevertheless, can assist parents in developing a disciplinary system that is fair, effective, and encourages a child to learn the right things when the opportunity presents.