The 10 Attachment Parenting Discipline Principles

1. GET CONNECTED EARLY
Discipline is based on a healthy relationship between a parent and child. In order to discipline your child effectively and positively, you should know your child. This kind of knowledge is what we call a "mother's intuition" ( or father's intuition). You gain your intuition by having a connection with your child. Through attachment parenting from birth you built this connection between you and your child, laying the foundation for discipline in the trying years when your child now starts to become their own little person.

Connected parents become their own experts on their own child, so they know what behaviour is appropriate to expect and how to convey these expectations to their own child. IT is also important to note that each child is different and your connection will be different with each child.

Connected children know what behaviour parents expect and make an effort to behave this way because they want to please their parents, it's a natural desire within us all as humans.

2. KNOW YOUR CHILD

These are the three most useful words in discipline. Study your child. Know your child's needs and capabilities at various ages. Your discipline techniques will be different at each age because your child's needs change constantly. A temper tantrum in a two-year-old may call for a different response than it does in an eight-year-old.

Know Age-appropriate Behaviour for your child's age and development. Many conflicts arise when parents expect children to think and behave like adults. You need to know what behaviour is usual for a child at each stage of development in order to recognize true misbehaviour and know which behaviours call for instruction, patience, or humour, and which behaviours call for a firm, corrective response.

Get behind the eyes of your child-Children don't think like adults. Kids try crazy things and think crazy thoughts—at least by our standards. A two-year-old who runs out into the street isn't being defiant, he just wants his ball back. Action follows impulse, with no thought in between. A five-year-old likes her friend's toy so much that she "borrows" it. An adult may stop and weigh the necessity, safety, and morality of an act, but a young child doesn't.

Knowing your child helps to prevent getting into situations that could lead to needing to discipline. Take for example knowing that your child needs a lot of notice to switch gears from one activity to another. Giving warnings every 5 minutes for 20 minutes will help the child get ready for the switch in activity and possibly prevent a situation where you need to discipline your child because of a temper tantrum when you're late, or need to leave the playgroup gathering to go home to make dinner.

Realizing how much better discipline works when you consider your children's needs is very important to positive discipline. It will make things flow so much easier and cause less conflict. Many new parents worry about the child manipulating them because we they read, or are told by friends or family members from older generations that good parents are always in control, and are made to feel guilty for our child's behaviour not living up to their older standards. You will find, however that considering our child's point of view will actually help you take charge of guiding them. Knowing your child is the key to knowing how to discipline them. They will respect you and listen, when you respect them and listen. They know you are in charge because you are able to positively help them obey the rules.

3. HELP THE CHILD TO RESPECT AUTHORITY

Being a trusted authority 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,”, or is threatened with spanking may behave, but only does so out of fear, not 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.
If your children are older, and you're new to attachment parenting, start developing a new bond now with your child. If you are coming from spanking or verbal threats as your form of discipline and are reading this because you want to change that, start developing a new bond with your child through praise and special time with them. It will take time, so be patient, but your efforts will pay off. Once your child trusts you to meet her needs, she will trust you to set her limits.

Many parents mistaken 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 with conditions that make the rules easy to follow. Children need boundaries. They won't thrive or survive without limits; and neither will you. To learn about their environment, toddlers must explore and be energetic. 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 bodies a safe place to play and learn, so you’re not always yelling no to your child in fear of them hurting themselves or breaking something.

5. EXPECT OBEDIENCE

Your child will be as obedient as you expect them to be, or as defiant as you allow them to be. Consistency is of the utmost important when setting limits and boundaries for your children. As simple as this sounds, many parents let this basic fact of discipline slip away because they are too busy, or the home lacks and over all routine.

It may seem easier to just let them spoil their dinner with cookies because you're busy and have a headache and you just want the nagging to stop, or to just let them have the toy in the store because it will save you the embarrassment of people looking at you and you're child while they do the floppy chicken on the floor. It DOES work, but only in that case, and when you give in, you can be sure the next time you say no, they'll think that if they nag and do the floppy chicken, you'll eventually give in again. IT may be more time consuming to leave the cart behind and go to the car until they settle down, or to just leave and go home. or to listen to them nag about cookies, but the consistency will pay off, and make it easier for you to discipline them and have them listen.

In the early years children don't know what behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable until you tell them. They require guidance and boundaries. 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 him and to a child, that is scary.

6. MODEL DISCIPLINE

A model is an example your child imitates. The mind of a growing child is a sponge, soaking up everything around them; it's like a video camera capturing everything they hear and see, storing images in a mental vault for later retrieval. These stored images, especially those frequently repeated by significant persons in the child's life, like their parents, become part of his personality—the child's self. So, one of your jobs as parents is to provide good material for your child to absorb.

You might worry that you'll make mistakes because you're not perfect, but don't worry. No parent is perfect! In fact while typing this out my husband looked at the laptop and said "YOU are giving tips on how to be consistent!?" and laughed at me. It is true, because I have ADHD, consistancy is not my strong point and I often let bedtime slip by 10 minutes, or give in to requests I otherwise wouldn’t when I'm on the phone long distance to my mom. But when I catch this as starting to be a negative habit of mine, I immediately go back to be strict on my rules and boundaries. It's ok to be human, and to make mistakes, kids need to see that as well, to know it is a normal part of life. 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 will learn that this is the way people deal with life, and they will emulate that in their life as well. 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 ( or sad, or frustrated). It is ok to apologise to your child for being angry or sad or frustrated and say you're sorry and go back to being happy.

Parents are the first people a child knows. The first caregivers, authority figures, and playmates. We set the standards for a child's attitude toward authority for life, their ability to play with peers, and their 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.

7. NURTURE YOUR CHILD'S SELF-CONFIDENCE The child with a positive self-image is easier to discipline. If they think of themselves as a worthwhile person, they behave in a worthwhile way. When this child does misbehave, they return more quickly to the right path, with less need for punishment, because they like the positive feeling they get from good behaviour.

A child who doesn't feel self confident doesn't act self confident. 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 the child's self-esteem, producing more bad behaviour. IT is a never ending cycle that can spiral out of control for all involved. This is why the attachment parenting approach to discipline focuses primarily on promoting inner well-being in the child from the beginning.

8. SHAPE YOUR CHILD'S BEHAVIOR

Children are born with some behavioural traits that either flourish or are weeded out, depending on how the children are nurtured, much like how a gardener cares for a flower garden. Other traits are planted and vigorously encouraged to grow. Taken altogether, these traits make up the child's eventual personality. Your gardening tools as a parent are techniques called shapers, time-tested ways to improve your child's behaviour in everyday situations. These shapers help you weed out those behaviours that slow your child down and nurture those qualities that help them mature.

Most shaping of a child's behaviour is a when-then reaction. (When Billy's room is a mess, Mom says "No more playing outside until it's cleaned up.") Eventually, the child internalizes these shapers, developing his own inner systems of when-then, and in doing so learns to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. ("When my room is a mess, it's no fun to play there, so I better clean it up.") He learns to shape his own behaviour.

At each stage of development, your shaping tools change, depending on the needs of your little garden.

9. RAISE KIDS WHO CARE

Being a moral child includes being responsible, developing a conscience, and being sensitive toward the needs and rights of others. A moral child has an inner code of right and wrong that is linked to his inner sense of well-being. Inside himself he knows that "I feel good when I act good, and I feel wrong when I act wrong." The root of being a moral child is sensitivity to one's self and to others, along with the ability to anticipate how one's actions will affect another person, and to take that into account before proceeding. One of the most valuable social skills you can help your child develop is the ability to consider another person's rights and feelings. Children learn empathy from people who treat them empathetically. One of the best ways to grow our children into good upstanding citizens is to raise sensitive children.

Besides teaching children responsible behaviour toward others and toward things, also teach them to take responsibility for themselves. One of the most valuable tools for life you can give your child is the ability to make wise choices. You want to plant a security system within your child that constantly reminds them to think through what they are about to do. By learning to take responsibility for their actions in small things children prepare to make right choices when the consequences are more serious.

10.TALK AND LISTEN

Communicate with your child so they doesn't become "parent deaf". The best authority figures specialize in communication with children. oftentimes re-phrasing the same directive in a more child-considered way makes the difference in whether a child obeys or defies you. Wise disciplinarians know how to open up a closed-off child and consider the Golden Rule: talk to your children respectfully.

Besides learning how to talk to a child, it is equally important to learn how to listen. Nothing wins over a child (or anyone for that matter) more than conveying that you value their viewpoint. Being in charge of your child doesn't mean putting her down.

Each of these discipline points depends on the other. It's hard to be an authority figure, a good model, a behaviour shaper and obedience teacher if you and your child aren't connected and you don't know your child. You may know the psychological principles of behavioural shaping, but shapers won't work if you can't communicate with your child. And even a connected relationship doesn't guarantee disciplined children if you fail to convey your expectation that your child obey you. These ten interdependent building blocks form the foundation of the approach to discipline of Attachment Parenting as described by Dr William Sears. Put them all together, and you have a blueprint for raising children who are a joy to be with now and who will make you proud in the future.






Rewarding Good behaviour



An easy, instantly effective way to reward good behaviour is to begin a reward system for your child that is visible, easy to understand and is in the moment of the good behaviour.

The rewards have to have currency or value for them or they won't see the benefit of behaving. Promising a child a toy in two weeks if they don't misbehave at school everyday at recess for the next 10 days is too hard for a child to do, and they WILL fail. Set your child up to succeed with the Nurtured Mother Good Behaviour Reward System.

Our daughter has been a strong willed child since birth. As she grew it became quite apparent that she was spirited, and needed extra guidance in most daily activities. Even with boundaries set and adhered to, she would still be quite defiant almost daily. At one point, during a stressful period of our lives, she was harder to deal with due to her own level of stress and our lowered level of patience due to the stress, and there was a lot of yelling and even spanking going on for discipline. None of us were happy about it, in fact we were all miserable, which just made the stress even higher. It needed to stop immediately. Once spanking is the norm for discipline, there is nowhere to go. When the spanking is no longer able to set the limits and boundaries, what's next? Complete defiance or abusive control by the parents.

We quickly realized that we needed to make a change and fast before it became a habit. We invented the "you need to reboot" statement, which anyone can say to any other in our home. That is a queue that the people involved are upset and need to walk away, take a minute and gather themselves, just like how you reboot a computer when it's behaving badly. Once the reboot happens we all talk it out civilly and respond to the situation more appropriatley.

Then my husband had an idea. He had purchased a set of cheap poker chips in 4 distinct colors a while back and they were just collecting dust. so we sat and brainstormed and came up with a good reward system for our daughter to help create a positive environment for her and us. A system that gave us LOTS of options other then spanking for discipline.

Each child will be different, and their currency may be different, so know what will work for your child and won't. Here we offer you our system, that worked immediately with our daughter, and has been used for over a year an a half as of the writing of this. It's so effective in fact that now our 2 year old son goes around asking for helper chips when he empties the dishwasher with me. The pride on his face when he dumps a helper chip in his bottle, or cashes one in to see his favourite movie just makes me so happy, and proud. Proud of him, and of my husband for his innovative invention!




Click here for a printable page of the Nurtured Mother Positive Behaviour Reward program.

Please be sure to let us know how it works for you!




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