9781785045981 by Smakprov Media AB

JANET LANSBURY

NO BAD KIDS

toddler discipline without shame The

NO BAD KIDS

Toddler Discipline Without Shame

Janet Lansbury

Vermilion

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1. No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame

2. Why Toddlers Push Limits

3. Talking to Toddlers

4. Baby Discipline: Person to Person

5. A Toddler’s Need for Boundaries

6. The Key to Cooperation

7. 5 Reasons to Ditch the Distractions (and What to Do Instead)

8. Why Children Won’t Follow Our Directions

9. The Choices Our Kids Can’t Make

10. The Power of “No”

11. No Fan of Timers

12. Staying Unruﬄed

13. My Secret for Staying Calm When My Kids Aren’t

14. Why the Whining

15. Biting, Hitting, Kicking

16. Food Fight

17. Sassy, Bossy Back Talk

18. Stop Feeling Threatened

19. Don’t Fight the Feelings

20. The Healing Power of Tantrums

21. Your Child’s New Sibling Blues

22. Common Discipline Mistakes

23. Setting Limits Without Yelling

24. The Truth About Consequences

25. Letting Your Child Oﬀ the Hook

26. How to Be a Gentle Leader

27. If Gentle Discipline Isn’t Working

28. Parenting a Strong-Willed Child

29. When Respect Becomes Indulgence

30. Guilt-Free Discipline (A Success Story)

31. Respectful Parenting Is Not Passive Parenting

32. Gentle Discipline in Action

INTRODUCTION

When it comes to discipline, parents are faced with a deluge of disparate expert advice that can be perplexing, contradictory, and sometimes just plain impossible to follow. Should parents spank, bribe, reward, ignore, give consequences, or order a time-out? Does gentle discipline mean letting children rule the roost? Should parents use threats, distractions, games, charts, timers, count to three, or perfect “that look”?

It’s no wonder so many parents are confused, frustrated, and paralyzed. It’s no wonder they find themselves losing their confidence and often their tempers.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

UNLIKE THE MAJORITY OF prominent early childhood advisers on discipline, I’ve spent years in parent/toddler classrooms putting theory into practice. I’ve witnessed (a thousand times over) the kinds of interventions and responses that actually work, as well as the ones that never work and the ones that might work once or twice but ulti-

mately create even bigger power struggles or undermine trust between kids and their parents.

Toddlers, especially, are prone to pushing limits. It is their job as active learners and explorers and developmentally appropriate. It is a natural expression of their intense mix of emotions as they struggle to become more autonomous. Successful guidance provides children the safety and comfort they need to ﬂourish. When boundaries work, children don’t need to test them as often. They trust their parents and caregivers, therefore their world. They feel freer and calmer and can focus on the important things: play, learning, socializing, and being happy-go-lucky kids. When setting limits, the emotional state of the parent almost always dictates the child’s reaction. If we lack clarity and confidence, lose our temper, or are unsure, tense, frazzled, or frustrated—this will unsettle our kids and very likely lead to more undesirable behavior. We are gods in our children’s eyes, and our feelings always set the tone. With this understanding, it’s easy to see why struggles with discipline can become a discouragingly vicious cycle.

As the title of this book states, in my world there are no bad kids, just impressionable, conﬂicted young people wrestling with emotions and impulses, trying to communicate their feelings and needs the only way they know how. When we characterize them as bad because we’re frustrated, confused, or oﬀended by their behavior, we are doing them a great disservice. It is a negative label, a source of shame they may eventually start to believe about themselves.

My parenting philosophy and my perception of chil-

dren and our relationships with them are all informed by the teachings of my friend and mentor, child specialist Magda Gerber. Through Magda and the organization she founded, Resources for Infant Educarer (RIE), I gained clarity as a mother and developed the respectful, fulfilling, eﬀective approach to parenting that I’ve shared with millions of others as a teacher and writer.

At the core of RIE Parenting is a radical concept:

Babies are whole people—sentient, aware, intuitive, and communicative. They are natural learners, explorers, and scientists able to test hypotheses, solve problems, and understand language and abstract ideas.

Not what one would consider conventional parenting wisdom, but clinical and scientific findings and research* have confirmed these amazing infant abilities that Magda Gerber recognized fifty years ago.

Yet all too often we are still treating our infants and toddlers as if they are vacant, unaware, and incapable of understanding or communicating with us. Conversely, we might expect our children to be able to handle adult situations (like an afternoon shopping excursion at the mall) with a level of maturity and emotional self-control they have not yet developed. These inaccurate perceptions can lead parents in an unproductive direction, especially in regard to discipline issues.

* Gopnik, Alison. (July, 2010). “How Babies Think.” Scientiﬁc American, 76-81.

Ultimately, the big secret to successful discipline is ditching the quick-fix tricks, gimmicks, and all other manipulative tactics and simply being honest with our babies and toddlers. (What a concept!) This is the most basic level of respect RIE teaches, and embracing it is as liberating as it sounds.

This book is a collection of my articles pertaining to common toddler behaviors and how respectful parenting practices can be applied to benefit both parents and children. It covers such common topics as punishment, cooperation, boundaries, testing, tantrums, hitting, and more.

I am privileged to receive a steady stream of letters from parents with questions and concerns about discipline. Loving, thoughtful parents simply want to know how to give their kids healthy limits and gain their cooperation. Many are at their wit’s end and desperate for answers.

Other letters, which are usually the highlight of my day, are personal success stories describing a toddler dilemma and how the parent addressed it by putting respectful care principles into action. I have included several of these letters in this collection, along with my responses, because they are illuminating, relatable, and encouraging.

My hope is that this book will serve as a practical tool for parents who are anticipating or experiencing these critical years when toddlers are developmentally obliged to test the limits of our patience and love. Armed with knowledge and a better sense of the world through our children’s eyes, this period of uncertainty can aﬀord a myriad of opportunities to forge unbreakable bonds of trust, respect, and love.

NO BAD KIDS

1. NO BAD KIDS

Toddler Discipline Without Shame

Atoddler acting out is not shameful, nor is it behavior that needs punishing. It’s a cry for attention, a shout-out for sleep, or a call to action for firmer, more consistent limits. It is the push-pull of your toddler testing his burgeoning independence. He has the overwhelming impulse to step out of bounds, while also desperately needing to know he is securely reined in.

There is no question that children need discipline. As Magda Gerber said: “Lack of discipline is not kindness, it is neglect.” The key to healthy and eﬀective discipline is our attitude.

Toddlerhood is the perfect time to hone parenting skills that will provide the honest, direct, and compassionate leadership our children will depend on for years to come. Here are some guidelines:

1. begin with a predictable environment and realistic expectations. A predictable daily routine enables a baby to anticipate what is expected of

her. That is the beginning of discipline. Home is the ideal place for infants and toddlers to spend the majority of their day. Of course, we must take them with us to do errands sometimes, but we cannot expect a toddler’s best behavior at dinner parties, long afternoons at the mall, or when her days are loaded with scheduled activities.

2. don’t be afraid or take misbehavior personally. When toddlers act out in my classes, the parents often worry that their child might be a brat, a bully, an aggressive kid. When parents project those fears, it can cause the child to internalize the negative personas, or at least pick up on the parent’s tension, which often exacerbates the misbehavior.

Instead of labeling a child’s action, learn to nip the behavior in the bud by disallowing it nonchalantly. If your child throws a ball at your face, try not to get annoyed. She doesn’t do it because she dislikes you, and she’s not a bad child. She is asking you (toddler-style) for the limits that he needs and may not be getting.

3. respond in the moment, calmly, like a ceo. Finding the right tone for setting limits can take a bit of practice. Lately, I’ve been encouraging parents who struggle with this to imagine they are a successful CEO and that their toddler is a respected underling. The CEO guides and leads others with confident eﬃciency. She doesn’t use an unsure, questioning tone, get angry or emotional. Our child needs to feel that we are not nervous about his behavior or ambivalent about establishing rules. He finds comfort when we are eﬀortlessly in charge.

Lectures, emotional reactions, scolding, and punish-

ments do not give our toddler the clarity he needs and can create guilt and shame. A simple, matter-of-fact, “I won’t let you do that. If you throw that again I’ll need to take it away,” while blocking the behavior with our hands, is the best response. But react immediately. Once the moment has passed, it is too late. Wait for the next one!

4. speak in first person. Parents often get in the habit of calling themselves “Mommy” or “Daddy.” Toddlerhood is the time to change over into first person for the most honest, direct communication possible. Toddlers test boundaries to clarify the rules. When I say, “Mommy doesn’t want Emma to hit the dog,” I’m not giving my child the direct (“you” and “me”) interaction she needs.

5. no time- out. I always think of Magda asking in her grandmotherly Hungarian accent, “Time out of what? Time out of life?” Magda was a believer in straightforward, honest language between a parent and child. She didn’t believe in gimmicks like time-out, especially to control a child’s behavior or punish him.

If a child misbehaves in a public situation, the child is usually indicating he’s tired, losing control, and needs to leave. Carrying a child to the car to go home, even if he kicks and screams, is the sensitive and respectful way to handle the issue. Sometimes a child has a tantrum at home and needs to be taken to his room to ﬂail and cry in our presence until he regains self-control. These are not punishments but caring responses.

6. consequences. A toddler learns discipline best when he experiences natural consequences for her behavior rather than a disconnected punishment like time-out. If

a child throws food, her mealtime is over. If a child refuses to get dressed, we won’t be able to go to the park today. These parental responses appeal to a child’s sense of fairness. The child may still react negatively to the consequence, but she does not feel manipulated or shamed.

7. don’t discipline a child for crying. Children need rules for behavior, but their emotional responses to the limits we set (or to anything else, for that matter) should be allowed, even encouraged.

Toddlerhood can be a time of intense, conﬂicting feelings. Children may need to express anger, frustration, confusion, exhaustion, and disappointment, especially if they don’t get what they want because we’ve set a limit. A child needs the freedom to safely express his feelings without our judgment. He may need a pillow to punch. Give him one.

8. unconditional love. Withdrawing our aﬀection as a form of discipline teaches a child that our love and support turns on a dime, evaporating because of her momentary misbehavior. How can that foster a sense of security?

Alfie Kohn’s New York Times article, “When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say,’ ” explores the damage this kind of conditional parenting causes, as the child grows to resent, distrust, and dislike his parents, feel guilt, shame, and a lack of self-worth.

9. spanking— never. Most damaging of all to a relationship of trust are spankings. And spanking is a predictor of violent behavior. A Time magazine article by Alice Park (“The Long-Term Eﬀects of Spanking”) reports