Parenting is a tough job. All parents make their fair share of parenting mistakes. But rather than looking to the mistakes, let’s take a moment to consider another parenting Tuesday Tip presenting ideas on disciplining with love.
First let’s distinguish the difference between punishment and discipline. Punishment describes methods of control, gained by requiring rules or orders be obeyed and punishing undesired behavior. Discipline comes from the Latin root word disciplina, which means “giving instruction, to teach.” (srhd.org/123CareToolkit) Therefore, when using discipline with love, we are teaching our children how we want them to behave and showing them that we love them, simultaneously.
Discipline is an ongoing reality of being a parent. In fact, you might agree that it’s the hardest thing about being a parent. Most parents discipline their children the way we were disciplined ourselves as children. But times have changed drastically since those days and many psychologists, pediatricians, sociologists, and educators have conducted ample research on the topic of how-to best discipline children, especially from birth to age five.
Let’s look at some of that research now. The University of Rochester’s Medical Center in New York, published an article providing some thoughts for you to consider. This article provides you with ways to discipline with love. As always with research, some ideas will be immediately meaningful to you and other ideas will require further consideration. The intention with this parenting tip and all Tuesday Tips is to simply provide you with new ideas to consider for your parenting practices.
Research has shown us that discipline done within the context of parental love is an approach to help children develop self-discipline and grow into their full potential with confidence and security. Disciplining with love all begins with relationship and trust from parent to child.
It’s dismissal time. Many parents are present. Mom is eagerly awaiting to see her four-year-old daughter. Her daughter appears and the joy swells! Mom reaches to her daughter to hug her, and daughter surprisingly pushes her mother with a hard push and growls. This hurts mom’s feelings and makes her angry. Mom has two choices of reaction.
Disciplining with love takes thoughtfulness. As a parent, how you react to tense moments can teach your child self-control, patience and unconditional love or it can teach your child aggression, reaction with anger, and lack of self-control.
You must be patient and remember that you are the adult. Keep in mind that your child has only been on this earth for four or five short years. They are learning so many things! As stated in the article shared on Fatherly.com, proper and loving discipline is one of the most important components of your child’s development. This article reminds us as parents to avoid the “power struggle” and embrace the “Golden Rule”.
At Concordia International School Shanghai, we value our parent partner relationships. We know that children thrive when they are loved and supported. Their learning thrives when the actions at school are congruent to the actions at home. In the Early Childhood Division at Concordia School, we discipline students with love. We teach them that they are valued, special, needed and a wonderful part of our Concordia community. They help make our school and world a better place. We hope that this week’s Tuesday Tip has offered you some ideas for supporting your loving and respectful relationship with your child. Together, we thrive better!