my views (How to Discipline Children)

Member Name: dogleggedhat

Product:	How to Discipline Children
Date:	02/03/09 (88 review reads)
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Not being a mother myself, how I feel now about the way in which children should be disciplined is perhaps completely different to how I will actually act when I have kids myself, but I do still have opinions on the matter, and seeing various mothers ways of disciplining their kids has definitely given me a firm idea of how I wish to discipline my own children.

Firstly, I think its really important for people to discipline their children for actually having done something wrong. Disciplining children when they're doing your head in, or you happen to be in a bad mood is going to send very mixed messages-for example, behaviour which you find adorable when you're in a good mood, but irritates the hell out of you when you've had a bad day at work-it hardly makes sense to a child to chew the face off them when just the other day you were laughing with them over the same behaviour? So many parents seem to shout or lash out based on their own mood, rather than the behaviour in hand, and I don't think that gives the child the opportunity to learn, just to fear the person doing the disciplining.

I also believe that its important that parents need to not just constantly shout at children for every bad thing that they do-from what I've seen, kids become immune to this pretty quickly, and it will do nothing to deter bad behaviour. Instead, shouting should be saved for the really bad stuff, in my opinion, and for other misbehavings, a good telling off which explains what the child has done and why it is wrong is efficient. Just shouting at children without explaining what they've done wrong, why its wrong and the possible consequences of the action is important. I realise its not always possible or practical to do this every single time something goes wrong, but I do think its important to do it where appropriate.

I'm not really in favour of smacking children-generally I don't think its appropriate, and quite often the smacking is not carried out based on the behaviour itself, but rather on how it makes the parent feel (pissed off, embarrassed etc). Smacking to me is only necessary when a child is too young to understand what you're saying and do something dangerous (reaching for something hot, wandering off etc) or when they really do put themselves in some form of danger and the importance of not doing these things needs to be instilled into the child-smacking children for messing their room, or just being childlike isn't necessary in my opinion.

I feel its important that in disciplining children, if there are two parents involved, its important that they don't undermine each other, as this could lead to children playing parents off against each other, which won't be effective at all. Also, I believe that if parents choose to disicpline their children through, for example, confiscating toys etc, then they should follow through on these threats-children will see through empty promises very quickly, and won't be affected by them at all.

Of course, this is all my opinion, and its important for parents to find a style that fits them, and works for their children effectively. I don't believe that its up to the government etc to make rules on how we disicpline our kids-its not practical. However, i do think its important to ensure that children arent being put in danger by their parents disciplining.

Summary: my views