Discipline is a very complicated and complex matter. We want to enjoy our children, we don’t want to stress about the little things, and we want to be forgiving to our children and our selves. However – there are many, many things we must get our children to do, or stop them from doing – all day, every day. There are lots of daily tasks that must be completed. Add to that the fact that children don’t always listen, they don’t always do the things we want them to do, and they have a limited amount of knowledge and emotional control. Keeping all this in mind, I believe that there are four distinct parts to the purpose and goal of discipline:

1 – To correct immediate behavior.

2 – To teach a lesson.

3 – To give tools that build self-discipline and emotional control.

4 – To build the parent/child relationship.

Let’s examine how this applies to a few typical situations so that you can begin to understand how these four purposes colors almost every discipline situation with your child.

Situation:
Your child is having a temper tantrum in a store because you won’t buy a new toy.

1 – Correct immediate behavior

Take your child to a restroom or unpopulated corner of the store. Wait for your child to stop the tantrum.

2 – Teach a lesson

You can’t have everything you want. You need to express your emotions appropriately.

3 – Give tools to build self discipline and emotional control

Help child write a list of toys that she wants, but can’t have right now.

4 – Build the relationship

Demonstrate leadership, understanding and patience.

Situation:
Your two children are squabbling over a toy.

1 – Correct immediate behavior

Put the toy on the counter while you get your children to stop tussling and pay attention to you.

2 – Teach a lesson

Children need to learn how to share toys and take turns.

3 – Give tools to build self discipline and emotional control

Help children by setting a timer so each can have a five minute turn with it. Show them how to do this in the future without your help.

4 – Build the relationship

Show them how to play together and how to settle disputes. Show them that they can look to you for help in handling problems.

Situation:
Your child is upset with a playmate and bites her on the arm.

1 – Correct immediate behavior

Separate the children. Provide attention and care to the child who was bitten.

2 – Teach a lesson

Get down to your child’s level, put your hands on her shoulders, look her in the eye and tell her, “Biting hurts. We don’t bite. Give Emmy a hug now. That will make her feel better.”

3 – Give tools to build self discipline and emotional control

Give your child a few hints on how she should handle her frustration next time; “If you want a toy, you can ask nicely for it or you can come to Mommy for help.”

4 – Build your relationship

Show your child that you are on her side even when she makes mistakes. Demonstrate that she can count on you to teach her how to handle strong emotions.

Discipline is not a one-time maneuver
You say you’ve tried to get your little one to put his toys away, but he never does. You’re after your daughter constantly not to whine, yet that screechy voice continues. You repeatedly attempt to get your two children to share their toys nicely yet it seems that daily you’re refereeing an argument over toys. No matter what you do, the same issues keep coming up over and over again.

Think about something that you do, or don’t do – that you know you should do differently. Perhaps it’s exercising or eating healthily. Maybe it’s keeping your desk organized or your closet clean. In all of these examples it’s likely that you struggle to always do the right thing, even when you know what the right thing is. So, if you, the mature adult, still don’t do everything the right way how could you possibly expect such a feat from your young child?

Discipline means to teach – and it is a very rare lesson that can be learned in one simple session. Furthermore, young children cannot easily apply what they’ve learned in one situation to another. So even minor variations create entirely new scenarios – for example, learning to share toys with a sibling at home isn’t easily transposed to the situation of sharing playground equipment with a friend at the park.

What this all means is that you must teach the same, or similar, lessons over and over and over and over again in many different ways until, perhaps, your child will master the idea and claim it as his own. Even then, just because a child knows what is right doesn’t mean he will always do the right thing. (Do you always drive the posted speed limit?) Our job as parents is to help our children learn right from wrong, and how to make the right decisions in life. It is to guide and teach our children, every day, in many ways.

Discipline means teaching, and as such, it can encompass almost every interaction you have with your child. When you are thoughtful about your role as a parent, and when you keep your eye on your long-term goals and use carefully planned parenting skills, then your essential parenting attitudes will be properly aligned and your job as a parent will be more fulfilling and rewarding.

Excerpted with permission by McGraw-Hill Publishing from The No-Cry Discipline Solution (McGraw-Hill 2007) by Elizabeth Pantley http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth

About the author:
Elizabeth Pantley is the author of several books, including Gentle Baby Care : No-cry, No-fuss, No-worry — Essential Tips for Raising Your Baby, The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night, Kid Cooperation (with an introduction by William Sears, MD), Perfect Parenting, as well as her latest The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers and is also president of Better Beginnings, Inc. She is a popular speaker on family issues, and her newsletter, Parent Tips, is seen in schools nationwide. She appears as a regular radio show guest, and has been quoted in Parents, Parenting, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, American Baby, Working Mother, and Woman’s Day magazines. Visit Elizabeth’s web site http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth.

When a baby finds that her signals are validated and responded to appropriately—that troubles are soothed and pleasure enhanced—she begins to sense that her feelings, expressions, of her very being, are of value and important. A baby learns that she counts for something. This is the foundation of the development of self-esteem—a combination of who you are, how you feel about yourself, and what you think about your future potential.

Self-esteem takes root or withers depending on how you handle your child’s signals of fun—interest and enjoyment—and validating and attending to the signals for help—distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, and dissmell.

As parents you are the most important people in your baby’s world. You provide your child with his first definitions of himself. You tell him through your every word, gesture, and action just how important he is and how he is perceived by the outside world.

Over the coming months and years, as your child matures and becomes an adult, his self-esteem will become a more complex web of interlocking emotions and thoughts about himself and about how he sees and is seen by others. It’s common for growing children and as well as adults to fluctuate between episodes of high and low self-esteem over the course of months or years. However, a solid foundation of self-esteem—built by appropriate responses to a child’s signals and nurtured throughout childhood—will help most people maintain a basically optimistic view of their lives and their future over the course of life’s ups and downs.

Your goal now, with your baby, is to help him develop a sense of himself that is reasonably solid and stable. As he grows, that will allow him to perceive his talents and abilities accurately, respond to life with flexibility, and look at his goals and capacities realistically.

Of course, the real key is loving the very essence of your child—loving and valuing the child for himself or herself, who he or she is. But this is often easier said than done—especially if the parents have not been loved and valued. Yet, understanding the nine signals can be useful here too: Much of the child’s essence is wrapped up in her interests and enjoyments; and understanding and attending to the negative signals can help prevent the cycles of frustration, hurt, and anger which can so contaminate the parent-child relationship and erode the child’s internal world.

The Foundation of Self-Esteem
From the first days of your baby’s life, you can lay the foundation for self-esteem by responding appropriately to your child’s signals for help (distress, anger, etc.) and fun (interest and enjoyment).

Many experts believe that another important building block of self-esteem involves a child’s experience of competence. Competence is initially achieved as a result of the brain’s capacity to create order out of the disorder of all the incoming stimuli. An infant’s inherent ability to develop competence lays the foundation for later, more sophisticated mastery of interaction with the world and people, which in turn may produce a sense of self-esteem. One part of this development, as a child grows, is learning that he is able to exert control over external events. Another, as he interacts with his environment, is learning how to adapt in a healthy way to the external world’s social requirements and expectations.

How to Help Your Child Build Self-Esteem
Focusing Appropriate Attention on the Child. Babies thrive when they feel they are of genuine interest to you and are the center of your universe. They use their nine signals to express their entire range of emotions. When a baby cries, or fusses, or coos, she expects you to react with as much enthusiasm or distress as she does about what is happening to her.

What parents sometimes forget is that to babies those reactions of distress are proportional to the situation. Not being able to get a hold of a ball that rolled into a corner is terrible! And your baby wants you to pay attention to him when he announces it in no uncertain terms. He finds himself incapable of righting the situation himself—no matter what he does, he’ll never be able to reach the ball. Talk about frustration! So he asks for your help in the only way he can—by making a scene. If that doesn’t elicit your sympathy and attention, if you don’t respond and help your baby out of his distress, he will begin to think that his problems don’t really matter, how he feels doesn’t count. Instead, if you take the opportunity to pay attention, validating and confirming his feelings and perceptions, you will help your child become confident.

Provide Reward and Praise. Along with paying attention, reward and praise from you are essential to child’s self-esteem. You must never forget how much your child wants to be like you and to be liked by you. Kids need to hear that you approve of them and think they are wonderful. They long to see the “gleam in your eye” that signals love and approval. You can’t assume they know how you feel. They don’t. They need to be told, over and over and over. In the long run, reward and praise tend to be better and healthier motivators than fear and shame. Of course, whenever you’re dealing with behavior, it is also important to explain to the child the pros and cons, the reasons and rationales, for whatever issue is at stake.

Offer Protection. If a child perceives the world as threatening or dangerous, it is almost impossible for her to feel brave and strong, to know that she can make her way through it successfully. But when you respond to your child’s negative signals of distress and anger by allowing expression of the signals and then removing the triggers, you have begun to give her the tools to deal with the world. When it comes to feeling confident, nothing helps a helpless baby like knowing she can depend on you to shield her from danger and distress.

How Self-Esteem is Damaged
Some parents inadvertently diminish their children’s self-esteem by interfering with or belittling their signals for interest and enjoyment. This triggers the automatic, built-in response of shame, and shame erodes self-esteem.

In my clinical practice, I frequently work with families in which both the parents and children have a variety of troubles related to a poor sense of self and self-esteem. The adults in these families often don’t understand how feelings and emotions work. The family ends up in a toxic situation because there is a mismatch between the child’s expression of emotional needs and the parent’s ability to respond appropriately. Often, then, the children fail to develop a solid sense of self—who they are, what they like and don’t like, a confidence in their perceptions and feelings, and so on. The resulting tension that develops between parent and child can contribute to the erosion of his self-esteem. The child may become angry, defensive, intolerant, and inflexible, or withdrawn, self-destructive, envious, and fearful. In fact, a whole variety of the less pleasing personality traits can be directly attributed to a person’s lack of belief in his own essential worth. Think bully. Think timid. Think depressed, depleted, and drained. These different qualities result, in part, from a lack of self-esteem.

The results of these kinds of parenting missteps can be heartbreaking. But the results of positive parenting are tremendous. You and your child are able to enjoy one another’s company, to delight in the deepening of your friendship. You gain access to the delightfully quirky way the world looks to a child. You learn as your baby learns. You gain confidence in your parenting skills; your self-esteem increases. Over time, you become ever more able to allow your child to grow into a unique, self-confident being. And because she has a solid sense of self, she will become capable of forming fulfilling relationships and of maintaining a healthy autonomy.

Copyright ©2005 Paul C. Holinger, M.D.

About the Author
Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., is the author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk. Dr. Holinger is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has been working with children and adults for the last twenty-five years. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He earned a Masters of Public Health from Harvard University School of Public Health and has held fellowships in both Psychiatric and Psychosocial Epidemiology. He is a reviewer for the American Journal of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Psychoanalytical Psychology, along with the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, to name a few. Dr. Holinger resides in the Chicago, IL area. For more information, please visit the author’s Web site www.paulcholinger.com.

Situation: It never fails, when we’re on vacation, the rains hit. We’re all stuck in the hotel room, and inevitably everyone gets grumpy. How do we keep the kids happy if this disaster strikes again?

Think about it: To quote the insightful words of William Shakespeare, “Nothing is good or bad, only thinking makes it so.” Hey, you’re still on vacation, no one has to go to work, or go to school, and you don’t have to cook and clean. You can still find plenty of ways to enjoy the time.

Solution #1: If you read this book before you left, you’ve packed some indoor activities. If not, venture out to a local store, and buy a selection. It will be the best money you spend on the trip. A few ideas are: paint by number sets, Legos TM, balloons, head sets with music and books on tape, puzzles, clay, and hand-held computer games. One toy that’s a hit for many kids from about age three to ten is a selection of plastic miniature animals or bugs. Many kids will play happily with these for hours. There are many favorite games that are made in small travel size versions, such as checkers, chess and even Monopoly TM. Check out the local toy store.

Solution #2: If you’re lucky enough to have a kitchenette in your room, allow the kids to play house. Let them use the dishes and supplies. Cleaning up the mess is worth it, since this activity will keep them busy for long periods of time. Even better, let room service take care of the mess and give them an extra tip.

Solution #3: Let the kids build a fort using tables, chairs, blankets and whatever else they can find. Let them play, eat, and even sleep in the fort. Need I say it again? The mess is worth the hours of happy playtime.

Solution #4: Fill the bathtub with water. Toss in anything you can find that can be used as water toys, such as cups, plastic dishes, and empty shampoo bottles. Let the kids enjoy playing in the water and don’t worry about the splashing.

Solution #5: Play “Easter Egg Hunt” using coins. Hide them all over the rooms and let the kids find them. Have a scavenger hunt, or a treasure hunt.

Solution #6: Set up a beauty salon. Let the kids practice hairstyles, paint each other’s fingernails, and put on make up.

Solution #7: Let the kids play dress-up with your clothes, if you’re comfortable with the idea. Have a fashion show. Put on a play. Have a concert.

Solution #8: Let them play in the rain! Just dry them off and give them some hot chocolate when they come in.

About the Author:
Elizabeth Pantley is the author of several books, including Gentle Baby Care : No-cry, No-fuss, No-worry — Essential Tips for Raising Your Baby, The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night, Kid Cooperation (with an introduction by William Sears, MD), Perfect Parenting, as well as her latest The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers and is also president of Better Beginnings, Inc. She is a popular speaker on family issues, and her newsletter, Parent Tips, is seen in schools nationwide. She appears as a regular radio show guest, and has been quoted in Parents, Parenting, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, American Baby, Working Mother, and Woman’s Day magazines. Visit Elizabeth’s web site http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth.