Most gentle parents I know don’t use punishment or love withdrawl (thank goodness) and so when they find themselves in a situation like we are in and their kids start acting out more and more, they can start to doubt that they’re doing much of anything.
I had a choice in a moment: To focus on the "misbehaviour" or focus instead on making sure my daughter understood one critical thing. I chose that critical thing - knowing that she is always loved by us.
Instead of ignoring your child or giving into a tantrum, what can you do? These are some steps to help you teach your child to solve their problems without hitting emotional overload.
There's an innate assumption in our society that formal education makes us smarter. Some recent research raises questions about this assumption and thus raises questions about what education should look like.
When people talk about ‘disciplining a child’, they usually mean ‘punishing’ a child. The punishment is supposed to help children learn, but research tells us punishment is an ineffective teacher... So what does it really mean to 'discipline'?
Homeschooling is something that gets mixed reviews when I bring up that we plan on it for our daughter. Whereas most people we know are actually quite supportive, there are those that seem to truly believe that parents are not competent to teach their children.
When I wrote about the benefits of adding logical consequences to our toolkit with our daughter, I was met with some resistance from people. Most of the resistance centered on the fact that people view logical consequences as punishment and children don’t learn from punishment. I disagree and I thought I’d share a bit more on how to implement a logical consequence, along with what it does and does not include.
I’m a big fan of natural consequences. But sometimes natural just doesn’t do it – like when my daughter decides to throw her toys at me – sure, she sees me sad and I will not play with her, but that doesn’t quite seem to curb it, especially when she’s angry and threw it in order to hurt me.
