The Good Behaviour Book. Марта Сирс

do you want your child to turn out? What will your child need from you in order to become the person you want him to be? Whatever your ultimate objectives, they must be rooted in helping your child develop inner controls that last a lifetime. You want the guidance system that keeps the child in check at age four to keep his behaviour on track at age forty, and you want this system to be integrated into the child’s whole personality, a part of him or her. If your child’s life were on videotape and you could fast-forward a few decades, what are the qualities you would like to see in the adult on the tape? Here is our wish list for our children:

      • sensitivity

      • confidence and solid self-esteem

      • wisdom to make right choices

      • ability to form intimate relationships

      • respect for authority

      • skills to solve problems

      • sense of humour

      • ability to focus on goals

      • honesty, integrity

      • healthy sexuality

      • sense of responsibility

      • desire to learn

      Once you know your objectives, you can set about figuring out how to achieve them. Remember, your child is not a blank slate on which you write your wishes. Your child’s personality is guided, not formed, by you and other significant persons. You must take the child’s individuality into account. Because children and parents have different temperaments and personalities, and families have different lifestyles, how parents guide their children will vary. Nevertheless, there are basic concepts that underlie all discipline, no matter what the characteristics of parent and child. The ten basic principles that follow should help you get started in thinking about how discipline will operate in your home. We’ll discuss each of these principles fully throughout the rest of the book.

      1. Get Connected Early

      Discipline is grounded on a healthy relationship between parent and child. To know how to discipline your child you must first know your child. This kind of knowledge resides deep in parents’ minds. You could call it intuition, but that term has a kind of mystique that confuses parents. (“How can I trust my intuition? I don’t even know if I have any!”) The term “connection” is easier to understand. With the high-touch parenting style called attachment parenting (to be explained in Chapter 2), you can build and strengthen this connection between you and your child, laying the foundation for discipline. Connected parents become their own experts on their own child, so they know what behaviour to expect as appropriate and how to convey their expectations. Connected children know what behaviour parents expect, and make an effort to behave this way because they want to please their parents. These parents and children together develop a style of discipline that works for them. In Chapter 2 we describe the tools for connecting with your baby and young child so that you can read your child’s behaviour and respond appropriately, and the two of you can bring out the best in each other. Throughout the rest of the book we help you stay connected to your child and show you how to reconnect if you had a shaky start in the early years of parenting.

Unconnected parents, unsure of what is going on in their child’s mind, may lack confidence in their own disciplinary skills, so they search for answers to their child’s behaviour from outside experts. They wander from method to method, groping for answers to problems that could have been prevented. If you and your child are having discipline problems and you feel there is a distance in your relationship, chances are the connection between you and your child needs some work. It’s never too late to improve that relationship, although the earlier you connect with your child the easier discipline will be. Getting connected and staying connected with your child is the foundation of discipline and the heart of the attachment approach.

      2. Know Your Child

      These are the three most useful words in discipline. Study your child. Know your child’s needs and capabilities at various ages. Your discipline techniques will be different at each stage because your child’s needs change. A temper tantrum in a two-year-old calls for a different response than it does in a four-year-old. In later chapters we will point out what behaviour is normal, what’s not, and what to do at each stage of a child’s development.

      Know age-appropriate behaviour. Many conflicts arise when parents expect children to think and behave like adults. You need to know what behaviour is usual for a child at each stage of development in order to recognize true misbehaviour. We find discipline to be much easier with our eighth child than it was with our first child, mainly because we now have a handle on which behaviours call for instruction, patience, and humour, and which demand a firm, corrective response. We tolerate those things that go along with a child’s age and stage (for example, most two-year-olds can’t sit still in a restaurant for more than a few minutes), but we correct behaviour that is disrespectful or dangerous to the child or to others (“You may not climb on the table”).

      Get inside your child’s mind. Children don’t think like adults. Kids try crazy things and think crazy thoughts – at least by adult standards. You will drive yourself crazy if you judge a child’s behaviour from an adult viewpoint. A two-year-old who runs out into the street isn’t being defiant, he just wants his ball back. Action follows impulse, with no thought in between. A five-year-old likes her friend’s toy so much that she “borrows” it. An adult may stop and weigh the necessity, safety, and morality of an act, but a young child doesn’t. Throughout this book we will show you ways to get behind the eyes of your child, so that you can understand what causes your child’s behaviour and figure out how to redirect it. We call it thinking “kid first”. Here’s an example.

      Our Matthew at age two was a very focused child. He would become so engrossed in a play activity that it was difficult for him to let go when it was time to leave. One day when he was playing and it was time for us to depart (we were late for an appointment), Martha scooped Matthew up and carried him to the door. Matthew protested with a typical two-year-old tantrum. At first Martha had the usual “Hey, I’m in charge here” feelings and felt that she was justified in expecting Matthew to obey quickly and be willing to leave his toys. But as she was carrying the flailing child out the door, she realized that her discipline gauge was out of balance and she was not handling things in the best way. Her actions were a result of her need to leave, but they didn’t take into account Matthew’s need for advance warning and a more gradual transition. She realized it wasn’t in Matthew’s nature to click off his interest in play so quickly, even if we did have a deadline. He was not defying her but was just being true to himself. He needed more time to let go of his activities. So she calmly took him back to the play setting, sat down with him, and together they said “Bye-bye, toys, bye-bye, trucks, bye-bye, cars”, until he could comfortably release himself from the activities. It only took a couple of minutes, time that would otherwise have been wasted struggling with Matthew in the car. This was not a “technique” or “method”; this disciplinary action evolved naturally from the mutual respect between parent and child and the knowledge that Martha had about Matthew. At the end of this exercise Martha felt right because it had accomplished what she wanted – getting Matthew out of the house with the least amount of hassle. She taught him a method of releasing himself from an activity without resorting to a tantrum. That’s what discipline is all about.

      Realizing how much better discipline worked when we considered our children’s needs in our decisions was a major turning point for us. Initially, we had to work through the fear that we were letting our children manipulate us, because we had read, heard from others, and grown up with the idea that good parents are always in control. We found, however, that considering our children’s point of view actually helped us take charge of them. Knowing our children became the key to knowing how to discipline them. They knew we were in charge because we were able to help them obey. That left no doubt in their minds or ours that mum and dad knew best.

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