How to Parent with Positive Discipline

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How-to Guide for Tantrums 3-5yo If you're using positive discipline under the assumption that once you're doing it "right" your child won't tantrum anymore……that's not gonna happen. Your child is going to tantrum because she's got a brain that is developing emotional depth and control like any child's brain does - slowly, and in fits and starts. When she starts to get overwhelmed in any way, she's going to pop, and there is nothing you can do that will stop tantrums completely. They are a valid part of her development - she needs to have them, so she can learn to control and modulate her emotional state. The point of positive discipline is that during this period of development you can: 1) Keep your relationship with her intact 2) Keep her sense of self intact (so she doesn't come to believe that she is a scary awful person) 3) Teach her more appropriate ways of expressing herself 4) Teach her healthy boundaries, both in what you do, and in how she manages her big feelings She will keep having big feelings.  You can't stop her.  Using positive discpline tools such as:  reflecting  feelings; taking her to her to a safe space so she isn't hijacking the house; coaching her through her feelings; presenting limited choices; being a container for her anger until she learns to be her own container - all of these help get you through this time with your relationship intact, her sense of self intact, and having taught her boundaries and acceptable ways of expressing anger. Is it fair that you should have to be her anger container while she matures enough to be her own?  Nope.  Parenting involves crazy outputs of energy that we don't see the reward of right away.  But she needs *someone* to contain her anger & teach her appropriate ways of expressing anger, and you're the parent, so you're elected!! A big part of making the paradigm shift toward positive discipline is accepting where your child is right now, accepting where you are right now, believing that she will grow up, and letting the rest go.  Right now, she is a child who tantrums.  Accept that.  Do the best you can to see that she has enough rest, enough food, an the right amount of stimulation for her temperament.....and then when the tantrums *still* happen, repeat the mantra, "this is not about me, she is not trying to get me, her brain is just short circuiting," and take her to the safe space & sit with her while she's freaking out.  Let her know you are there for her, but you will not allow her Big Feelings to hijack the house (so you guys are in her room) or you (which is why you stay calm & neutral, even though it takes superhuman power to do so!). You may be angry at having to manage her anger, angry that it is disrupting your life, and angry that she isn't as compliant as some other little girls out there.  Accept that!  Accept that you can feel that angry, and still choose to act compassionately toward your daughter.  It is important to allow yourself to feel your anger - maybe even make, "I feel..." statements while dealing with your child.  It helps you to start to just be there, with her, the calm eye in the middle of the hurricane. There is no where else in the world at that moment that you are needed more. And with time and a lot of inner focus you can began to see that, and to feel the truth of it. She will grow up.  Believe that.  Even if the only thing you did when she raged was remove her from the rest of the house & sit with her while she was angry, she would still mature out of this developmental phase. You are just waiting through this time and keeping everyone as healthy as you can while you wait. Parenting a spirited child demands a tremendous amount of maturing from us as adults. We will never be this tested by most other people in our lives. Any adult who treated me the way Dakota treated me at 5 years old, I would have walked away from. To have to expand spiritually and emotionally to embrace (metaphorically speaking) a child who is hurling verbal abuse, or legos, or herself at you is incredibly challenging.  Its also totally worth doing. You will have a relationship with her that is deep and trusting, and she will emerge with the skills of self management that she forged while you were being her "container." And you will be sainted - but that comes later. How do you know if your child needs restraining or just your presence?  Intuition and an intimate knowledge of the child are vital. Trial and error is necessary. A child who rages out of control physically simply can't be given a choice - if he's hurting himself or others he *must* be restrained.

But to figure out whether a child simply needs that level of physical boundaries, I think its a matter of trying it for a few months & paying close attention. Does the child seem to have touch as a love language, showing that he feels most loved with hugs, tickling, heavy pressure? Does the child show a level of relief (moving from insecurity & tension to genuine emotion) when the physical boundary is finally set and really let go, relax, rage? Does the child learn from the interactions over time? Does the child always push you to the point of using physical restraint before he lets the boundary testing go? If you give the child the option, "You need to control your body, or I will have to control it," is he capable of getting control? I think of holding a raging child like I would think of myself if I were, say, on drugs and raging out of control. If my brain chemistry were so altered that I wanted to hurt myself and my loved ones, even though I screamed, "I hate you! Let me go or I will hate you forever!" at the time, I would be so grateful later that they stopped me from doing awful things, that they preserved my relationship with each of them by restraining me from doing harm. When a child is raging so much that they are physically out of control they are on drugs! Their brain chemistry is so altered that they cannot be held accountable for their actions, and they need us to protect them from their own anger, so that their sense of self, sense of being a good person, sense of not being a dangerous person can all be preserved. Its one of those areas of parenting where you have to carefully examine your own triggers. As non-punitive parents most of us have a loathing for any action that takes power away from others, and many of us feel absolutely triggered by it - we feel like getting this physical must be punitive - and then the child screams at our boundary setting, and that confirms our deepest fears! Learning how to be a calm, effective leader as the mom/dad of the family, while at the same time respecting the rights to dignity that each family member must have is very tough.  How many of us have ever seen that dynamic? We're not only learning it in adulthood, we're making it up as we go along, cause we have no good examples! Examining our own deeply triggered feelings, examining our own layers of motives, are really important in parenting. I constantly ask myself, "Do I just want to 'make him pay?'" Because I've figured out that that sense of "making him pay" is when I've fallen over into a punitive mindset, and at that moment even my most positive tools will be used in a punitive way. When I get easily frustrated with the children, I have realized that that is when I'm tired, or overwhelmed and must take a break, or eat, or whatever. When I cannot treat them as kindly as I want to, I know that the problem isn't them, its my emotional state needing nurturing, needing to be noticed. If I take care of myself and my triggers and keep an eye on my motivations, then I can respond to the children clearly. When Dakota first started having rages so severe that he had to be restrained, I felt awful every time. I would talk myself though them over and over, "I'm keeping him safe, I'm keeping myself safe, he's allowed to be angry, he will get back in control" Over time, this became something I said out loud, because Dakota become scared of his own anger, and needed to know that I believed that he would get back in control eventually - and THAT was when I really knew that what I was doing was the right thing. Up to that point, I was doing the ONLY thing I could think of that would keep everyone safe and not force Dakota to shut down his intense feelings (which, I knew from my personal history is very destructive).