How to Parent with Positive Discipline

Home Blog Have a question for the blog? Contact Articles: The Secret to 2-5 yo - Talk Less, Do More! Being On The Same Team Authority or "Help! The Kids are Winning!" Toddlers and Discipline How To Guide for Tantrums 3-5yo Taming The Mess

Toddlers and Discipline It's very helpful to look at Positive Discipline in the light of toddler-brains.  It's really puts the very different approach of Positive Discipline into sharp relief when you contrast it with the conventional thinking about toddler management. The toddler is the center of the universe - your wants or imposed limits are just about meaningless to her. She has a very limited concept of cause and effect (and therefore cannot understand future outcomes well) and her impulse control is very immature (meaning even if she understands your rules, she cannot always follow them. Her brain won't let her.) So what do you do? You wait for her to mature. Don't take her behavior personally, don't let it "get to you," and don't let it worry you. Just find ways to make limits a non-struggle.  Start working with her developmental stage to help her.  Be on the same team she's on by figuring out how to have limits she can understand, and empathize with limits she cannot yet grasp.  Stop telling and start acting - when you give direction to a 2 year old, you can't give it sitting down!  You must get up, go to her and help her follow through.  When you speak, things must happen. This is a foundation of being the leader of the family and an effective authority who doesn't need to get all in a huff.  When you speak, action follows.  It doesn't matter at all that the action that follows now, at the age of 2.5, is action that mom or dad does (holding her hand, carrying her while you put her shoes away etc.) what matters is that her body starts to get the information that when words fall out of mom or dad's mouth....action follows. Eventually her body will actually take over for you.  Really truly. So what do you do?  You make limits a non-struggle.  She will learn that when mom says things, then action happens.

It's hard to wrap your head around, but this is such an important paradigm shift in positive discipline. The trick isn't to get the child to "obey" you right now, in toddlerhood. You don't have to "get through to her" or "convince her that mom is serious." Her brain can't really receive that information yet. The trick is to teach your child's body (making a habit, really) than when you speak, action follows. You repeat that experience enough times and your child starts acting as if your mere WORDS will make action happen, and so takes action before you do (because as they get older, preserving their own autonomy is more fun then giving it all to mom :P). It's simply a matter of building that habit while you wait for maturity to take it's course. This applies to every area of boundary setting and structure. "We're picking up the toys now!" is followed by mom picking up toys & finding fun ways to help toddler begin to learn to pick up toys. "We're going home now." is followed by mom helping toddler get into her carseat/carrier & going home (sometimes happily, sometimes not happily - but mom is always understanding of the emotion & still firm with the course of action being taken). "I will not let you hurt me." is followed by mom stopping toddler from hitting & helping toddler take out her anger on a pillow or stomping feet or roaring like a lion, or bopping a boppy toy or drawing angry pictures or singing an angry song or dancing an angry dance. Hang in there - the toddler will mature, and there are lots of skills to help you teach him and keep healthy boundaries while that process happens.