By: Odedeji I. Folaji
How to administer child discipline with love?
Some things in life are inevitable, a child will err in one way or another. Even adults who are supposed to know better misbehave sometimes. It is one of the duty of parents to teach their children how to behave, and it is a task that requires time and patience.
Parents need to manage their children’s behavior while promoting a healthy growth environment. It is an added advantage for parents to know healthy and effective discipline strategies to use when a need for it arises.
Below are ways parents can correct Childs misbehavior by administering suitable discipline measure where and when necessary
Unboxing childhood care’ development, good parenting and childhood education trends
Ways to control and correct child’s misbehavior
- Set rules: Set up clear, concise, and consistent rules that your children can obey. Explain the rules and the reason why you set them up, it makes the rules easier to obey. When you do not explain that the rules are put there for their own good, they instead feel that you are lording over their life or just do not like them.
- Give consequences: State calmly and firmly the consequences if they do not follow laid down rules. This helps to put them in line. For example, tell him that you will put his toys away for the rest of the day if he doesn’t pick them up. Don’t give in easily and give him back after a few minutes or else next time you won’t be taken seriously. But do well not to take away basic needs like food or water or a place to sleep.
- Hear them out: Sometimes punishment or consequences is not the right manner of approach. Be patient and do not jump in to conclusions, listening is important. Hear your child out and let them finish the story, you can get an insight as to how your child is feeling or what made him do what he did. At times like this, talk with your child rather than give consequences.
- Give them attention: This is a powerful tool, very effective for discipline. When you pay them attention you help to reinforce good behavior and discourage the bad ones. They need to know when they do something bad and when they do something good. Notice good behavior? Point it out and praise them for it, it encourages them to want to do more. e.g. you helped your friend pick his toys? That’s a good boy. Likewise, if you see bad behavior, point it out and scold them. Also, every child wants their parent’s attention. Children who don’t get enough attention from their parents grow up feeling neglected.
- Know when to sit back and watch: Sometimes sitting back and watching can be an effective way of stopping bad behavior, as long as they’re not doing something dangerous. For example, if your child keeps dropping her biscuit on the floor intentionally, soon she will no longer have any to eat. Most times it’s best to let them be after an initial warning. Before long, your child will learn not to drop her biscuits.
- Redirect bad behavior: Misbehavior from children sometimes can be as a result of boredom, or they don’t know any better. When you notice this, find something else for your child to do. Games can help, coloring games, puzzle games, etc.
- Avoid unhealthy spanking and harsh words: Unhealthy, too frequent, and harsh spanking may cause damage to your child’s mental health in the long run. If you have to spank your child, do it moderately and with love. Harsh words and insults may lead to low self-esteem and a feeling of unworthiness.
Why unhealthy and harsh spanking is wrong?
Definitely, when a parent engage in spanking, its most time done with anger and if care is not taken the severity of scars such can left the child with is immeasurable. Some reason why unhealthy and harsh spanking is not the best include but not limited to below few points
- Lasting scars: Harsh spanking increases the risk of injury and sometimes may leave scars on the body and even the brain. It can affect the children psychologically, mentally, emotionally, and otherwise. Due to harsh and frequent spanking, some children have shown a higher level of hormones tied to toxic stress.
- Verbal abuse: Using words to cause emotional pain or shame has also been found to be an ineffective and harmful way of disciplining a child. Sometimes it can even lead to more misbehavior or mental health issues in children. Studies have shown that it is a symptom of behavioral problems and depression in teenagers.
- Hatred: The child may seldom develop hatred for the parent thinking his/her parent hate him. The child also may be nursing thoughts and feeling like been misjudge and not understood. Such may also lead to the child embracing bad counsels from peers and when over pressed may abscond from home and start living street life style.
What parents should learn from their mistakes?
As parents, it is not uncommon to make mistakes sometimes. If you feel a bit out of it you can give yourself time to put yourself together, relax, or maybe call a trusted friend to talk. And then when you’re feeling better you go back to your child, apologize if necessary, and start over.
If you handle a situation badly for the first time, peradventure you misjudge your child action; don’t freak out too much, it happens. Go back and think about what you could have done differently, if you made the mistake in the heat of the moment, wait to calm down. Apologize to your child and tell him how you’re going to handle it next time, this sites an example to your child on how to recover from mistakes.
Healthy and effective child discipline tips by stage
Infants
Since babies learn by watching you, set examples of the behavior you expect from them. Use positive language with your baby. E.g. Time to sit instead of ‘don’t stand’. At this stage, a good strategy is to distract or replace any object you don’t want them to play with by another one that they can play with.
Toddlers
The period your child is beginning to recognize what is allowed and what is not. Pay attention to the good and bad behaviors of your child. At this stage, tantrums may become more common due to hunger, tiredness, or trying to adapt to new skills. Teach them not to hit or bite or use other aggressive methods. When your children fight, avoid taking sides.
Preschool age
Children at this stage are still trying to understand how things work and the effects of their actions. They will continuously test the limits of their parents and/or siblings as they learn appropriate behavior. You can begin to assign chores that are age-appropriate, e.g. cleaning up after themselves.
Teach your child the golden rule; to treat others the way they would like to be treated. Explain to them that it is indeed alright to be angry at times, but not to get violent e.g. breaking things or hurting someone. Teach them positive ways to deal with anger e.g. talking about it with someone.
Grade school age
At this stage, your child is beginning to have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Be there to talk with them about difficult situations, the different options that are available to them, the good or bad ones, and the resulting consequences depending on how they choose to act.
Talk about family rules and consequences for not following them e.g. Do not stay out after 7pm or else no more outings for a week. Teach and model patience, respect, and concern for others.
Teenagers and adolescents
As your child develops independent decision-making skills, continue to show unconditional love and support alongside clear expectations and boundaries.
Parents also read: How to discipline a preschooler?
You may want to know your child’s friends and talk to him about the right kind of people to hang out with. Make them your friend, talk about everything, important topics, and topics that seem unimportant.
Children with close relations with their parents are more likely to make healthy decisions. Acknowledge their efforts and achievements in the things they do and always remember to set a good example. Thanks for reading. Please follow us and share for others to benefit.
DFlourishingKids™ 
Things Often Neglected In Articles Talking About The Negative Effects Of Spanking
One of the things people neglect to talk about is how spankings can involuntarily stimulate the child. This happens 3 ways.
1. Through the Common Iliac Artery where impact to the buttocks forces blood to the genitals causing stimulation.
2. The neurological transmissions from the buttocks to the genitals creating sensations.
3. The hormones and endorphins that gets released during a spanking.
Children don’t understand what is happening to their bodies at that time.
I will share based on my experience, I was spanked with sticks bare butt as a child and hated it at the time, but starting at age 8, became fascinated with spankings. When everyone else thought of exploring people if the opposite sex during puberty and fantasized about them, I went through puberty thinking and fantasizing about being taken behind the woodshed, stripped naked and spanked or whipped. I often longed to live in the old days to get whipped on my butt. I started self spanking at age 15 until my butt was bruised, and cannot be aroused without being spanked or thinking about being spanked. I am sharing this because people need to know that spanking a child can be just as gross as molesting a child. I would like to see this being brought up about childhood spanking. I hope you will share my story on this so that people can think about what they are doing before they spank a child.
Thank you,
Rodney Calmes
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