Structure to Guide Your Child Down the Right Path

Discipline is an important, yet often controversial topic. Many parents do many different things, and everyone seems to have a very strong opinion on discipline and the correct ways to conduct it. I feel like it's important to discuss a few techniques that I feel are effective, that give children direction, that teach children right from wrong, and maintain and strengthen the bond between parents and their children.

I think it's important as a parent to be just that, a parent. Children need guidance, structure and love that only parents can provide. Children will make plenty of friends along the way, so parents I feel should be more of figures to look up to rather than their childs friend. The key word though is love. I'm NOT saying to be overly strict with your child in every sense of the word. I am saying to bond with them, love them, spend time with them, and yes..discipline them in order to maintain a healthy and effective relationship.

What I have found to be effective when it comes to discipline is assigning certain punishments to certain behaviors. Keep the lighter punishments to the minor and very common offenses and the stronger more aggressive punishments to the more serious offenses. For instance, children often throw temper tantrums or fits when they don't get what they want. As any parent would know, this happens ALL the time, particularly with younger children. So for something like this, I feel a time out is an effective way to correct this behavior. There are many variations of a time out, but after speaking to many people about it and gathering information about it, this is how I feel a time out is the most effective. Have your child stand in the corner for one minute per their age. Have the child stand as opposed to sit since children have a tendency to fall asleep while sitting or laying, which defeats the whole purpose. So, if your child is 5 years old, I feel having them stand in the corner for about 5 minutes is an appropriate amount of time. This gives the child time to think about what they did wrong and gives them a chance to calm down and fix their mistake. Now, if the child is cooperative, etc. you can decrease the time and if the child is still throwing a fit, acting out, etc. you can increase the time. That is a way to make the think about their behavior and also reward them for cooperating. Time outs are effective for fits as I mentioned, as well as not sharing, yelling or screaming, or not listening. All of these offenses are common, and time outs really help correct these problems.

Another effective punishment is grounding your child. Grounding your child to me is this: basically having your child stay at home without the everyday privileges they are used to having. Also, with a grounding punishment, friends cannot come over to play, and the child cannot go to a friends house to play. Basically under the grounding punishment the child cannot leave the house except to go to school, or run an errand if you need to do so and you need to bring them along. Offenses such as performing poorly in school, excessive disobediance, and not handling themselves well while at a friends house constitute a grounding to me. Whether you ground your child for a few hours or a few days, grounding can be very effective. I feel it's also important to reward your child for good behavior. The reason I bring that up while talking about groundings is that the child can "earn" their privileges back with good behavior. For instance if you ground your child for the day and remove all of their privileges from them, but they help clean up after dinner, then they can earn their toys back for the remainder of the night. Something to that effect. That in turn reinforces their good behaviors, making it more likely that the child will repeat those behaviors. Groundings work well, but it's important to remain fair.

The most serious punishment, and also the most controversial, is spanking your child. Spankings should ONLY be done for the most serious of offenses, and should be done in moderation. What I mean by that is only spank when its absolutely necessary. Things like stealing, deliberate vadalism, deliberately hurting others (kicking, biting, etc.) extreme disobediance, and school suspensions I feel all constitute a spanking. Defining a spanking is difficult since there are so many variables when conducting one, but a good overall definition would be this: A spanking is a form of punishment where the parent strikes the child on the buttocks with their hand or another acceptable medium in an effort to correct an unwanted behavior. Conducting a spanking is never easy, and its often times not only emotionally difficult for the child, but the parent as well.

In conclusion, I feel like these are a few tips that can not only help you, but also help your child.