Positive Discipline Strategies that Work

Discipline is a lifestyle, not a weekly/monthly change. Parenting can be challenging as it is a 24-hour job. Caring for your child’s needs, health, education, and zillion tantrums demands patience. While you might find a strict approach to parenting negative, inculcating disciplinary behaviour in everyday life can significantly impact your child’s behaviour and create a wholesome household.

This article will discuss positive discipline strategies that can help you create positive discipline at home and a productive lifestyle.

Steps Towards a Disciplined Household

Inculcating discipline in an adult’s or child’s life is not rocket science but it requires a few lifestyle changes to bring positive impacts. Positive reinforcement, praise and healthy habits are the key goals to bring in focus. Read on to learn more about disciplinary strategies and methods of discipline at home:

1. Redirection

As a parent, you probably already know that children have a short attention span that can be used to their benefit at this age. Redirect their activity towards the positive ones. For instance- If your child spends their day playing games on a screen, redirect their attention to fun activities outside the screen. Invest in learning toys, puzzles and informational board games. Additionally, remember that the key to positive redirection comes from teaching them what they can do rather than focusing on what they can not.

2. Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is a practical disciplinary strategy that involves praising good behaviour. When you choose to correct your child's bad behaviour, remember to praise the behaviour that you find kind, healthy, or productive. Praising words at times will encourage your child to repeat the good behaviour with the hope of praise until it becomes their nature.

3. Be Respectful

Parents often forget that their kids need respect as much as an adult. Constant discouraging words or laughing at their curious questions will demotivate them and push them to anger, resulting in a lack of discipline and disrespect towards elders. Respect your child’s questions and curiosity to ensure they don't resort to destructive behaviour for attention.

4. Selective Time-outs

As a parent, you might find enrolling your child in multiple classes and courses important. However, it is equally important to allow them selective time-outs to ensure they have free time to calm down and behave disciplined when needed. Ensure your child is positively using the time-outs to relax and not indulge in reckless activities.

5. Healthy Lifestyle

Often ignored, a healthy lifestyle can have a wonderful impact on your child. Eating unhealthy food and inadequately consuming protein and vitamins can cause your child to become lethargic, preventing them from following a disciplined schedule. Ensure your child’s healthy and wholesome diet to ease their way to a disciplined lifestyle.

6. Be Disciplined

Your child learns and behaves as you do. Therefore, you must live a disciplined life to set the right example. Being a parent can be exhausting, but to build discipline in your child, you must avoid bad behaviour and outbursts in front of them. Create positive examples of discipline at home that your child can follow and become disciplined.

7. Prepare Charts

Following a tight weekday schedule is an excellent strategy for bringing discipline to the household. Prepare an age-appropriate discipline chart of activities for your child that matches their classes, courses, sleeping and eating windows, time-outs, and playing time. In addition, you can create a chart for yourself and follow it to set an example for your child to learn from.

8. Prefer Consistency Over Rigidness

Whether it is to follow a disciplined schedule or build a healthy lifestyle, rigidness is never the answer. Focus on bringing consistency to your child’s lifestyle by allowing periodic offs and selective time-outs. Understand that children are prone to be attracted towards bad habits, and a consistent approach to bringing discipline is how to make good habits a part of their nature.

9. Build a Problem-solving Approach

Many parents pamper their children to the extent that they are spoon-feeding everything, which often makes them incapable of developing a problem-solving approach. Let your child use their creativity to solve little problems of everyday life, as this will help them become disciplined and independent people when they grow up.

10. Teach Your Child the Importance of Discipline

You can not expect your child to follow you mindlessly, and this is not the right approach. Teach your child the importance of discipline in ways they understand. You can start by offering them praise and treats for good behaviour. This can shift to meaningful lessons when your child grows.

>> Also Read: Wellness Tips for a Healthy Lifestyle

Why is Discipline Important?

Now that you have gone through practical strategies to bring discipline to your home, you might wonder whether discipline plays a vital role. The answer to your question is yes. Discipline brings productivity and is a pathway towards a successful life. To get you on board, here’s a list of advantages that a disciplined life brings:

1. Teaches time management
2. Better academic results
3. Physical and mental fitness
4. Builds the bridge between goals and accomplishments
5. Improved social relations

Understanding your child's needs today is important for enforcing disciplinary strategies. Once you are on board with the positive impacts of discipline, you are ready to make your child an even better human.

In a Nutshell

Choosing lethargy over discipline might appear to be an easy way out. However, discipline is the key to building a productive and healthy home. As a parent, you want the best for your child. You can start your journey by following simple strategies like positive redirection, healthy praise, schedule charts, and time-outs. These do not demand significant changes in your everyday life but relatively small and consistent additions.

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