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Positive Discipline 1
Suzanna Smith 2Sometimes, children challenge or test parents and other adults. Sometimes they misbehave to get something, like attention, an object, or peer approval. Children learn right from wrong and what is acceptable and what is not in their family and society through discipline and guidance they get from parents and caregivers.
Child development experts advise that positive discipline works best. Positive discipline helps children learn to control their behavior, protects their self-esteem, and keeps the parent-child relationship strong. With positive discipline, children are on their way to becoming responsible adults. These techniques avoid some of the problems that come with a common form of discipline: spanking.
No one disciplinary technique will work in all situations, so a wise parent learns several options that can be used in different situations. One important way is to show, or model, how you want a child to behave. Children learn more about how to act from watching adults than any other way. Of course this means that parents will need to monitor their own behavior! For example, they will need to watch their language if they don't want their child to use certain words.
Another approach is to encourage your child. Support the child's work, even if it's not perfect, and value her or his views. A third way is to give attention when children do something you like--in other words, to catch your child being good!
Listening, learning, and living together: it's the science of life. "Family Album" is a co-production of University of Florida IFAS Extension, the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences and of WUFT-FM. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our Web site at http://www.familyalbumradio.org .
To listen to the radio broadcast:
http://www.radiosource.net/radio_stories/posdis.mp3
http://www.radiosource.net/radio_stories/posdis.wav
Resources
Child Welfare League of America Discipline Techniqueshttp://www.cwla.org/positiveparenting/tipsdiscipline.htm
Footnotes
1. This document is FAR0037, one of a series of the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. First published February 2008. In the interest of time or clarity, the broadcast version of this script may have been modified. Please visit the EDIS Web site at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.2. Suzanna Smith, associate professor, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, University of Florida, and Executive Producer, Family Album Radio, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.
The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other extension publications, contact your county Cooperative Extension service.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Larry Arrington, Dean.
Copyright Information
This document is copyrighted by the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) for the people of the State of Florida. UF/IFAS retains all rights under all conventions, but permits free reproduction by all agents and offices of the Cooperative Extension Service and the people of the State of Florida. Permission is granted to others to use these materials in part or in full for educational purposes, provided that full credit is given to the UF/IFAS, citing the publication, its source, and date of publication.