child’s attention long enough to get your point across. Your child must understand your instructions in order to follow them. Expect whatever behaviour makes your child a nice person to live with, and then help your child to comply. Your child will thank you later.
6. Model Discipline
A model is an example your child imitates. The mind of a growing child is a sponge, soaking up life’s experiences; it’s a video camera capturing everything a child hears and sees, storing these images in a mental vault for later retrieval. These stored images, especially those frequently repeated by significant persons in the child’s life, become part of his personality – the child’s self. So one of your jobs as a parent is to provide good material for your child to absorb.
“But I can’t be perfect.” Of course not. No parent is perfect. While writing this book, Martha and I would often say, “We know all this stuff and we still keep making mistakes.” In fact, it’s unhealthy to model perfection – a goal that neither parent nor child can meet (though many are crippled by trying). It’s the overall impression that your child receives that counts, not the occasional blunders or outbursts. If a parent is habitually angry, anger becomes part of the child’s self. The child learns that this is the way people deal with life. If a parent models happiness and trust, with an occasional angry tirade, the child sees a healthier model: people are happy most of the time, but sometimes, difficulties make you angry. You handle the situation and go back to being happy.
Parents, you are the first people your child knows. You are the first caregivers, authority figures, playmates, male and female. You set the standard for your child’s attitude toward authority, her ability to play with peers, and her sexual identity. Part of yourself becomes part of your child. Yes, much of a child’s behaviour is genetic. More than one parent has been known to remark, “He came wired that way”, but much is also influenced by the child’s behavioural models. Throughout this book we will show you how to provide your child with a disciplined model.
7. Nurture Your Child’s Self-Confidence
A child who feels right acts right. In the first part of this book we will show you how to help your child like herself. The growing person with a positive self-image is easier to discipline. She thinks of herself as a worthwhile person, and so she behaves in a worthwhile way. She is able to forgo some wilful misbehaviour to maintain this feeling of well-being. When this child does misbehave, she returns more quickly to the right path, with less need for punishment.
Not so the child with poor self-image. The child who doesn’t feel right doesn’t act right. His parents don’t trust him, so he can’t trust himself. No one expects him to behave well, so he doesn’t. The bad behaviour cycle begins: the more misbehaviour, the more punishment, which intensifies the child’s anger and lowers his self-esteem, producing more bad behaviour. This is why our approach to discipline focuses primarily on promoting inner well-being in the child from the beginning. Throughout life your child will be exposed to people and events that contribute to his self-worth and to others that chip away at it. We call these builders and breakers. We will help you to set the conditions that expose your child to many more builders than breakers, and, of course, to become a builder yourself.
Builders and breakers.
8. Shape Your Child’s Behaviour
A wise parent is like a gardener who works with what he has in his garden and also decides what he wants to add. He realizes he cannot control the characteristics of the flowers he has, when they bloom, their scent and colour; but he can add those colours that are missing in his garden, and he can shape it to be more beautiful. There are flowers and weeds in every child’s behaviour. Sometimes flowers bloom so beautifully that you don’t even notice the weeds; other times the weeds overtake the flowers. The gardener waters the flowers, stakes the plants to help them grow straight, prunes them for maximum bloom, and keeps the weeds in check.
Children are born with some behavioural traits that either flourish or are weeded out, depending on how the children are nurtured. Other traits are planted and vigorously encouraged to grow. Taken altogether, these traits make up a child’s eventual personality. Your gardening tools as a parent are techniques we call shapers, time-tested ways to improve your child’s behaviour in everyday situations. These shapers help you weed out those behaviours that slow your child down and nurture those qualities that help him mature.
The goal of behaviour shaping is to instil in your child a sense of what is “acceptable behaviour” and to help him have positive feelings about it. The child learns to behave, for better or for worse, according to the response he gets from his authority figures. When a child gets encouraging responses to desirable behaviour, he is motivated to continue it. When a child gets unpleasant responses to desirable behaviour, it dies out. However, when a child gets lots of attention, positive or negative, for undesirable behaviour, it may continue, especially if that’s the only behaviour that gets a response. Be careful which behaviours you reinforce and how you do it.
Most shaping of a child’s behaviour is a when-then reaction. (When Billy’s room is a mess, Mum says, “No more playing outside until it’s cleaned up.”) Eventually, the child internalizes these shapers, developing his own inner systems of when-then, and in so doing learns to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. (“When my room is a mess, it’s no fun to play there, so I better clean it up.”) He learns to shape his own behaviour.
At each stage of development, your shaping tools change, depending on the needs of your little garden. In the pages ahead, we give you gardening tips to help you confidently shape your child’s behaviour and make his personality work to his advantage. He will be a more likable person who contributes to the garden of life.
9. Raise Kids Who Care
Being a moral child includes being responsible, developing a conscience, and being sensitive toward the needs and rights of others. A moral child has an inner code of right and wrong that is linked to his inner sense of well-being. Inside himself he knows that “I feel right when I act right, and I feel wrong when I act wrong.” The root of being a moral child, and one of the main focuses of this book, is sensitivity to oneself and to others, along with the ability to anticipate how one’s actions will affect another person and to take that into account before proceeding. One of the most valuable social skills you can help your child develop is empathy – the ability to consider another person’s rights and feelings. Children learn empathy from people who treat them empathically. One of the best ways to turn out good citizens is to raise sensitive children.
Besides teaching children responsible behaviour toward others and toward things, also teach them to take responsibility for themselves. One of the most valuable tools for life you can give your child is the ability to make wise choices. You want to plant a security system within your child that constantly reminds him:think through what you’re about to do. By learning to take responsibility for their actions in small things, children prepare to make right choices when the consequences are more serious. Our wish for you is to raise kids who care.
10. Talk and Listen
Throughout each chapter we will point out ways to communicate with your child so she doesn’t become parent deaf. The best authority figures specialize in communication with children. Often rephrasing the same directive in a more child-considered way makes the difference in whether a child obeys or defies you. (see here.)
