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Be Clear about Expectations Setting appropriate limits means making clear your expectations. What do you expect of your child's behavior? An example of an expectation is a parent telling their child to keep their hands to themselves, not to text at the dinner table, or that there are five more minutes until bedtime. This gives children a sense of safety and predictability, and with practice and reinforcement, children can learn to meet the expectations set forth for them. Guiding children about the rules of society, both in the household and in the larger context, helps them understand what is expected of them. When you need your child to do what you say, the instructions need to be clear. Get close to your child, make eye contact, and in a loving or really just neutral voice, tell them. Don't ask them what to do. One step at a time. You can say please, because saying please is just a nice habit to model. For discipline strategies to be most effective, there has to be a foundational relationship in which children feel loved and secure. Discipline that focuses on teaching rather than on punishing can strengthen the parent child relationship and build the necessary skills children need to function effectively within their family and at school and within other relationships. Here are two questions to ask yourself when you respond to your kids first, did I honor my child's feelings? Second, did I make my expectations clear? When you're wondering if you've given the right response to your child's behavior, you could just ask yourself, did I honor their feelings? And Was I clear about the behavior that I expect? Think back to the last conflict you had with your child and think about how you might answer those questions. Asking these questions won't mean you get to live in a world of no fights and no challenging feelings. It's just a way to know how you can check yourself and examine the way you play your part. How your unique child responds isn't your job. It may become your problem but it is not your job. The more you allow these questions to guide your parenting behaviors, the more easily you will be able to put your hand on your heart and remind yourself. Parenting is a long game, so come up with house rules. This can be really helpful. My own house rules are pretty basic. No physical harm to humans or animals. No breaking bones. No breaking skin. No disrespecting property. No dehumanizing language. Each person is entitled to personal things they don't share, which can go into a private drawer, a private bucket, whatever, depending on your child's age, is a private space. And finally, electronics are turned in and agreed upon hours and not used during mealtime. You can have a family meeting at which you go over your house rules and you can decide together what consequences feel appropriate. Speaking of consequences, I want to tell you about connected consequences. So embrace connected consequences. We can't protect our children from consequences of their actions and expect them to learn. Connected consequences make things right. Punishment shuts your child's system down, meaning there's no learning opportunity. A consequence, on the other hand, may not be something your child's thrilled about, but it creates a cause and effect feedback loop in which they can learn through experience. The consequences fit the behavior. There's no shame. There might be anger, there might be frustration, but there's no shame. Connected consequences can be divided into natural consequences and logical consequences. If it's helpful to think about them that way. They're both connected to the child's behavior, and they're both effective. Natural consequences are ones that you really have nothing to do with as a parent. If your child was banging a toy against the wall and it broke, now they no longer have the toy. If your child decided not to study for a test and then failed it, natural consequences allow them to feel the responsibility of making a wrong choice. It's not about punishment from you. All that's required from you as the parent is that you refrain from going into fix it mode. Don't replace the toy. Don't call the teacher to change the grade. Don't threaten to sue them. Let your child live with the results of their decisions. Logical consequences, in contrast, take a little more proactive response from us. We can set a consequence that directly relates to the action. Maybe your toddler used their toy wand to hit their younger sibling, and you decide to take the toy wand away for a few days until they're ready to learn to use it properly. Maybe your child sneaks their phone or iPad into their room for use at night so they lose their iPhone privileges until you feel you can trust them again. That is a logical consequence. It reinforces what you're teaching your child about what you expect from them in a given situation, and they allow the child to understand the connection between their own decision making and the loss of the privilege. When your child breaks a rule or exceeds a limit, you tie a logical consequence to that misbehavior. For example, if your child runs away when you're walking down the street, you might say, if you want to continue to walk, you need to hold my hand to keep your body safe. Running away is dangerous. Or I can put you in the stroller. As kids get older, it can be helpful to start mapping out collaborative consequences in advance. For example, if you can collaborate on the expectations and consequences at a family meeting or just in conversation by asking, what do you think the consequences should be if you don't follow this plan? This way, kids start to feel like they have some control over their experience. In another example, if you're establishing expectations for online behavior, for example, you can say, if you bully someone online, what do you think the consequences should be? And they might say, you should take away my social media and my phone for three weeks. Then if they make the choice to do something like that, they know what's coming. Set the stage for success. Catch your child being good. Okay, so many of us ignore good behavior and focus on the negative. So the majority of the feedback our kids are getting from things like don't do that or put that down are negative. Positive reinforcement, on the other hand, shifts the focus to what we do want to see. For example, when your child shares a toy with his sister or spends some time playing quietly with his own books, you can notice and comment, that was so nice of you to take a turn with your sister. Or I see you looking at your books while you wait until it's time to go to school. This kind of specific and positive reinforcement makes children more likely to repeat that behavior in the future, and it helps kids understand what's expected of them as they navigate sharing the world with other people. General praise, just as a warning like great job doesn't seem to have much impact. Studies show that praise is most effective when it's specific and comes immediately after the behavior. Caveat, which I go very deep into in the book, is that you don't want to just operate under, like a praise and positive reinforcement system because that doesn't actually teach a bigger picture, deeper meaning. It teaches behavior and it's definitely good for compliance and for getting into habits, but you don't want to operate with a constant looking for the positive reinforcement because sometimes things should just be Introduce Interoception we all know about the five senses sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. But a lesser known sense to be aware of is interoception. It's the sense that helps us understand and feel what's going on inside our bodies. Kids who struggle with their interoceptive sense might have a hard time knowing when they feel full, cold, hot, hungry or thirsty. Having trouble with this sense can make self regulation extra challenging. How many of us kind of brace ourselves when we know our kids are hungry and feel that panic like I've got to get them something to eat because they know what's to come? You can help your kids begin to develop their understanding of their body mind connections by labeling them in yourself. So you might say something like I feel nervous. It's like I have butterflies fluttering around in my tummy. You can also try reflecting back your observations about your child's mind body connection by saying something like oh, you were stressed about that test and you got a headache or your stomach growled because you're hungry. Just a note. For a lot of kids, the space between hunger and anger or other emotional responses can be pretty small, so it's helpful to teach kids to have a snack on hand and to recognize a mood shift of possible hunger. Anybody who has that capacity of getting hangry knows how important this skill is. Follow predictable routines. When children know what to expect, they're less worried, they feel more secure, and they are more likely to behave in what's called a pro social way. When parents plan and execute consistent routines, such as bedtime, they build executive function skills by giving children opportunities to predict what comes next so that they can plan and act appropriately. For families where caregivers work multiple jobs, this may be difficult, but focus on predictability wherever possible. Prepare for transitions. Being aware of what's coming next, especially if it's not typical, decreases the intensity of emotions that escalate when children feel surprised by a change. Offering children frequent reminders and having a schedule can help kids transition more flexibly. For example, a five minute warning if it's almost time to leave the house, such as remember we have to leave to go to dinner in five minutes can help to avoid some of the tension that transitions tend to bring. Even if your younger ones can't quite grasp what five minutes actually feels like, they'll learn to understand what to expect, anticipate, and prevent when possible. While even the calmest, most authoritative parent can't prevent Every tantrum. We can learn to anticipate what sets off our unique children and then set up the environment and schedule accordingly. For example, if tantrums frequently occur in the late afternoon, avoid overstimulating activities at that time of day. If seeing cookies ignites too much temptation, keep the package packages in the closed cabinet. Validating a child's feelings early in the reaction can often prevent escalation. You can say something like, I know you really love cookies, and we're about to go pick up cookies for your Aunt Molly, but we're not going to be getting cookies for ourselves. Do you think you can pick out your favorite cookie and we can take a picture so we remember to get it the next time we go to the bakery and are buying ourselves a treat? Plan Ahead with Big Reactors if your child is a big reactor and your attempts at connection are met with ever more intense tantrums, violence, or spitting, then connection may not be their thing in the way that we think of it. Spend some time with your big reactor when they're not upset, and discuss what would help them self soothe when they're having those big reactions. You might consider setting up a safe space for them with comfort items that can help them regulate when your presence actually escalates the situation, or if you just have two other kids to attend to and you might need to physically protect their bodies. Offer Choices Giving kids choices when choices are a reasonable option allows them to exert some control over the world around them and encourages cooperation while decreasing power struggles. For example, offering a child the choice to get into the stroller themselves or for a parent to put them in the stroller may help to avoid a tantrum when a parent chooses for them. You might say for a younger child, something along the lines of do you want the blue cup or the red cup? And then for an older kid, you might say, do you want to take your screen time before dinner or after dinner? Introduce contracts Older tweens can begin to understand specific examples, obligations, and previously agreed upon consequences. By formalizing these into a written contract, you make the expectations that much clearer and you help kids start practicing what it's like in the larger society to make commitments that may even be legally binding. You are ultimately the parent, but it has to be done collaboratively to a certain extent, and it feels good for kids to be able to ask for what they feel is reasonable. When invited to collaborate, they'll also be more likely to feel respected and honor the plan. Okay, so this next section is about understanding moral development, and I wrote it because Sometimes we have developmentally inappropriate expectations of our kids because we're thinking that they're small adults who have the same concept of morality as we do. And it does have an impact on the choices that we make with discipline. When our kids act out, it can be helpful to understand where they're coming from developmentally. After all, kids don't know the social contracts when they get here. They rely on us to guide them as they learn how to act appropriately in various contexts. A brilliant American psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, has a theory of moral development that gives us insight into the decision making process. Process. When humans are presented with moral choices, this can really help manage our expectations by considering not our moral understanding. For example, only a selfish brat would steal that toy from his sister, but rather the understanding of a particular child's developmental phase, both cognitively and ethically. Kohlberg interviewed people of various ages and analyzed how they justified their behavior when faced with moral decisions. And he came up with six very interesting stages humans typically go through as we mature. He called the first two stages pre conventional morality, the next two stages conventional morality, and the last two stages post conventional morality. Before our kids become teens, they grow through the first four stages. As adults, they may mature into post conventional morality. Okay, so preconventional morality. Preconventional morals are typical in childhood through about age 9. And among adolescents and adults when under tremendous pressure. The pre conventional stages are as stage one, obedience and punishment. In this orientation, humans figure that if they get punished for something, it must be bad, and if they get rewarded, it must be good. It's as simple as that. An example of leaning into preconventional morality is when a kindergarten teacher tells students that they're not allowed to leave the classroom during class time or the have their name put on the board. Because the rule has an associated punishment, most kids will obey it without thinking about the why and the nuances of the rule. Stage two, self interest, individualism and exchange. At this second level, humans are driven by fear, reward, and self interest. Think about it for yourself. What would make you override the fear of punishment when you were making a decision that might get you in trouble? Your answer might be on the high road because you're much further along your development. But sometimes the answer is going to be more basic. There's something in it for me. As for children, it's completely normal and appropriate for them to weigh fear of punishment with self interest. Conventional morality. Humans tend to develop into the conventional level of morality at around age 9, and they stay there through Adolescence, at least through adolescence. Stage 3 Interpersonal Accord and Conformity in this stage, it's developmentally appropriate for kids to start caring what other people think. They also internalize the moral standards of their adult role models. Often, that's you. But if tweens seem unexpectedly conventional, approval seeking, or suddenly embarrassed about the things that make your family unique, know that they're just doing their developmental work as they learn more sophisticated ways of navigating social norms. Norms and stage four is maintaining social order. This is super interesting because it's a stage when children really come into their understanding of the wider rules of society. Their judgments take into account concerns for obeying the rules in order to uphold the law and order and avoiding guilt. Authority is internalized and not questioned unless that questioning is really a part of their culture or subculture. Post Conventional Morality Post conventional morality is actually rare among adolescents and is slightly less rare among adults. Kohlberg established that only 10 to 15% of humans ever even get to stage five or six. But it may be something for us to strive for. Post conventional morality means we understand universal, abstract ethical principles based on personal, nuanced values like the preservation of life or the importance of human dignity. A person with post conventional morality is someone who doesn't need a parent, a police officer, or even a law to tell them how to behave. Stage 5 Social contract and Individual Rights Here we understand that a rule or law may exist for the good of the greatest number of people, but there are times when it makes ethical sense to break it. For example, would you steal to save a life? Stage 6 Universal Principles at this stage, humans literally don't need laws because their own ethical compass and moral guidelines are consistently on point, weighing issues of human rights, justice, and equity. A person at this stage is prepared to act to defend those universal principles, even if it means going against the rest of society and having to pay the consequences. For example, would you refuse to serve in a war you thought was unethical, even if it meant imprisonment? What's salient for parents is to remember that pre conventional level our kids are at is at least going to last until age 9, and that's totally normal. The conventional level our kids move into as adolescents is also normal and a perfectly acceptable place to stay. Having adult children who can engage in post conventional morality might be one of your goals or hopes, but it's not likely something you'll see in them until very late adolescence, but most likely adulthood. And one way to help get them to the next level is to make it a practice of noticing together how your stomach feels, when an ethical conundrum comes up, when anyone causes minor harm, or when they lie to cover up breaking a rule. Rather than telling a child how they should act, you can help them pay attention to what their body tells them when their inside values don't match their outside behavior. So as a parent, you have set the stage for success. You've made your expectations clear. You understand childhood moral development. But we know that your kids are still going to act out, things are still going to go wrong. And that's when it's time to step into your authority and practice some intentional discipline. We know from studies in neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt have shown that repeated experiences change the physical structure of the brain. And with effective discipline, the parent's goal is to strengthen the connections between the back and front parts of the brain for both the children and the caregivers, so that everyone's responses can be less reactive and more thoughtful. All of this is also available, of course, if you just want to go read the Five Principles of Parenting. But I wanted to pull out the discipline because having an overall understanding of your baseline goals of discipline and where your kids are developmentally can really help keep us grounded as we, you know, meet these challenges. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.
