K through 4th grade
While some approaches to discipline harm relationships between parents and children, you can avoid this trap by collaboratively establishing consequences for misbehavior in advance, freeing you to spend more time empathizing and less time nagging.
“Rest assured your kids would actually rather learn from life circumstances than from daily nagging throughout their childhood. And what they learn from life, they will learn for life.”
— Amy McCready
Key Strategies
- Solve problems. Instead of nagging, work with your child to brainstorm solutions to problems that underlie mistakes or poor behavior. Children usually want to make good choices; we need to help them figure out how.
- Establish consequences. If problem solving doesn’t yield results, work with your child to establish consequences for their mistakes — agreed upon in advance. For example, if your child doesn’t remember to bring their uniform for soccer practice, they will have to play in their school clothes. (You will not bail them out.)
- Empathize and problem solve again. Once you’ve established the consequence, don’t back down when your child complains. Instead, empathize with them. “I’m sorry you have to go to practice in your school clothes today! How can I help you remember your uniform tomorrow?”
Additional Resources
Book: The Good News About Bad Behavior, Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Book: No Drama Discipline, Daniel J. Siegel M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson Ph.D.
Consequences