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  7 0 I think that many in the educational field believe that children in recent decades were raised in a style that was in reaction to how the children's parents were raised. In short, many parents feel like they were raised in somewhat stifling, overly strict households. Their response, in the name of encouraging creativity and self-expression is to parent in a very hands-off way. Children are allowed to interrupt, run and scream, eat only what and when they want, and more. I feel that children thrive given structure. Those parameters give the big unknown world some needed boundaries. A parent that can't be pushed around by their kid exudes safety and confidence to all. That said, I am not afraid to constantly emphasize the positive with children. There are going to numerous small and large blows to developing self-esteem. Rewarding good behavior always trumps punishing bad behavior. Barry Wright answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report 7 comments by Misty Brown, Charles B, and Charles B… 1 0 There goes my mushroom... Misty Brown commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 'Fraid so. Charles B commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 One point: How do we know that kids like structure and boundaries? It does sort of make sense but many things that make sense turn out not to be true. No need to give me studies or links to references, just wondering if you had read such stuff. Charles B commented 11 months ago | Report 1 0 I have no specific references, just a lot of experience with kids. I have known many kids with pushover, passive parents that show their insecurities in numerous ways. If you can do whatever you want even though dad says not to, how effective a protector is he? Barry Wright commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 Yes, same here. Personal experience and observation. Kids seems to feel calm and secure when they know there's some structure and limits. The kids with parents who let them run wild or treat adults rudely seem blown out. Misty Brown commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 Children like structure and boundaries because the world is a scary, unpredictable place. I've taught sixth grade for several years and have found that when children enter puberty their boundaries need to be both expanded to develop the growth of the individual and strengthened to keep them feeling secure and cared for in the face of a tidal wave of new information about the world. My students all live in poverty and gang-stricken neighborhood, which means their lives are very unpredictable. They actually remind me to give them their homework if I forget to pass it out. Any change in routine and structure seriously stresses them out. Adults like boundaries too. We call them laws and the social order. These are to be reexamined, debated and updated by the societies that agree to live by them (this is why parenting philosophies get so heated), but living in a community requires we live within certain boundaries. A huge part of setting boundaries is teaching children how to live in the world. Mary Cornwell commented 11 months ago | Report 1 0 One of my most vivid and depressing memories is of a night when my mother asked me where I was going as I headed for the door and like a punk I said "out". She said "OK." It stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn't believe that we were in a situation where she really didn't care. Perhaps I was at the zenith of my adolescence but i still remember it as the nadir of her parenting. Jim commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  5 0 I believe the confusion comes from people associating the word 'discipline' with the concept of 'punishment' instead of the idea of parents and caregivers developing a way of teaching children the ability of recognizing the needs of others and exhibiting appropriate behavior in various settings. Discipline as a word being too often used as a replacement for appropriate behavior or comportment. I answered a question recently citing the lack of children being taught The Golden Rule as a reason that they do not show concern for the misfortune of others. My thought was that they first learn the concept of their own desire to be treated fairly so that they should then exhibit that behavior to others. Someone responded that "empathy doesn't come naturally to everyone" which of course was my point that it has to be diligently taught. I once evaluated a student that had been taught by his parent that he "didn't have to show respect to anyone that hadn't earned it from him". You could not believe how chaotic this child's behavior was and the incredible disruption he presented in normal social school settings. The possibilities of this child's common behavior of running roughshod over others without concern leading to eventual problems with the law were obvious. The greatest gift parents can give their children is the tools to be able to move through the myriad of social settings in our culture and be able to recognize or discern the appropriate behavior to use in each. Russ Campbell, NWEBS answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report 2 comments by Charles B and Russ Campbell, NWEBS… 0 0 Russ. Hate to say it, but I have no idea what "The Golden Rule" is. Guess I wasn't v. well brought up. What is it? That's a sad story you relate, and it's so easy to imagine happening in so many homes. Charles B commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As we learned it in my childhood. It takes many forms in different cultures and religions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule Russ Campbell, NWEBS commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  5 1 I will say that I've been appalled at the ill manners of some of my daughter's friends. Parents are doing such a disservice to their kids by failing to teach them the basics of saying please, thank you etc. I think the addition of the word "positive" in front of "discipline" comes from rejection of the idea that you have to bully or otherwise abuse your kids into behaving properly. The good old days kind of sucked. Hitting, ridiculing, and other means of negative reinforcement were commonplace. Has the pendulum swung too far into lenience? I think so. But it's worth it to put the "positive" on there. There's a good middle way to strive for. And, I don't know where you grew up, but yes, Americans are louts. There's definitely a cultural difference. Sorry about that. Now gimme my mushroom, bitch. Misty Brown answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report 1 comment by Charles B… 0 0 I'm American. Don't call me a lout if you wanna mushroom. Jeez. You earned the shroom but I'm afraid Barry kicked your butt at the last minute. Charles B commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  3 0 I am going to quote the definition for ‘discipline' we give in our book, Positive Discipline the First Three Years: When people talk about discipline they often mean punishment, because they believe them to be the same thing. “Real discipline, involves teaching; in fact, the word itself comes from the Latin root disciplina, which means ‘teaching; learning.” If this were the common understanding of the word, the ‘positive’ would be redundant. Roslyn Ann Duffy answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  2 0 Just to interject a different perspective, I am skeptical whenever people start to talk about how kids are being raised "here" or "these days". Opinions like this are likely 40% baggage from one's own upbringing (either for or against what they experienced), 80% based on media pseudo-phenomena ("Are our kids' addictions to the web causing a rise in blah blah blah"), and maybe 20% based on reality. Consider this: the 'old way' or 'the way the do it in ____' (whatever the country is) did a pretty good job producing the anxious, dysfunctional, rude, depressed, antisocial, and occasionally criminal adults of today (including you and me). So how do we know that this supposed laxness is a real issue? It would take a few serious studies of how these kids are actually turning out before I believed that it was a real problem. Bion Satir answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report 5 comments by Russ Campbell, NWEBS, Charles B, and Bion Satir… 2 0 I might in principle agree with some of what you say. But having a background of working in the public schools (for over 15 years) I have strong memory of the many meetings I have been in where parents have expressed how their kids get enough sleep (at 7 hours) being in bed by midnight and seem completely unbelieving when you tell them that 10 or 11 hours would be most appropriate. By the way we are talking about first and second graders with behavior issues at school. The emotional lability of a sleep deprived child of that age is quite amazing. They can go from laughing to throwing a chair across the room in a matter of seconds. There have been many moments in my career that leaves one wondering about the lack of common knowledge about human needs and how it ultimately affects child welfare and development. Russ Campbell, NWEBS commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 Andrew, as much as I see your point and generally it's true that people thought they had to walk to school in snowstorms every day, uphill - both ways. But now kids get coddled in SUVs etc. At the same time there are some obvious differences that can't be dismissed so easily. Believe me, English kids are little monsters who I would be scared to be stuck in a room with. But in the presence of adults they are pretty well behaved and polite. I don't think the nature of children has changed over time or is different from place to place but I do think there are very noticeable differences when it comes to behaving in public - both culturally and over time. Charles B commented 11 months ago | Report 1 0 First of all, the second "80%" was supposed to be "40%" - I DO know my percentages! I will defer to those with long term experience in the school system, although I'm not sure I was thinking more rules and manners than bedtimes (that could be from OVER scheduling kids rather than laxness, although I guess it depends on what the population is). My response is probably related to my own experience working in the CPS system. I've heard countless times from parents, "When I was a kid, kids followed rules. My parents raised me strictly [i.e. they hit me]. Now that we can't give them a 'whop' to teach them a lesson, what are we supposed to do?" They say this while at the same time revealing a huge amount of trauma and abuse from their own past. Not that anyone is advocating punishment here, but I think it shows how warped our perception can be. Finally, I, personally, don't notice kids being particularly more rude in public than when I was a kid or compared with other countries, but I am also not that aware of it. As a parent myself, I think it is a real challenge to find right zone of structure and freedom, and I'm not sure there is one answer. Bion Satir commented 11 months ago | Report 1 0 Wow. I really don't understand putting kids to bed at midnight. It seems like one of the few upsides of parenting is that you can put the kids to bed at 8 and have the rest of the night to yourself. keshmeshi commented 11 months ago | Report 0 0 The explanation at the time was that they wanted to stay up to see a favorite show (some anime thing). Of course, time delaying a recording seemed to have not crossed anyone's mind. And, of course, the parent also said they didn't seem tired. That, by the way, is one of the symptoms of sleep deprivation in children. I found myself on a number of occasions having to explain to parents about the need to control the home environment to encourage a 'winding' down of extraneous noise, bright light, energy, and excitement in the home so that young minds would also move towards being ready for bed. Sometimes you just wanted to remind parents who the adults were at their house. Russ Campbell, NWEBS commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  2 0 Yes. AKB answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  1 0 I often find that the most obnoxious and disruptive children I deal with are the one's who's parents are more "traditional" in their discipline. Living with rules that are set without explanation and enforced with violence or deprivation makes for a kid who tries to set rules with their peers using violence. My parents were hippies, so I'm on the second generation of non-violent parenting. I remember my aunts being amazed by how polite my siblings and I were when we were kids, while their kids were fucking assholes most of the time. My own daughter uses please and thank you most of the time (she's not perfect, of course). She doesn't automatically obey an adult, she expects rules to be explained and will debate a rule endlessly. That makes me proud. dwight moody answered in Discipline 11 months ago | Report 1 comment by Charles B… 0 0 I know what you are saying and I think the differences of opinion on this stem mostly from what we mean by "discipline" as RA Duffy pointed out above. If you think of discipline as punishment then it has bad results, if you think of it as boundaries then it's probably good. When I asked the question, I assumed that discipline meant boundaries since I would use the word punishment if I meant it. But I now understand that it is not a word that is in the least bit mutually understood. Charles B commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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