What would you do if your three-year-old son hits a playmate at the park or smacks his baby brother on the face? Refer to the instruction manual of Child Code 143, Model XYZ? No way, your child did not come with an instruction manual nor would you find one from other "manufacturers."
It is our responsibility as parents to mold them to become good and responsible citizens of society, on top of our duty to provide them their basic needs, give them good education and keep them healthy and happy. Tough, isn’t it?
How do we go about this task? The one word that comes to mind is discipline. By definition, discipline is any training intended to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior. In child development, discipline refers to methods of modeling character and of teaching self-control and acceptable behavior. To effectively discipline a child is one of the most difficult but essential skills parents would have to learn. Effective discipline keeps order in the family and produces responsible citizens of society.
Involved parents are concerned with child discipline but differ on how they go about it largely because of parenting style. Researchers identified four parenting styles namely, uninvolved, indulgent, authoritarian and authoritative, and each one was excellently presented in this video:
Now, which one is your style? Maybe you cannot fit yourself in one particular style or maybe you can. Knowing from the video the correlation of parenting style with child’s well-being in terms of social and emotional development, school performance, and proneness to problem behavior, which parenting style would you strive to employ for your child?
I am leaving you with this thought to ponder upon as I prepare my next posts on discipline of which I have outlined five methods as enumerated below.
1. Communication and Role Modeling
2. Merit and Demerit System
3. Time-Out and Reverse Time-Out
4. Avoidance and Tolerance
5. Spanking
The plan is to fully discuss each discipline method by presenting them one by one on Fridays.
If you like this article, please let your friends know about it. You can do it by email, tweeting or sharing using the button below. You may also follow us on Twitter (use follow button above near the title) or Facebook (use follow button at the bottom right of this page).
UPDATE: Discipline methods series now posted:
- Discipline Methods: Communication and Role Modeling
- Discipline Methods: Merits and Demerits
- Discipline Methods: Time-Out and Reverse Time-Out
- Discipline Methods: Prevention and Tolerance
- Discipline Methods: Spanking
Posts
