Building discipline with a positive approach

Most of the discipline questions we get are not about a difficult child. They are about a tired one, at five in the afternoon, in a house where everybody has already had a long day.

Name the thing, not the child

“You threw the cup” gives a two-year-old something to act on. “You are naughty” gives them a description of themselves, and they will hold on to it long after they have forgotten the cup.

The sentence that works in class is short, said close, and said once: what happened, what happens instead, and then help to do it.

Consequences have to be small enough to keep

A consequence a parent cannot carry out is worse than none at all. If the cup gets thrown, the cup goes away for the rest of the meal. Not for the day, and not for the week.

The point is not to make this afternoon fair. It is to make tomorrow afternoon shorter.

What we do in class

• Give the warning before the moment, not during it.
• Offer two choices, both of which you are happy with.
• Put it right together afterwards: fetch the cloth, hand back the toy, say the sentence.

None of it works in the first week. It starts working around the third, which is roughly when most families give up on it.