Child Discipline. Often parents find themselves at logger heads with each other over their child discipline problems and their techniques or strategies for coping with them.

Parents argue about the rights and wrongs of child discipline - one parent just wants to spank, the other believes family discussions are what's needed.

One parent chooses to deny their children a beloved toy, the other thinks that's molly coddling and believes more severe steps are necessary to prevent chaos in their household.

The children are often very aware of their parents dilemma and suffer the consequences of their inconsistent behaviour.

When the parents themselves are at odds over the way discipline is handled, it doesn't take the children two minutes to have a very acute handle on the problem.

Children can, and do, take part in pitting their parents against each other, especially if they feel they can escape punishment for their unacceptable behaviour, while their parents fight it out in the background.

This scenario is not as uncommon as you would think!

I am often asked about how to deal with anger management - children who have anger problems that are disrupting the household.

Angry Parents

Often anger in parents is displaced onto their children. It is easier to 'blow your top' at your child's behaviour then it is to acknowledge and sort out your own anger problems.

Anger can also be projected onto each other instead of being owned and understood. This is particularly the case when parents have difficulties in their own relationship and the child is made the scapegoat for the parents' problems, or the child's behaviour stirs up the parent's anger with each other and they use the situation to attack.

Parents with repressed anger may also find that their child's smallish misdemeanor sparks off a volcano within them which escalates out of proportion to the behaviour.

There are many ways of dealing with anger:

• Identify it - what it hides - what it covers over
• Talk it out with someone you trust
• Recognise the hurt and sadness behind it
• See it as an energy that can be released
• Yell it out, or cry it out, or scream it out, in a safe situation.
• Recognise that it is yours and not your child's.

Child Discipline - Anger Management

John and Jane came with their ten year old son, Stephen, to talk about an anger management programme for him. After listening to them, I asked Stephen to tell me what he thought were the reasons for his rage and angry outbursts. He greatly surprised his parents by promptly stating, "Angry parents". He then artfully explained that if he got them riled enough they would take their anger out on each other and he frequently got off free. Then he told them he actually didn't like that and would feel better if they worked it out better, both with each other and for him. After a very interesting discussion, the surprised parents were ashamed to discover that their child would actually appreciate some strong, firm and secure boundaries as he informed them that he felt he was too young to know the right answer all the time! Stephen's other piece of advice for his parent was to stop 'going on about it' and just do it!

Stephen wrote out his own anger management programme and it looked like this:

• Let's talk about it.

• Respect each other and me

• No yelling

• Talk one at a time

• No nagging

• Give me options

• Make a decision

• Do something

After reading this list, John and Jane both learned more about their own behaviour than they did about Stephen's.

Looking at Stephen's list, it's not hard to see that he experienced his parents arguing over him (mostly in his hearing), disagreeing and yelling at each other, not listening, and doing nothing to change the situation.

Today they are learning to implement positive discipline together.

Some Techniques for Child Discipline:

• Be direct, clear, firm and consistent in your approach

• Develop a list of consequences and stick to them

• Hold a family conference and make a declaration for change in your discipline style from now on.

• Don't nag, persuade, or manipulate

• Model the behaviour you want to see

• Praise and reward positive behaviour

• Apologise for your mistakes and teach your children how to say they are sorry for theirs.

Child Discipline With Love.com
Permanent child discipline can be achieved only by way of love and by no other means or methods. Selective use of specific discipline techniques serves the purpose if you use them with lots of love. It certainly works where punishment, scolding, spanking, nagging have failed.

Read more about understanding your emotions

How to Discipline Children Discipline is NOT about punishment Effective discipline has nothing to do with any form of physical abuse towards children. Discipline is NOT about smacking, spanking or hitting.

---