Positive Discipline is an approach developed by Canadian psychologist Joan Durrant Ph.D. for Save the Children that encourages parents to teach children and guide their behaviour, while respecting their rights to healthy development, protection from violence and participation in their learning
Positive Discipline is based in research on children’s healthy development and effective parenting, and founded on child rights principles. It currently is used in approximately 15 countries as an alternative to typical reward and punishment models of parenting.
Positive discipline is not permissive parenting and is not about punishment. It is about long-term solutions that develop children’s own self-discipline and their life-long skills.
How is Positive Discipline practiced?
Positive discipline has four components:
- Identifying long-term childrearing goals - by thinking about what kinds of people we want our children to become, we can avoid emotional reactions to children’s behaviour and instead use everyday situations to reach these goals by choosing to respond in a more constructive way.
- Providing warmth and structure- learning at any age is enabled by structure (information, consistency, reasonable guidelines and expectations, support to help child succeed, respecting child’s point of view, and focusing on solutions) enveloped in a milieu of unconditional love and warmth (emotional and physical security, verbal and physical affection, respect for child’s developmental level, sensitivity to child’s needs, and empathy)
- Understanding how children think and feel – without appreciating the child’s abilities at various developmental stages, parents sometimes think that children are being “stubborn” or “spoiled”, or “bad”. Viewing the world from a child’s perspective can result in more reasonable expectations and a more nurturing environment. Positive discipline means considering the thoughts and feelings behind the child’s behavior.
- Problem-solving – by clearly identifying the problem, and focusing on solutions instead of punishment, parents can help their child learn a critical life skill while building a stronger, more harmonious relationship. When parents consider theirlong terms goals, strategies that reflect warmth and structure, and their child’s developmental stage, they can create a much more positive way of interacting with their children. Positive discipline can prevent many situations from arising in the first place, and help parents deal more constructively with conflict that will inevitably occur.
For information see the Positive Discipline Primer.
To see a list of organizations in Alberta with staff trained in Positive Discipline click here.
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