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Child Discipline Alternative To Saying “No”

By Bob Lancer
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

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Frustration and child discipline do not mix well

For easier child discipline, try telling your child HOW or WHEN she CAN do what she wants, instead of bluntly clashing against her will.

When it comes to child discipline, “no” does not always seem to work.

One reason for this is the natural, human tendency to go into denial.  When your child wants to do something, and you say “no”, a part of him that does not want to hear that, causing him to, perhaps unconsciously, pretend you did not say it.

But even when you have your child’s full attention, the word “no” may still not work well for you.  One reason for this is that it simply presents opposition, which will likely frustrate your child, and frustration and child discipline do not mix well.

One effective child discipline alternative to saying “no” is to redirect instead of merely to block.

Rather then simply saying “no” let your child know
what he CAN do instead.

For instance, if your child asks for a cookie, you might say, “You can have a cookie after you eat all of your lunch later.”

If your child wants to play outside, but it’s too dark out for you to allow it, instead of saying “no” you might say, “You can play outside only when it is light enough to be safe.”

If your child snatches something from her younger sister, instead of simply barking out, “no!” you might say, “You can play with that when she is done.”

By letting your child know what he CAN do, you diminish his natural resistance to opposition.

While it requires a bit more patience and self-control to replace your automatic “no” with a reasonable, positive response, it saves you the strain of a power-struggle.  It also helps your child to remain more calm and rational because children feel how we feel while we are with them.

For easier child discipline, try telling your child HOW or WHEN she CAN
do what she wants, instead of bluntly clashing against her will.

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Positive Parental Involvement

By Bob Lancer
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

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A sufficient quantity and quality of parental involvement is essential for a child’s healthy attitude and positive behavior.

A common cause of a child’s emotional and behavior problems stems from one or more of the following parental patterns:

  • The parent spends too little time with the child
  • The parent pays too little attention to the child
  • The quality of time spent with the child is marred by parental stress and strain

To even know how much time your child needs with you, you need to pay close enough attention to your child.

Positive parental involvement means that you are consciously present

Positive parental involvement means that you are consciously present, focused and sensitively aware of your child in the now


Perhaps a main reason why parents fall short in this area is because they don’t fully understand what it means to really spend time with a child.  Simply being in the same general area with a child does not constitute true parental involvement.

Positive parental involvement means that you are consciously present, focused and sensitively aware of your child in the now.  You are reading your child’s body language, voice tones and verbal communication (if your child is at a verbal stage) to recognize your child’s needs so you can respond accordingly.

Paying insufficient attention to a child allows the child to drift too far into troublesome emotional states and inappropriate behavior. The parent then involves himself with the child when the child’s behavior has become too outrageous to overlook, and then the involvement is characterized by harsh expressions of disapproval that sadden and antagonize the child, inciting even more problematic behavior.

Positive Parental Involvement Is More Pro-Active Than Reactive.

The parent observes the child before she drifts into trouble in order to recognize what the child needs to avoid emotional and behavior problems.

Positive parental involvement includes the parent’s ongoing dedication to the practice of the best possible self-control to avoid spoiling the quality of parental involvement with excessively critical, annoyed reactions that harm the parent-child relationship, make parenting more of a strain than it needs to be, and inevitably leads the child into more disturbing behavior.

As you bring positive parental involvement into your relationship with your child,
you and your child will both feel better and do better.

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End The Exhaustion Of Parenting Your Children

By Bob Lancer
Monday, January 24th, 2011

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Parenting our children is exhausting. But have you ever paused to consider what makes it so exhausting?

 We usually presume that what makes parenting children so taxing is how our children behave.  And there is no doubt that managing child behavior presents one of life’s most difficult challenges.

As long as we regard our children’s behavior as the cause of our strain and drain, however, we make ourselves overly dependent upon our children and give up our power to improve our time with them.

 How you expend your energy, and how much of your energy that you expend, is as much up to you as how you spend your money. 
After all, it’s your energy, and what you do with
it is your responsibility.

Accepting responsibility for exhausting yourself through the ways that you manage child behavior is the first step for better managing of your energy in parenting.  Our children are not responsible for how we exhaust ourselves through the ways that we interact with them.

parenting children

Our children are not responsible for how we exhaust ourselves through the ways that we interact with them.

 The next step to ending the exhaustion of parenting is to understand how you spend your energy. You expend energy with every:

  •  thought you think
  • emotional reaction you engage in
  • word you speak
  • action you take. 

The more intense your actions and reactions, the more energy you expend.

Also, the more discordant, disturbed or distressing your emotional state, and the more you rush, the more energy you burn and the more quickly you burn it.

By practicing parenting in a more calm and conscious mode, paying closer attention to your own actions and reactions in the present,
you will become more selective and less wasteful
in your energy expenditures.

You will therefore be able to gradually find ways of functioning more efficiently (in terms of your energy), and suffer less drain and strain in parenting your children as a result.

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Positive Discipline Through Non-Reactive Parenting

By Bob Lancer
Monday, January 17th, 2011

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Positive discipline

Exercise self control to ensure positive discipline when parenting children

Positive discipline leads a child into a positive attitude and responsible behavior.

We can define negative child discipline as disciplinary efforts that may or may not stifle the child’s disturbing behavior for the moment, but does in fact lead the child into a more negative attitude and more irresponsible self-conduct.

No parent wants to mislead her child through negative discipline, but not understanding what it takes to achieve positive discipline leads to that sad result.

Essentially, the difference between negative and positive discipline comes down to the level of a parent’s self-control.  The greater your self-control, the better you are at positive discipline.

The specific form of self-control needed for positive discipline can be described as non-reactive parenting.  To apply non-reactive parenting means that your responses to your child’s behavior are not run by your habitual emotional reaction-patterns. Instead, before reacting:

  1. You recognize the need your child’s behavior is expressing
  2. Then you consciously and intentionally respond in line with that need for the results you really want.

When you react to your child’s behavior your child has “pressed one of your buttons”. Instead of basing your response on a clear and accurate sense of what your child really needs, you “lose it” and either lash out (if you feel angry) or you may jump into excessive subservience or giving in.

A reaction is a trigger-response and not a reliable way of directing events in line with your objectives.

Non-reactive parenting means that you refrain from responding until you have a clear sense of what your child really needs and what you want your response to accomplish. This practice is central to positive discipline.

The more that you react to your child’s behavior, you more you are bound to experience a growing sense of powerlessness, futility, and perhaps even inadequacy.  This is because reaction-parenting is like driving a car at top speed while you are blindfolded.  You have the potential to see where you are going, but you are not accessing it.

To free yourself (and your child) from the negative consequences of reactive parenting:

Parenting children with positive discipline

One thumb rule of positive non-reactive parenting is to understand what your child really needs

  1. Notice when you react to your child in an automatic, thoughtless, habitual way.
  2. When you notice that happening, step back from the reaction, figuratively speaking, to more calmly and patiently consider your child’s needs in the present.
  3. As you sense what your child actually needs from you in the present for healthy, happy, responsible behavior, act upon that.

For instance, when your child lies, your instant reaction-impulse might want you to scold him. But more calmly, patiently observing your child might reveal to you that he is simply demonstrating his creativity and needs a more compassionate response from you to avoid shutting down that marvelous ability.

As you shift out of reaction-parenting you will find your way
into more positive discipline for more success and satisfaction
in your relationship with your child.

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Improve Child Behavior With Peace

By Bob Lancer
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

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Perhaps the most common and easiest mistake to make in how we respond to child behavior is attempting to correct with a stressful, impatient reaction.

While blurting out a direction in stress seems instinctive, there is a far more effective way of leading child behavior.  And though it requires overcoming our first instinct and replacing it with a more conscious and intentional response, it IS possible and it proves far healthier for both parent and child.

For more success and fulfillment with your child,
practice disciplining with peace.

Peace works best for several reasons:

1.      As you maintain your peace and poise when you feel tempted to lose it, you model a higher level of self-control for your child.

Deal patiently with child behavior

Keep your calm when dealing with child behavior problems

2.      As you maintain your calm, you radiate a calming influence upon your child (and calm promotes thoughtful, responsible, and compassionate child behavior)

3.      Your peace and poise provides you with access to your finest judgment, so that you can choose a response that best matches your child’s needs for healthy, happy, wonderful behavior.

4.      Maintaining your peace and poise is far more satisfying than putting yourself through the painful strain of frustration and impatience.

5.      Maintaining your peace and poise conserves your energy, energy that would be quickly drained by an intense emotional reaction (and you when you feel drained your ability to make the best decisions and demonstrate your highest level of skill in ANY area – including parenting – is compromised; which means your level of results must be lower)

Disciplining with peace does not mean passiveness.  It means practicing staying calm while you take whatever actions seem appropriate to you.  The more you practice disciplining with peace, the stronger will grow you ability, the happier and calmer both you and your child will feel, and the more marvelous child behavior you will see.

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Love And Child Development

By Bob Lancer
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

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Healthy child development

Healthy child development depends on love and understanding

All sane parents want child development for their children. We want our children to be the most competent, successful human beings possible. That desire for our children expresses our love for them.  Or does it?

Sometimes a parent may want a child to shine to satisfy the parent’s desire to shine.

A parent who wants his child to perform at a high level may be unconscious of the self-serving nature of that motivation.

Here are some common signs of this selfish motivation for child development:

•       The parent demonstrates pushiness to advance the child’s performance in any area, including school, sports, musical training, etc.

•       The parent’ expresses impatience, frustration, criticism or complaining when the child’s performance level is lower than expected or desired.

Basically, when a parent treats a child’s performance level as more important than how the child feels about himself, his relationship with his parents, and his life the parent is making the child’s
performance too important.

A child may push himself to achieve at high levels under the pressure of insecurity, but the toll that takes can prove dangerous.  The overly pressured child tends to:

•       Experience unhealthy levels of anxiety

•       Experience dangerous levels of self-loathing when her performance disappoints

•       Fall prone to drug or alcohol abuse at an early age as a means of escaping the painful sense of pressure

•       Fall for the temptation to use underhanded ways to appear more successful, like cheating

•       Feel a deep sense of emptiness no matter how much she accomplishes

•       Become overly dependent upon winning others’ approval, to the extent that he makes choices aimed at pleasing everyone but himself

•       Never feel worthy enough for love to enjoy a genuine, loving relationship, and thus suffer from a deep sense of loneliness.

Ironically, for child development, children need to feel secure about their parents’ unconditional love.

Being sensitive to your child’s deeper feelings
is essential for healthy child development.

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A Root Of Behavior Problems

By Bob Lancer
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

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Child behavior problems often stem from the way that a parent attempts to lead, direct or control the child.

When a parent directs a child to, say, pick up after himself, if it is to support the child’s development of a natural, easy tendency to demonstrate responsible self-discipline, a healthy sense of order and a sturdy foundation of self-reliance, it still may require some coaxing. But the child is more prone to cooperate because the direction is consistent with the child’s natural instinct to survive and thrive in the world.

Child behavior problems

Behavior problems hamper child development

Just being aware of the developmental benefits
that you are attempting to impart to your child
will make guiding your child’s behavior easier.

Child behavior problems fester when the parent’s intention is to control the child for the sake of the parent’s personal satisfaction, without regard for the child’s developmental interests. When parents enforce obedience for the sake of obedience, they develop in the child a blindness or a numbness to the child’s inner sense of life-wisdom. This causes the child to feel lost, confused and out of control, prompting increasingly serious behavior problems.

Your child is naturally programmed to succeed in life, but how you relate with your child may either support or thwart this programming. The appropriate goal of child discipline is not to make the child blindly obedient to the authority of the parent, but to help the child cultivate, recognize and heed the authority of his or her own inner sense of responsibility for healthy, happy success in life.

Nature programs children to diligently pursue the development of the strengths, skills and knowledge they need to succeed. The parent’s role is to facilitate this natural programming in the best interest of the child. The more consistently a parent does this, the more the child’s behavior problems dissolve into demonstrations of beautiful cooperation and personal responsibility.

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Improve Your Child’s Behavior Through Awareness

By Bob Lancer
Sunday, August 29th, 2010

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Any anger that you exhibit in response to your child’s behavior works against you and against your child.

To find this out for yourself, closely observe how your child responds, in subtle and obvious ways, to your expressions of anger, frustration, impatience, annoyance and exasperation.

You will soon observe, through your child’s facial expressions, body language, and through your child’s behavior, that your angry reactions lower your child’s self-esteem and self-confidence and causes your child’s behavior to worsen.

Also notice how your angry reactions to your child’s behavior impact you. You will find that they drain you of energy, lower your morale, make parenting unpleasant (if not torturous at times), and makes you more irritable and less effective in every other area of your life, including marriage. If you react with anger on a routine basis you will also see that it negatively impacts your health.

Anger creates behavior problems

Irresponsible angry responses can lead to behavior problems

Once you recognize that your reaction is not working, you can change it. But changing your behavior requires that you first take total responsibility for it. As long as you blame your child, or your child’s behavior, for the way that you behave, you continue giving your child the power to make you react.

As long as you believe that you have no choice but to react in the same old way to the same old problems, your belief keeps you trapped in those old reactions, and those old reactions keep re-creating the same old problems.

Improving your response to your child’s behavior begins with taking total responsibility for your responses and maintaining the open-minded attitude that you can always find a better way.

To begin improving the quality of your experience and your results in parenting, reject any belief that tells you that you cannot change, or that you need your child’s behavior to change before you can change what you do and how you feel about your child’s behavior.

So the most important key is to be aware in the now. You have to notice what you are doing, how you are feeling, and even what you are believing in the present moment to make better choices for better results.

As you become more aware of how you are responding to your child’s behavior, and to the results of those responses, you will find ways to improve your child’s behavior and your parenting experiences.

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