If you can’t spank a child, then what else can you do to discipline a naughty child?

Whether children can be spanked has always been a controversial issue. Some netizens actually commented like this: \”Well, you definitely can\’t spank your children often. If you want to spank, just do it once!\” I can only laugh at this, regardless of whether it can be done once. If you can\’t beat the child into submission, even if you beat him down, the damage suffered by the child will probably be difficult to make up for in his lifetime. Rooney refused to go to school that day and cried and made a fuss. After being beaten by me, I felt very powerless. I deeply realized that beating children is actually the most incompetent sign of a parent, because you no longer have any way to discipline your children. He can just rely on his physical strength to bully children. However, not spanking children does not mean pampering children. The word discipline sounds a bit domineering in today\’s educational environment that advocates \”love and freedom\”, but in fact it was originally a respected word. The definition of discipline in the dictionary is: \”training to cultivate self-control, good character, or order and efficiency.\” The purpose of discipline is to cultivate children\’s self-control ability, even if the parents are not around, even when a person is alone, the child Their behavior is still good because they have a \”policeman\” in their hearts who restrains them. Can spanking a child achieve this effect? Obviously impossible! Children are extremely smart. If the motivation for restraining his bad behavior is fear of being beaten and scolded by his parents, then he will definitely have the thought in his heart, \”Just be careful not to be discovered by your parents next time. Children also live in the present, if not Constrained by the inner \”police\”, they will always think of \”do it first and then talk about it\”, even if they may have to pay the price of spanking for it later. Sadly, when their children make mistakes again, some parents actually think that they have not spanked them enough. Then he beats the child again. Thelma Freberg, author of \”The Magic Years\” said that spanking is the only punishment that parents can become addicted to. This is a vicious cycle because the child never Nothing can be learned, so this cycle of making mistakes and being punished will continue endlessly. The more cruel you are to your children, the more naughty the children will become, and they will even deliberately seek beatings to offset the pain they feel when they make mistakes. Feeling of guilt. Re-understanding children’s bad behavior. After reading my article, a mother asked me: “Don’t children deserve to be punished when they do something wrong? \”I won\’t answer the question of whether children should be punished. Let\’s first discuss what children\’s bad behavior is. Usually, we punish children because we think they have done something wrong. But as far as I have found, most of the time, children do What happens is only \”age-appropriate\” behavior, not bad behavior in the eyes of adults. It\’s just that we know too little about children, and we impose the rules and values ​​​​of the adult world on children, so we treat children\’s age-appropriate behavior Treat it as bad behavior. One morning, I pushed my brother Xiaobei out for a walk and met a mother in the same building. Her daughter Qianqian was one year and two months old and could walk. Qianqian saw Xiaobei holding a little bear in his hand. , was very interested, and came over and reached out to take it. Her mother immediately slapped her palm and said sternly: \”Don\’t steal my brother\’s things!\” What you are doing is wrong! I smiled and said, \”The child is still like this.\”Xiao, you don’t need to be so strict, right? \”Qianqian\’s mother said: \”This guy always likes to take people\’s things and touch them everywhere at home. He won\’t listen to me no matter what I say. I can\’t do it without beating him!\” It won\’t be good until you develop a habit. \”Her tone was very determined, and I didn\’t know what to say. I just thought to myself: A child over one year old has just started to explore the world, and you don\’t let him touch this or that. How uncomfortable that child will be! In fact, at this stage, the most important thing is to take adequate safety protection measures and let them explore. When encountering danger, just gently hold the child away. In this matter, is it the fault of the child or the adults? Is it your fault? I also heard a story about a two-and-a-half-year-old child who suddenly started peeing his pants again after being able to control his urine and feces. The parents didn\’t know that this was the child\’s anal desire period and thought that the child was doing it on purpose. So I was very angry and spanked him every time he peed his pants. The child was scared of being spanked. Later, he no longer peed his pants during the day, but he always wet the bed when sleeping at night. There is also a touching story, One morning, the mother was in a hurry to go to work, but the child suddenly poured the milk from his cup onto her cup, accidentally spilling it everywhere. The mother immediately scolded the child: \”What are you doing? Always causing trouble! Doesn\’t it make people worry less? At this time, the child cried and said: \”Mom, I want to give you half of the milk to drink.\” \”… As long as we observe carefully, we will find that there are many such examples. Facing the unknown world of children, we always seem to speculate on the children\’s motives with the greatest malice. Alfie, the author of \”Unconditional Parenting\” Cohen said that children\’s mischief can usually be explained as a lack of skills or guidance, stemming from a simple desire to explore, but an inability to foresee the consequences of their actions. There is a term in psychology called \”self-certification\” \”Prophecy\” means that people will unconsciously act according to known prophecies, and eventually make the prophecies happen. If you think your child is born to be a troublemaker, then the child will actually become what we fear. So, if you want to make your child better, first change your view of your child. As educationist Nell Noddings says, look at your child\’s motivations in the best possible light, consistent with the facts. Even if we don’t know the truth many times, our judgment tendency should be to “assume the child is innocent in the absence of insufficient evidence.” Set rules and enforce them kindly but firmly. Although most of the time, children behave \”age-appropriately\” rather than in the eyes of adults, there are a few children whose behavior is really troublesome, such as littering. , hitting, spitting, destroying the environment, etc., then we need to set rules, clearly indicate our attitude when children violate them, continue to tell children what our expectations are, which behaviors are worthy of encouragement, and which behaviors are absolutely prohibited, and Carry out kindly but firmly. I saw a mother at the slide in the community. She told her child many times that it was time to go home, but the child refused to listen. What was surprising was that the mother was not angry at all. She always kept a gentle tone and told her child, \”Baby.\” \”It\’s time.\” But the child seemed to graspHe discovered his mother\’s weakness and asked her again and again to \”play a little longer.\” When your child doesn\’t feel the change in your attitude, he will test your bottom line again and again. Thelma Freberg said that all those clever tricks and exclusive secret recipes for training children\’s self-control, in the final analysis, the reason why the child cooperates with his training is because he hopes to get the love and approval of his parents. The disapproval of his parents will It made him feel that his parents had temporarily withdrawn their love and attention from him. If a child feels \”exactly the same\” love after he loses his temper and kicks his father as he does when he is being reasoned with by his father, what motivation does he have to control his temper? If his father treated him the same way no matter how he treated him, why should he try to exercise self-control? There are also some parents who are very casual when establishing rules without a complete plan. Speaking of which, I have to reflect on myself. For a while, Rooney always liked to watch animations while eating, and I didn\’t care. His father was very angry when he saw it, and asked him not to watch animations when eating in the future, but I always thought about this. Sometimes it was loose and sometimes tight, and the execution was not in place, but he still did it often. One day I couldn\’t help but walked over and turned off the TV. He immediately got angry: \”Why can\’t I watch animations while eating in the past? Today I can\’t.\” ?” The establishment of rules does not happen overnight and requires parents to continue to implement them. When we first set rules for our children, they will definitely resist. At this time, we must control our emotions and avoid disciplining our children with emotions. For example, if we agree on a time to watch TV, but the child still refuses to turn off the TV when the time comes, we may be very angry or even beat and scold the child angrily. At this time, the child is likely to be very scared, feel bad about himself, blame himself, and have a reduced sense of self-worth. A wise approach is to remind the child 5 minutes in advance that the time is almost up so that the child can be mentally prepared. If the child is still unwilling to turn off the TV when the time comes, we should take a deep breath and calm down before telling the child gently and firmly. Child: The TV must be turned off now. Try to stick to rules and boundaries in a calm, loving way so your child only has to adjust their behavior and their sense of self-worth is not unnecessarily negatively affected. Give choices and appropriately delegate power. When children are two or three years old, their sense of autonomy begins to sprout. They suddenly find that their daily lives are arranged by their parents. They feel very unhappy, but they cannot express it, so they want to challenge themselves from time to time. Find the feeling of making your own decisions, this is how Terrible Two comes about. For example, if you are playing outside and want to go home late, but he refuses to leave and is still rolling around on the ground, if you confront him at this time, he will definitely cry more violently. In fact, we can easily use the \”choice method\” to solve the problem. , asking him, \”Do you want to play for another five minutes or ten minutes?\” When children are young, they are easily confused by such questions. They will naturally choose one of the answers. Then we only need to set the alarm clock and execute it at the time. But this trick won’t work as the child gets older. For example, Rooney is six years old now. Faced with such a problem, he is very confident.Then he would ask: \”Why should I listen to you? I choose neither!\” Therefore, I decided to give him the power to participate in making rules. For example, I recently printed a time schedule and discussed with him when When to practice piano, when to take up Taekwondo, when to learn English. He was very happy to do such a thing, and even took out the seals of \”Come on\”, \”Progress\” and \”Excellent\”. He hoped that I could give an evaluation based on his daily performance. If it was \”Progress\”, he would have to One star. If it is \”very good\”, it will get two stars. If it is not good, it will deduct one star. If you have accumulated ten stars, you will give him a small gift. If you have fifty stars, you will give him a small gift. A big gift. I thought this suggestion was good, so I agreed. Judging from recent performance, although he still has some iterations in the execution process, it is much better than before. As for the specific details, it still needs to be continuously verified, overturned, and reconstructed during the execution process. We use natural consequences to reasonably punish children. Many times, we have warned our children many times and the children have been able to understand the truth, but they still deliberately violate the rules and challenge our bottom line. At this time, we must punish our children. A necessary punishment. However, it should be noted that the best punishment is definitely not to beat or scold the child, but to \”repay the consequences\”, that is, to let the child bear the reasonable and inevitable consequences of his inappropriate behavior. For example, if a child doesn’t clean up a toy after playing with it and refuses to listen even after being told multiple times, then we don’t have to help him clean it up (if it affects him, just sweep the toy aside). He will know when he can’t find the toy next time. If there are no consequences for not picking up the toys, then if you set the rules for picking up the toys with him, he will be more willing to listen. Thelma Freberg said that the most effective punishments are those that teach children a lesson by seeing the consequences of bad behavior. However, if the punishment exceeds the child\’s ability to endure it, it will not play an educational role, and the child will only respond to us with hostility. For example, if a child is punished for skipping breakfast and cannot eat for a whole day, the child will only feel angry and will never correct it out of regret. Sometimes the smartest thing a parent can do is not punish their child at all. For example, 4-year-old Pippi always likes to beat children and sometimes hit them with stones. Despite repeated warnings from his parents, he still refuses to listen. One day, Pippi got into a fight with his friend Tintin again. He angrily picked up a stone on the ground and threw it, hitting Tintin just above the eye. Blood kept flowing from Tintin\’s face, and Pippi was stunned! The adults rushed over and took Tintin to the hospital. Tintin\’s wound was very deep and had to be sutured. If it were one centimeter deeper, he would have lost his sight. At this time, should Pippi\’s parents punish him? There is no need, Pippi has seen the tragedy caused by his actions, and his guilt has punished him enough. If parents scold Pippi again at this time, it will alleviate his guilt. Finally, I want to say that any discipline method is based on a good parent-child relationship. If you say: \”Nothing works for my child, he doesn\’t listen to me at all and does whatever he wants!\” Then we should reflect on it.Think about it, is there something wrong with the parent-child relationship? At this time, don’t think about how to effectively discipline your children. First, build a good relationship with your children.