How to Discipline a Child the Right Way

This is a way to discipline your child effectively.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Confidence in your parenting abilities.
• Patience
• Love
• A place designated for the child to sit.

1. Disciplining your child can be a hard thing to do emotionally. Parents tend to go back and forth on what is a right way and what is a wrong way to go about doing this. Sometimes parents lose focus and patience with their child and give up on discipline. The key thing is to not give up. If you give up, your child will continue to test how much they can get away with and that is NOT something that any parent wants.

2. Time-Out. Now most of you are thinking, "I have tried this before, it doesn't work", but just give this method a chance. You need to find a designated spot in your house and place a chair there. This will be your Time-Out Chair. Use only the designated spot that you have chosen for time-out, if you start to use different places it will confuse your child and they won't be as prone to understanding what time-out is.

3. When your child is acting out, take them to their time-out chair and sit them down for 2 minutes. Now here comes the emotionally hard part for you parents. They may get up, cry, say mean things, act out more, but you have to put them right back. Do not tell them to go back to time-out, actually take them back and place them in the chair again. Do this as many times as needed, until they actually sit there.

4. Now that they have sat there for 2 minutes, go back to your child and sit with them. Have them look into your eyes and tell them why you put them in time-out. Ask your child if they understand why what they did was wrong and tell them not to do it again. Have your child apologize and give them a hug.

5. This is a fairly simple way to discipline. You have to stick with this routine every time your child acts out, it takes a lot of patience, but it is well worth it. If you do not stick with this routine every single time, then it will not work for you.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember to be strong, don't give up, and don't get frustrated.
• If your child goes to daycare or an in-home provider, make them aware of your choice of discipline and ask that they follow it. This will help in the effectiveness of the process.

[rarendarczyk]

on 9/4/2009 Similar approach to Super Nanny's, which is what I use on my 2 year old, and it works! :-)

[evgnspaces]

on 8/30/2009 Discipline of a child has many forms and the most important as you say is consistency.

[sha4852]

on 8/28/2009 Great article, great tips. I think if one disciplines their child from a young age, then as they get older they will know what the parent expects. I'm sure if a parent is starting out with an older child, other methods may need to be implemented along with this.

[tobyandallen]

on 8/10/2009 Thanks for the information. I find that this works for the younger ones. The older ones could care less.

[gahazeleyes]

on 8/5/2009 Very good article. Thanks for sharing 5*****