Also known as positive discipline, gentle parenting abstains from giving away any rewards or punishments to encourage good behavior amongst children.
No Compliments or Rewards
Many parents offer their children rewards for doing things or bribes may be in form of lollipops, TV shows, toys, etc. They even use statements like good girl or good boy. In positive discipline method of parenting, parents need to abstain from the above.
No Punishment
Parents also tend to punish kids on misbehaving or wrongdoing by giving a timeout, smacking, scolding, shouting or yelling at them. Positive parenting is about avoiding this too.
Using positive discipline, the idea is to make children empathetic, calm and capable of controlling themselves. Offering rewards or punishments to children apparently teaches them to behave in certain ways, for the purpose of either avoiding punishment or bagging a reward.
The Gentle Parenting Approach
Positive discipline is about encouraging healthy partnership with children.
- No Commands – The approach involves giving choices to children than commands.
Eg. Do you want to brush your teeth first or wear your pajamas? - Play way Approach – This involves using play way styles to ask your kids to do stuff
Eg. Let’s play a game of toy arrangement. - Concentrate on Behavior – Sometimes, parents tend to label a child as naughty, quiet, etc. But, more importantly, it’s about the behavior. You may explain to the child how you feel about something.
Example – I feel frustrated when I have to arrange your clothes and shoes that you throw here and there. - Negotiate Limits – Negotiating limits can work well with inculcating positive discipline. For example – How many more minutes before we leave the park?
- Have Trust – Trust your child and it applies to the behavior as well. If the child is misbehaving, it may be an indicator of some needs that are not met. Try to read between the lines.
- Parental Timeouts – When angry, the idea is to give yourself a timeout and not the child. Reset yourself and then talk to the child.
- Treat children as Partners – If a child is involved as an equal partner in the family, he or she has that sense of belonging and even develops responsibility. This also means that the parents apologize, if they go wrong somewhere.
- No force – This approach is about avoiding from telling children to say sorry or thank-you. It even means not forcing to hug seniors if the child does not want to and listen to why he/she does not want to meet, hug or talk to the particular elder.
Benefits of Gentle Parenting
The believers in this methodology feel that children who are raised using the positive discipline or gentle parenting style tend to be sensitive to needs of others because their own needs are met, they are respected and treated as equal partners in the family.
Well, there is definitely more effort involved in raising children irrespective of using this method but rewards and punishments are only short terms solutions as per a child behavior management expert. Positive parenting helps children become productive members of the family
