Parenting (Disciplining your Children) the hard issues!!!

With Children, it is essential that you have appropriate car insurance, that is flexible and saves you money. Please visit our friends at Advantage Auto Quotes http://www.advantageautoquotes.com/ to find the best deals around!!!

In parenting today, we will look at a controversial issue: disciplining your children. The area of discipline has been has been researched intensively, Doctorates have been written, and everyone seems an expert.

Just last night while shopping your dear editor had the pleasure of taking his three children supermarket shopping – the children are aged 4, 2½ and 8 months so it’s an exciting experience at the best of times. At the register your editors son (the 2 ½ year old decided to swing on a register gate). After I asked for him to stop once, the lovely check out lady – whose talents obviously go far beyond scanning barcodes – said “that’s not the way to do it, watch this!!!”. Much to everyone’s bemusement she proceeded to walk up to him, slam the gate shut and yell at him.

The outcome was successful, if you consider that he stopped banging the gate. However, the crying that went on for the next 15 minutes took away from this ladies small win. Your editor simply replied ‘you don’t have kids do you!!!’. We left the supermarket with the child still crying, and someone else’s child swinging on the gate waiting to receive the same treatment.

Rather than focusing on what type of discipline you use – this if definitely individual and can be based on race, religion or cultural upbringing, we will focus on the keys on how to make discipline be successful. Just as a note: With Children, it is essential that you have appropriate car insurance, that is flexible and saves you money. Please visit our friends at Advantage Auto Quotes http://www.advantageautoquotes.com/ to find the best deals around!!!

Rule number one: Be consistent. Above all when it comes to disciplining children you must treat all equally and provide the same punishment for the same behaviour.

Rule number two: Give realistic and enforceable punishments. If you can think back to your childhood, you will probably remember your parents saying “you will never watch TV/Play Cricket/etc again!!!”. These punishments that we won’t stick to said in the heat of anger often serve to weaken our control over children. If our children see that we are not going to enforce our punishments they are more likely to repeat the activity.

Rule number three: Never give into your children. As hard as it can sometimes be, as parents we must learn to never give into our children. If we do, they will see this as a sign of weakness, and know that they can get away things. If we let them get away with an activity that we as parents think is not appropriate, just once, then this sets the path for repeating the activity in the future.

Rule number four: Enforce the punishment. As parents if we say we are going to punish, then we must do it. This can sometimes be hard but it reinforces that we are going to act when we say we are going to.

In summary, children are a fantastic part of life and bring countless hours of joy to parents. Children by their very nature are going to test the limits to see what is acceptable. As parents our rule is to guide them as to what we – and society as a whole – accepts.

With Children, it is essential that you have appropriate car insurance, that is flexible and saves you money. Please visit our friends at Advantage Auto Quotes http://www.advantageautoquotes.com/ to find the best deals around!!!