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| Discipline should be a ‘positive force’ |
by Amy Bangerter
BAN01002@BYUI.EDU
Scroll Staff |
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Most children desire to be wild and free, to live life any way, to play all day and stay up late, to not have to do any homework or to eat sweets for all meals.
They may not always understand why they can’t have whatever they want, and parents must use discipline to teach their children how to follow the rules.
Discipline is a way of teaching children acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, Karen M. Carlson, who holds a master’s in early childhood education, said.
“Good discipline should be a positive force focusing on what a child is allowed to do,” Carlson said. “The goal of discipline is to help a child change impulsive, random behavior into controlled, purposeful behavior, and discipline should be reinforced with teaching, firmness and reminders.”
Since every individual is different, various discipline methods are used to make it as successful as possible for each case.
Some different disciplinary methods include removing privileges, time out or isolation, reasoning, restraint, ignoring, scolding, love withdrawal, brief room isolation, diversion, child-determined release from time out and reasoning combined with non-physical punishment, Robert E. Larzelere, a Ph.D. associate professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said.
“Punishment can serve to emphasize parental conviction, clear the air between parent and child and relieve parental frustration when a child’s behavior is especially exasperating,” Carlson said.
Some look at discipline in different ways, seeing it as either a positive or negative reinforcer for children, but Larzelere said that how parents handle punishment is more important than if they do actually participate in different methods.
Some also question when a good age is to start disciplining children. Michael Farnworth, a professor in the Child and Family Studies Department at BYU-Idaho, said that when the child becomes mobile parents should start to intervene and convey their will to their children while in complete control.
“Discipline is an ongoing process in which parents can help their children to become self-directed,” Carlson said. “The process is a complex one for both child and parent. The parents’ duty is to provide their child with a clear notion of what is expected, what is allowable and what is not acceptable.”
There are truly too many variables to determine which ones, if any methods of disciplining children, are more effective than others. They are only effective when done appropriately with the right energy and control, Farnworth said.
“My parents used a lot of different methods on my brothers than on me,” April Harber, a senior from Boulder City, Nev., said. “The same methods wouldn’t work on every child because we all have our own personalities and ways of handling things, so my parents had to adapt to using different methods for each child.”
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