The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten

The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten Martha Sears William Sears In THE GOOD BEHAVIOUR BOOK, Dr. William and Martha Sears, the paediatrics specialists whose books on birth, babies, and parenting have become widely praised best-sellers, provide a definitive guide to raising happy, well-adjusted, well-behaved children.Disciplining children means equipping them with the tools to succeed in life. In this unique guide, seasoned parents of eight, Bill and Martha Sears draw on personal experience and their professional knowledge as childcare experts to provide an authoritative approach to a broad range of disciplinary issues and practices.With focus on preventing behaviour problems as well as managing them when they arise, the Searses offer clear, practical advice on everything parents need to know about disciplining young children. Believing that discipline starts at birth, the Searses discuss baby discipline, disciplining the toddler, mother-father roles in modern parenting, saying no, self-esteem as the foundation of good behaviour, helping a child to express feelings, the constructive use of anger, good nutrition for good behaviour, and sleep discipline.On handling problem behaviour, the Searses cover sibling rivalry, spanking and alternatives to spanking, breaking annoying habits, and eliminating bothersome behaviours like whining and talking back. The Searses strongly advocate teaching children values like apologising and sharing, and explain how to deal with such issues as lying, stealing, and cheating.In addition, the Searses address building healthy sexuality and discipline in special situations such as after divorce and in the single-parent household. the good behaviour book How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten Dr William Sears and Martha Sears, R.N. Edited by Caroline Deacon copyright (#ulink_1107bbec-587d-5e76-80e8-58656fbd8290) Thorsons An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) HarperThorsons are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. First published by Little, Brown and Company 1995 This revised and updated edition published in 2005 by Thorsons Copyright © William Sears and Martha Sears 1995, 2005 William Sears and Martha Sears assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780007198245 Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007374304 Version: 2016-10-20 contents Cover (#ue2217f0c-99e7-5818-9501-420b88f2200f) Title Page (#u7d4d06ca-a2ce-50c3-9f7b-63edd671b723) Copyright (#ue3892d60-59e4-5d5f-83a7-720e0daff800) A Word About Discipline from Dr Bill and Martha (#u85980e6a-51d1-5c3e-9aaf-195f8c7eca70) I: Promoting Desirable Behaviour (#ua1284f80-9816-5473-b925-872fc46d3ffe) Chapter 1: (#ub30f935c-e844-5151-99a0-cb65a45fbc4a)Our Approach to Discipline (#ub30f935c-e844-5151-99a0-cb65a45fbc4a) Styles of Discipline (#ulink_aafb4025-8074-57ed-8667-d72244850c88) Discipline’s Top Ten – An Overview of This Book (#ulink_4a41de32-4c46-5a3c-9fc3-2f8671fb967d) Chapter 2: (#uc08f4de2-a9eb-5013-ab6d-1b538ed66a29)Birth to One Year: Getting Connected (#uc08f4de2-a9eb-5013-ab6d-1b538ed66a29) Martha and Matthew – How They Got Connected (#ulink_37386ace-3b4c-5ae7-90ea-a46f42aaca99) Attachment Parenting – The Key to Early Discipline (#ulink_871eef34-f2dc-5896-865b-cb298a810cdc) How Attachment Parenting Makes Discipline Easier (#ulink_7b7f8ebe-35a4-5559-b190-9902a085350a) Chapter 3: (#u765d195b-8e83-56dd-a1c9-ab3765142e89)Understanding Ones, Twos, and Threes (#u765d195b-8e83-56dd-a1c9-ab3765142e89) How Toddlers Act – And Why (#ulink_e8a92026-c93b-594b-85dd-f8128e14f3c9) Talking with Toddlers: What They Can Understand, What They Can’t (#ulink_193f4314-5e41-509d-ac5c-0e44ec99d58b) Channelling Toddler Behaviours (#ulink_66afbe6d-ec02-578a-b590-9908cc3adb01) Providing Structure (#ulink_6726fbe6-3947-5dd8-8137-360c01576097) Going from Oneness to Separateness: Behaviours to Expect (#ulink_e47c7203-a88c-5112-b33f-271c12876ba1) Helping a Toddler Ease into Independence (#ulink_b0d9db96-02ea-5f35-a483-da3ef4482ff1) From Two to Three (#ulink_3995bc50-8e1f-5a37-8bb6-97cd55938e07) Discipline Gets Easier (#ulink_6b25f7c8-35cb-5c19-ab4b-5f8d6468ad48) Chapter 4: (#u24045bf5-400c-5f54-aec9-e6dc21855a17)Saying no Positively (#u24045bf5-400c-5f54-aec9-e6dc21855a17) The Importance of Saying No (#ulink_afdd7f29-4131-594a-9259-dafc2c42c262) Creative Alternatives to “No” (#ulink_b3f1a69b-2261-58cc-9ed1-c6e899e00124) Respectfully, No! (#ulink_888621b4-b853-54e4-874c-384eb9f4d14f) Making Danger Discipline Stick (#ulink_710a53be-dc37-58a2-a681-4029979b3dfd) Chapter 5: (#litres_trial_promo)Taming Temper Tantrums (#litres_trial_promo) Why Tantrums? (#litres_trial_promo) Preventing Tantrums (#litres_trial_promo) What to Do When the Volcano Erupts (#litres_trial_promo) Handling and Preventing Tantrums in Older Children (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 6: (#litres_trial_promo)Fathers as Disciplinarians (#litres_trial_promo) Becoming a Dad: Bill’s Story (#litres_trial_promo) Eight Tips to Help Fathers Become Disciplinarians (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 7: (#litres_trial_promo)Self-esteem: The Foundation of Good Behaviour (#litres_trial_promo) Ten Ways to Help Children Build Self-Confidence (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 8: (#litres_trial_promo)Helping Your Child Express Feelings (#litres_trial_promo) Feelings: Expressing or Bottling Up? (#litres_trial_promo) How to Raise an Expressive Child (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 9: (#litres_trial_promo)Making Anger Work for You (#litres_trial_promo) Why Kids Get Angry (#litres_trial_promo) How Adult Anger Affects Parenting – And Discipline (#litres_trial_promo) Getting a Handle on Anger (#litres_trial_promo) Peace for Parents (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 10: (#litres_trial_promo)Feeding Good Behaviour (#litres_trial_promo) Foods That Bother Behaviour (#litres_trial_promo) Tracking Down Feel-Bad Foods (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 11: (#litres_trial_promo)Sleep Discipline (#litres_trial_promo) What Every Parent Should Know About Babies’ Nighttime Needs (#litres_trial_promo) Principles of Nighttime Discipline (#litres_trial_promo) Handling Common Nighttime Discipline Problems (#litres_trial_promo) II: Correcting Undesirable Behaviour (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12: (#litres_trial_promo)Smacking – no? yes? Sometimes? (#litres_trial_promo) Ten Reasons Not to Hit Your Child (#litres_trial_promo) How to Avoid Smacking (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13: (#litres_trial_promo)Discipline by Shaping Behaviour: Alternatives to Smacking (#litres_trial_promo) Praise (#litres_trial_promo) Selective Ignoring (#litres_trial_promo) Time-out (#litres_trial_promo) Help Your Child Learn That Choices Have Consequences (#litres_trial_promo) Motivators (#litres_trial_promo) Reminders (#litres_trial_promo) The Art of Negotiating (#litres_trial_promo) Withdrawing Privileges (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 14: (#litres_trial_promo)Breaking Annoying Habits (#litres_trial_promo) Steps to Breaking Habits (including nail biting, grinding teeth, twitching, lip biting, head banging, nose picking, hair pulling, and throat noises) (#litres_trial_promo) Thumb-Sucking (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 15: (#litres_trial_promo)Disciplining Bothersome Behaviours (#litres_trial_promo) Biting, Hitting, Pushing, Kicking (#litres_trial_promo) Dressing Discipline (#litres_trial_promo) Supermarket Discipline (#litres_trial_promo) Teaching Toothbrushing (#litres_trial_promo) Facilitating a Facewash (#litres_trial_promo) Whining (#litres_trial_promo) Clearing Up Dirty Words (#litres_trial_promo) Soiling Pants (#litres_trial_promo) Name-calling (#litres_trial_promo) Grumbling (#litres_trial_promo) Answering Back (#litres_trial_promo) Exciting the Unmotivated Child (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 16: (#litres_trial_promo)Sibling Rivalry (#litres_trial_promo) Introducing a New Baby (#litres_trial_promo) Promoting Sibling Harmony (#litres_trial_promo) Discouraging Sibling Disharmony (#litres_trial_promo) III: discipline for life (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 17: (#litres_trial_promo)Morals and Manners (#litres_trial_promo) Raising a Moral Child (#litres_trial_promo) Why Kids Lie – What to Do (#litres_trial_promo) Raising a Truthful Child (#litres_trial_promo) Encouraging Honesty (#litres_trial_promo) Stealing (#litres_trial_promo) Cheating (#litres_trial_promo) Teaching Your Child to Apologize (#litres_trial_promo) When Your Child Interrupts (#litres_trial_promo) Teaching Manners (#litres_trial_promo) Sharing (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 18: (#litres_trial_promo)Building Healthy Sexuality (#litres_trial_promo) Fostering Healthy Gender Identity (#litres_trial_promo) Modelling Healthy Gender Roles (#litres_trial_promo) Curious Little Bodies (#litres_trial_promo) Masturbation (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 19: (#litres_trial_promo)Discipline for Special Times and Special Children (#litres_trial_promo) Disciplining the Hyperactive Child (#litres_trial_promo) Disciplining the Temperamentally Difficult Child (aka the High-Need Child) (#litres_trial_promo) Disciplining the Special Needs Child (#litres_trial_promo) Parenting the Shy Child (#litres_trial_promo) Disciplining the Fearful Child (#litres_trial_promo) Discipline Following Divorce (#litres_trial_promo) Caregivers as Disciplinarians (#litres_trial_promo) Closing comments: Putting It All Together – A Sample Discipline Plan (#litres_trial_promo) Index (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) Also by the Same Authors (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) a word about discipline from dr bill and martha (#ulink_8afc110a-cd17-51ee-80f5-a4253e6622f0) Parents struggle with what discipline is and how to approach it. We all want our children to behave well, but the word “discipline” has connotations of corporal punishment and Victorian family values. In fact, discipline is a positive and integral part of your whole relationship with your child. It can’t be pulled out and isolated from the rest of your family’s life and does not need to be punitive – in fact, we would argue that it should never involve physical punishment. At one point we intended the title of this book to be Discipline for Life, because our purpose is to equip children with the tools they will need to succeed in life. This book was written on the job. Many of the stories throughout this book are from our own family, and as you will see, discipline has not always been easy for us nor have we always done it right. We could never have written this book without the many years of parenting we have under our belt. It wasn’t until our kids started having kids that we fully realized the value of what we had done – and hadn’t done – as disciplinarians. Besides our own experience, much of the advice in this book comes from the real experts: veteran parents of disciplined children who over the years have shared their wisdom with us. You may feel that some advice in this book is too lenient, or that other advice is too harsh. You may feel, “I can’t do that with my child.” If it doesn’t feel right to you, you shouldn’t do it. Discipline is not a list of techniques to be plucked from a book, tried insensitively on your child, and followed rigidly. Instead, use the tools in this book to develop a philosophy of discipline, and use whatever tools fit your child and your family situation to create your own style of discipline. How to read this book depends upon your needs. If you are first-time parents with a new baby, this book is a recipe for discipline, a philosophy of child rearing, and for some even a guide for living. If you are already experiencing discipline problems, this is also a repair manual, a fix-it-yourself book. Parents, we want you to realize the rewards of investing in your child’s behaviour. While parents should take neither all the credit nor all the blame for the person their child becomes, we believe that many of the problems society now faces – crime, violence, sexual irresponsibilities, and social insensitivities – stem from poor discipline in the child and in the adult that child becomes. A mother in my surgery, desperate for direction on how she could influence society, said: “The streets are full of crime, the homes are full of violence, and schools spend more time keeping law and order than teaching. I feel powerless to make a difference, and I don’t believe government knows how to change this course of events.” I told this mum: “You can change the world, one child at a time. Do what you and no one but you can do – discipline your child.” William and Martha Sears San Clemente, California March 1995 I promoting desirable behaviour (#ulink_529994e3-997c-5025-aaf5-2ec9c9b3960b) How parents and child get started with each other influences the discipline relationship. Some parents will naturally ease into discipline, and some children are easier to discipline. Other parents, partly because of how they were disciplined as children, lack confidence in guiding and correcting their child. For these parents, the early chapters of this book will help you to become confident parents while giving your child the start you never got. We begin by discussing the attachment style of parenting, a way of getting connected to your child. Our journey into discipline starts by giving you the tools to get connected to your child in the early years, when the little person is under construction. We help you to build your sensitivity to your child, and your child’s toward you; to know what is age-appropriate behaviour; to help your child to become comfortably expressive, to handle anger, and to develop self-confidence. And from that basic relationship, loving guidance flows naturally. Attachment parenting brings rewards for parents as well as children. Putting in some extra effort at the beginning will save time and energy later on. You won’t have to do as much of the repair work we discuss in Part II. chapter 1 our approach to discipline (#ulink_59f41bd2-0082-5753-9a28-b4bd60954468) How do parents get children to do the things they want them to do – and to want to do those things? This is the age-old problem of discipline, a matter not only of directing children’s behaviour but also of motivating it. The answer is grounded not in a catalogue of behaviour-controlling techniques but in the parent-child relationship itself. If you know your child well and are sensitive to his needs, so that he trusts you, the ability to get him to behave well will follow naturally because he wants to please you. Discipline is more about having the right relationship with your child than it is about using the “right” techniques. One of our goals in this book is to help you and your child become more sensitive persons. Our main approach to the topic of discipline can be summed up in one word – “sensitivity” – teaching parents how to understand the mind of their child, and teaching children how to consider the effects of their behaviour on others. Many of today’s discipline (and social) problems can be traced to one source – insensitivity toward oneself and others. So while we do present behaviour-improving ideas throughout this book, we focus mostly on the important parent-child connection. We call this the “attachment approach”. styles of discipline (#ulink_a2c91abd-18c0-511e-acfd-ef8f8fa9a4ea) In order to better understand exactly what is different about our attachment approach, it helps to take a look at various other methods of discipline. Discipline methods fall into three categories:the authoritarian style, the communication approach, and the behaviour modification approach. All three of these ways of guiding children’s behaviour have strengths and weaknesses. In twenty-two years of experience in handling discipline problems in paediatric practice, and in disciplining eight children of our own, we have found that all three of these approaches are useful at different times, though by themselves they are not enough. The authoritarian style. The traditional way of disciplining, authoritarianism, focuses on parents as authority figures whom children must obey or face the consequences. As one authoritarian father put it: “I’m the dad, he’s the child, and that’s that! I don’t need this modern psychology stuff. If he gets out of line, I’ll show him who’s boss.” With this style of parenting, smacking is considered appropriate, even necessary. The good part of this approach is that it makes it clear that parents must take charge of their children. Many of today’s discipline problems result from adults avoiding responsibility for the behaviour of their children. Children need wise authority figures in order to learn what to do and what not to do. Authority will always be an important part of the discipline package. Yet many problems can occur with authoritarian parenting. For one, the child can fail to feel the parents’ love. The child can also internalize fear of the parents’ power to the point that it controls her life, even in adulthood. Most important, however, is that when it is used as the sole method of discipline, authoritarianism simply doesn’t work. There are several reasons for this. First, it causes parents to focus so much on stamping out the bad in their children that they tend to overlook the good. Also, the emphasis on punishment keeps parents from learning more appropriate ways to correct their children, ways that could lessen the necessity for punishment in the first place. Worst of all with authoritarian discipline, children behave more out of fear of punishment than desire to please. As a result, they develop no inner controls. Once the controllers’ backs are turned, the controllees can run wild. They may not throw their toys on the floor as adults, but they will lack the inner discipline needed to motivate and control themselves when there is no threat of dire consequences. The authoritarian style regards discipline as something you do to a child, not a learning discipline is therapeutic Disciplining a child, especially a difficult child, brings out the best and the worst in parents. It challenges them to act like the adults they want their children to become. Thus, in disciplining your child, you discipline yourself. To fix your child’s behaviour, you must fix your own. As you train your child, you train yourself. Yet childish behaviour can also push buttons that produce irrational reactions in parents. Understanding your child’s feelings and your reactions to them can lead to greater self-understanding. Disciplining your child becomes a personal discovery in how you were parented. A mother once told us, “I notice my own mother’s voice coming out of my mouth.” Problems from your past may surface in your relationship with your child and infect your ability to discipline. If you had a childhood full of dysfunctional discipline, you are at risk of passing on these problems. The desire to discipline well compels you to heal the unhealthy parts of yourself so that you can be a healthy parent to your child. process you go through with a child. The newborn who cries a lot is seen as a tyrant whose noises should be squelched rather than as a little person who needs help. The toddler is a manipulator who is out to dominate the parents if they aren’t careful. This sets up an adversarial relationship between parent and child, and confuses taking charge of the child with controlling the child. Authoritarianism creates a distance between parent and child, for two reasons: it is based on punishment, which can easily create anger, and thus distance the child from the parent, and it makes little or no allowance for the temperament or developmental level of the child. Wise disciplinarians become students of their children and work to know their children well. Controllers often find this consideration demeaning to their authority and therefore do not believe it belongs in their discipline package. Because authoritarian parenting is not geared to the child as an individual, this style of parenting seldom brings out the best in parents and child, even when a warm heart is behind the heavy hand. The communication approach. This philosophy teaches that communicative rather than punitive parenting is the way to discipline. Dissatisfaction with the authoritarian/ punishment approach to discipline spawned several schools of discipline based on teaching parents how to better communicate with their children. Most of today’s discipline books and classes are based on this approach. This philosophy suggests there are no bad children, just bad communication; and that children are basically good; parents just have to learn how to listen and talk to them. The good news about this “modern” approach is that it respects the child as a person whose actions result from feelings and encourages parents to delve into the feelings behind the behaviour. Parents learn constructive ways to convey to their children what behaviour they expect. Parents also use empathy and understanding to create a generally positive atmosphere in the home, so they can limit the use of the word “no”. The communication approach emphasizes parenting skills that lessen the need for punishment. Psychology replaces punishment. Smacking is taboo. The main problem with the communication approach is that parents tend to lose their authority, instead taking on the roles of amateur psychologist, negotiator, and diplomat. Children may end up not respecting authority because their parents do not expect them to. This lack of respect for home authority carries over into lack of respect for others, including, for example, teachers and police officers. And if it is overused, most children regard this approach as phoney. The dialogue sounds like nothing more than a list of emotionally correct phrases mum and dad learned at last night’s parenting class, not true communication at all. Instead of saying, “Don’t hit your brother”, communicative parents tend to address their child’s feelings: “You must be very angry with your brother.” This sounds right, and to many parents feels right, but what happens if after identifying his anger the child continues to hit? What do you do then? Another problem is that parents often become so worried that they will damage their child’s psyche if they don’t react in the “psychologically correct” way, that they end up unwilling to take a stand. This style of discipline, therefore, runs the risk of being over-permissive. The behaviour modification approach. Behaviour “mod”, as it is known, teaches that children’s behaviour can be influenced positively and negatively according to how parents structure their child’s environment. If the child continues to hit other children even after you have given him all of the psychologically correct communication you can provide, you simply remove him from the group. Most children respond well to behaviour modification; some regard the techniques as contrived. Although somewhat mechanistic in its approach (it’s strikingly similar to training pets), behaviour modification gives parents techniques, such as time-out, positive reinforcement, and the teaching of natural consequences, which can be called on when the authoritarian and communication approaches are not working. Behaviour modification may be especially useful for children with emotional problems or difficult temperaments who don’t respond to other methods. The trainer focuses on shaping behaviour, conditioning the child without judging her. The bad news about behaviour modification techniques is that sooner or later you are going to run out of them, or run out of the energy it takes to apply them consistently. The greater danger of behaviour modification is that it focuses on external techniques rather than on the parent-child relationship, so that the child is approached as a project rather than a person. The attachment approach. Parents who rely on any of the three above approaches to solve a discipline problem may find that their child’s behaviour improves, but only temporarily. Without a secure grounding in parent-child attachment, the other discipline approaches are merely borrowed skills, communication gimmicks, techniques that are grabbed from the rack and tried on in hope of a good fit. None of these approaches incorporates the idea that discipline must be custom-tailored to the age and temperament of the child and to the personalities of the parents. Every family, every child, every situation is different, and parents must take all these things into account when they are working to correct their child’s behaviour. To do this, they must know themselves and know their child. We use the best from all of the three approaches outlined above, but only after going much deeper to construct a firm foundation: Discipline depends on building the right relationship with a child. With a firm grounding in a connected relationship, a parent can use the other three approaches to discipline (authority, communication, and behaviour modification) in a balanced way. If your child is having discipline problems, you can use your close relationship with her to figure out what to do. Ask, “What is going on inside my child, and how can I help her deal with these problems?” rather than, “How can I get her to behave?” This approach helps parents and children to work together rather than clash. Picture the attachment approach as a pyramid: the foundation is wide and strong, and it takes longer to build, but as you go up you have to use less energy and material. The structure is solid and stands forever. Other approaches may appear convenient initially, but without that broad foundation you will always be making tricky repairs later on. consult the experts When I counsel paediatric students about to enter practice, I tell them: “Surround yourself with wise and experienced parents, and learn from them.” These are the true discipline experts. In fact, much of the material in this book comes from veteran parents in our practice who shared their successes and failures with us. In formulating our own philosophy of discipline we took note of what these wise disciplinarians did and how their kids turned out. This is what we learned: wise disciplinarians spend time and energy keeping one step ahead of their child and setting conditions that promote good behaviour, leaving the child fewer opportunities to misbehave. Wise disciplinarians • stay connected to their children • develop a mutual sensitivity between parent and child • spend more time promoting desirable behaviour, so they need less corrective discipline • have a working understanding of age-appropriate behaviour • use humour to promote cooperation in the child • are able to get behind the eyes of their child and redirect behaviour Love for your child makes you vulnerable to any advice that promises to create a bright and well-behaved child. One of our goals in this book is to sharpen your sensitivity so that you learn to discern between advice that creates a distance between you and your child and advice that draws you closer together. Pick advisers who have raised lots of children and whose kids you like. Make friends with them, watch them in action, and learn from them. Yes, you must take charge of your child, but not in a controlling way. Yes, you should communicate with your child, but in the context of a trusting relationship. Yes, you need discipline tools to help you handle real-life situations, but when these techniques don’t work, you need to fall back on a deeper understanding of your child. With an attachment approach to discipline, you can have confidence that your child will (for the most part) behave well and develop the inner controls needed to live a happy, productive life. Where the authoritarian approach says, “I’ll tell you what to do”, the communication approach says “What do you think is the right thing to do?” and the behaviour modification approach says “If you do that, then this will happen”, our suggestion is to give your child the attachment message “You can trust me to help you know what to do.” Strong parent – child connection. Weak parent – child connection. In the next section we will give you an overview of the attachment approach to discipline. You will see how all these other approaches fit into the total package. Remember that discipline is a package deal, and that all the separate parts must be held together by a right relationship with your child. discipline’s top ten – an overview of this book (#ulink_3d1bf7e3-41df-5376-bcba-944ace29bbb5) One day I was watching a family in my waiting room. The toddler played happily a few feet away from the mother, sometimes returning to her lap for a brief reconnecting cuddle, and then darting off again. As he ventured farther away, he glanced back at her for approval. Her nod and smile said “It’s OK”, and he confidently explored new toys. The few times the child started to be disruptive, the mother connected eye-to-eye with him and the father physically redirected him so that he received a clear message that a change in behaviour was needed. There was a peace about the child and a comfortable authority in the parents. It was easy to see that they had a good relationship. I couldn’t resist complimenting them: “You are good disciplinarians.” Surprised, the father replied, “But we don’t smack our child.” Our understanding of the word “discipline” was obviously different, like many other parents, they equated discipline with reacting to bad behaviour. They didn’t realize that mostly discipline is what you do to encourage good behaviour. It’s better to keep a child from falling down in the first place than to patch up bumps and scrapes after he has taken the tumble. Discipline is everything you put into children that influences how they turn out. But how do you want your child to turn out? What will your child need from you in order to become the person you want him to be? Whatever your ultimate objectives, they must be rooted in helping your child develop inner controls that last a lifetime. You want the guidance system that keeps the child in check at age four to keep his behaviour on track at age forty, and you want this system to be integrated into the child’s whole personality, a part of him or her. If your child’s life were on videotape and you could fast-forward a few decades, what are the qualities you would like to see in the adult on the tape? Here is our wish list for our children: • sensitivity • confidence and solid self-esteem • wisdom to make right choices • ability to form intimate relationships • respect for authority • skills to solve problems • sense of humour • ability to focus on goals • honesty, integrity • healthy sexuality • sense of responsibility • desire to learn Once you know your objectives, you can set about figuring out how to achieve them. Remember, your child is not a blank slate on which you write your wishes. Your child’s personality is guided, not formed, by you and other significant persons. You must take the child’s individuality into account. Because children and parents have different temperaments and personalities, and families have different lifestyles, how parents guide their children will vary. Nevertheless, there are basic concepts that underlie all discipline, no matter what the characteristics of parent and child. The ten basic principles that follow should help you get started in thinking about how discipline will operate in your home. We’ll discuss each of these principles fully throughout the rest of the book. 1. Get Connected Early Discipline is grounded on a healthy relationship between parent and child. To know how to discipline your child you must first know your child. This kind of knowledge resides deep in parents’ minds. You could call it intuition, but that term has a kind of mystique that confuses parents. (“How can I trust my intuition? I don’t even know if I have any!”) The term “connection” is easier to understand. With the high-touch parenting style called attachment parenting (to be explained in Chapter 2), you can build and strengthen this connection between you and your child, laying the foundation for discipline. Connected parents become their own experts on their own child, so they know what behaviour to expect as appropriate and how to convey their expectations. Connected children know what behaviour parents expect, and make an effort to behave this way because they want to please their parents. These parents and children together develop a style of discipline that works for them. In Chapter 2 we describe the tools for connecting with your baby and young child so that you can read your child’s behaviour and respond appropriately, and the two of you can bring out the best in each other. Throughout the rest of the book we help you stay connected to your child and show you how to reconnect if you had a shaky start in the early years of parenting. Unconnected parents, unsure of what is going on in their child’s mind, may lack confidence in their own disciplinary skills, so they search for answers to their child’s behaviour from outside experts. They wander from method to method, groping for answers to problems that could have been prevented. If you and your child are having discipline problems and you feel there is a distance in your relationship, chances are the connection between you and your child needs some work. It’s never too late to improve that relationship, although the earlier you connect with your child the easier discipline will be. Getting connected and staying connected with your child is the foundation of discipline and the heart of the attachment approach. 2. Know Your Child These are the three most useful words in discipline. Study your child. Know your child’s needs and capabilities at various ages. Your discipline techniques will be different at each stage because your child’s needs change. A temper tantrum in a two-year-old calls for a different response than it does in a four-year-old. In later chapters we will point out what behaviour is normal, what’s not, and what to do at each stage of a child’s development. Know age-appropriate behaviour. Many conflicts arise when parents expect children to think and behave like adults. You need to know what behaviour is usual for a child at each stage of development in order to recognize true misbehaviour. We find discipline to be much easier with our eighth child than it was with our first child, mainly because we now have a handle on which behaviours call for instruction, patience, and humour, and which demand a firm, corrective response. We tolerate those things that go along with a child’s age and stage (for example, most two-year-olds can’t sit still in a restaurant for more than a few minutes), but we correct behaviour that is disrespectful or dangerous to the child or to others (“You may not climb on the table”). Get inside your child’s mind. Children don’t think like adults. Kids try crazy things and think crazy thoughts – at least by adult standards. You will drive yourself crazy if you judge a child’s behaviour from an adult viewpoint. A two-year-old who runs out into the street isn’t being defiant, he just wants his ball back. Action follows impulse, with no thought in between. A five-year-old likes her friend’s toy so much that she “borrows” it. An adult may stop and weigh the necessity, safety, and morality of an act, but a young child doesn’t. Throughout this book we will show you ways to get behind the eyes of your child, so that you can understand what causes your child’s behaviour and figure out how to redirect it. We call it thinking “kid first”. Here’s an example. Our Matthew at age two was a very focused child. He would become so engrossed in a play activity that it was difficult for him to let go when it was time to leave. One day when he was playing and it was time for us to depart (we were late for an appointment), Martha scooped Matthew up and carried him to the door. Matthew protested with a typical two-year-old tantrum. At first Martha had the usual “Hey, I’m in charge here” feelings and felt that she was justified in expecting Matthew to obey quickly and be willing to leave his toys. But as she was carrying the flailing child out the door, she realized that her discipline gauge was out of balance and she was not handling things in the best way. Her actions were a result of her need to leave, but they didn’t take into account Matthew’s need for advance warning and a more gradual transition. She realized it wasn’t in Matthew’s nature to click off his interest in play so quickly, even if we did have a deadline. He was not defying her but was just being true to himself. He needed more time to let go of his activities. So she calmly took him back to the play setting, sat down with him, and together they said “Bye-bye, toys, bye-bye, trucks, bye-bye, cars”, until he could comfortably release himself from the activities. It only took a couple of minutes, time that would otherwise have been wasted struggling with Matthew in the car. This was not a “technique” or “method”; this disciplinary action evolved naturally from the mutual respect between parent and child and the knowledge that Martha had about Matthew. At the end of this exercise Martha felt right because it had accomplished what she wanted – getting Matthew out of the house with the least amount of hassle. She taught him a method of releasing himself from an activity without resorting to a tantrum. That’s what discipline is all about. Realizing how much better discipline worked when we considered our children’s needs in our decisions was a major turning point for us. Initially, we had to work through the fear that we were letting our children manipulate us, because we had read, heard from others, and grown up with the idea that good parents are always in control. We found, however, that considering our children’s point of view actually helped us take charge of them. Knowing our children became the key to knowing how to discipline them. They knew we were in charge because we were able to help them obey. That left no doubt in their minds or ours that mum and dad knew best. 3. Help Your Child to Respect Authority Parents, take charge of your children. That’s basic. But being a trusted authority figure in your child’s life does not automatically come with the job of being a parent. The child who is told he must obey “or else” may behave, but he does so out of fear, not respect. “Honour thy father and thy mother” is the wise and time-honoured teaching; not fear them. Honour implies both obedience and respect. How do you get your children to respect you? An authority figure needs to be both warm and wise. First, get connected to your child. Start as a nurturer, a baby comforter. In so doing, you get to know your baby and your baby trusts you. Respect for authority is based on trust. Once your child trusts you to meet her needs, she will trust you to set her limits. One day I asked a mother why she felt so confident as an authority figure. She said, “A lot of my security comes from knowing my children.” Because she understood her children, she was able to guide them wisely and know they would follow. Many parents confuse being in charge with being in control. Instead of directly controlling children, wise authority figures control the situation in order to make it easier for children to learn to control themselves. Children respond with genuine trust and respect rather than fear and rebellion. 4. Set Limits, Provide Structure Establish rules, but at the same time create conditions that make the rules easier to follow. Children need boundaries. They won’t thrive or survive without limits; neither will their parents. To learn about their environment, toddlers must be energetic and exploring. That’s their job. Environmental control is the parents’ job. This involves both setting wise limits and providing structure, which means creating an atmosphere in the home that makes these limits easier to respect. The limit-setting part of disciplining a toddler is to say no to an exploring child who is headed for trouble; the structure part is to childproof the home to provide busy minds and busy bodies a safe place to play and learn. 5. Expect Obedience Your child will be as obedient as you expect or as defiant as you allow. When we ask parents of obedient kids why their children obey, they all answer, “Because we expect them to.” Simple as this sounds, many parents let this basic fact of discipline slip away. They are too busy; their child is “strong-willed”; they make excuses: “It’s just a developmental phase.” In the early years children don’t know what behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable until you tell them. One evening at a kid-friendly restaurant, we observed two families handle the same discipline situation in two different ways. The two-and-a-half-year-old in one family was incessantly climbing over the back of the booth, and she kept this climbing behaviour up until it became disruptive to nearby patrons. Wimpy “don’ts” from the parents did not deter the persistent climber. It was clear this child had no idea that climbing was unacceptable behaviour. She got the message “We prefer that you not climb, but we’re not going to do anything about it.” Another two-and-a-half-year-old got a different message and showed different behaviour. The parent sat the child next to him, frequently acknowledged the child, and kept him involved in the family conversation. As soon as the toddler began to climb, the father immediately redirected him and politely planted the climber back in his seat. With a combination of creative distraction and respectful restraint, the parent conveyed to the child that he was expected to refrain from climbing because climbing would disturb the people in the next booth. The child got the message that any effort to climb the seat would not be all right. The child filed this experience into his memory bank, to be retrieved the next time they went to a restaurant, when, presumably, he would make fewer attempts to climb over the seat. Was the parent in the second family exhibiting controlling behaviour? Yes, but in the right sense of the term. Abusive control is when you forcibly impose your will upon your child, expecting her to obey, but to the detriment of your relationship. When you insist on obedience and help the child to get control of herself, you are using your power over the child in a good way that helps her develop inner controls. Remember, children want limits so that they don’t feel out of control, and they want parents to stand by those limits. They keep testing the limits to see if you will uphold them. When you don’t the child feels anxious that no one is strong enough to contain her. To a child, that is scary. In the following chapters we will show you how to plant a cooperative attitude in your child so he will want to obey. Also, we will share with you tips for getting and holding your child’s attention long enough to get your point across. Your child must understand your instructions in order to follow them. Expect whatever behaviour makes your child a nice person to live with, and then help your child to comply. Your child will thank you later. 6. Model Discipline A model is an example your child imitates. The mind of a growing child is a sponge, soaking up life’s experiences; it’s a video camera capturing everything a child hears and sees, storing these images in a mental vault for later retrieval. These stored images, especially those frequently repeated by significant persons in the child’s life, become part of his personality – the child’s self. So one of your jobs as a parent is to provide good material for your child to absorb. “But I can’t be perfect.” Of course not. No parent is perfect. While writing this book, Martha and I would often say, “We know all this stuff and we still keep making mistakes.” In fact, it’s unhealthy to model perfection – a goal that neither parent nor child can meet (though many are crippled by trying). It’s the overall impression that your child receives that counts, not the occasional blunders or outbursts. If a parent is habitually angry, anger becomes part of the child’s self. The child learns that this is the way people deal with life. If a parent models happiness and trust, with an occasional angry tirade, the child sees a healthier model: people are happy most of the time, but sometimes, difficulties make you angry. You handle the situation and go back to being happy. Parents, you are the first people your child knows. You are the first caregivers, authority figures, playmates, male and female. You set the standard for your child’s attitude toward authority, her ability to play with peers, and her sexual identity. Part of yourself becomes part of your child. Yes, much of a child’s behaviour is genetic. More than one parent has been known to remark, “He came wired that way”, but much is also influenced by the child’s behavioural models. Throughout this book we will show you how to provide your child with a disciplined model. 7. Nurture Your Child’s Self-Confidence A child who feels right acts right. In the first part of this book we will show you how to help your child like herself. The growing person with a positive self-image is easier to discipline. She thinks of herself as a worthwhile person, and so she behaves in a worthwhile way. She is able to forgo some wilful misbehaviour to maintain this feeling of well-being. When this child does misbehave, she returns more quickly to the right path, with less need for punishment. Not so the child with poor self-image. The child who doesn’t feel right doesn’t act right. His parents don’t trust him, so he can’t trust himself. No one expects him to behave well, so he doesn’t. The bad behaviour cycle begins: the more misbehaviour, the more punishment, which intensifies the child’s anger and lowers his self-esteem, producing more bad behaviour. This is why our approach to discipline focuses primarily on promoting inner well-being in the child from the beginning. Throughout life your child will be exposed to people and events that contribute to his self-worth and to others that chip away at it. We call these builders and breakers. We will help you to set the conditions that expose your child to many more builders than breakers, and, of course, to become a builder yourself. Builders and breakers. 8. Shape Your Child’s Behaviour A wise parent is like a gardener who works with what he has in his garden and also decides what he wants to add. He realizes he cannot control the characteristics of the flowers he has, when they bloom, their scent and colour; but he can add those colours that are missing in his garden, and he can shape it to be more beautiful. There are flowers and weeds in every child’s behaviour. Sometimes flowers bloom so beautifully that you don’t even notice the weeds; other times the weeds overtake the flowers. The gardener waters the flowers, stakes the plants to help them grow straight, prunes them for maximum bloom, and keeps the weeds in check. Children are born with some behavioural traits that either flourish or are weeded out, depending on how the children are nurtured. Other traits are planted and vigorously encouraged to grow. Taken altogether, these traits make up a child’s eventual personality. Your gardening tools as a parent are techniques we call shapers, time-tested ways to improve your child’s behaviour in everyday situations. These shapers help you weed out those behaviours that slow your child down and nurture those qualities that help him mature. The goal of behaviour shaping is to instil in your child a sense of what is “acceptable behaviour” and to help him have positive feelings about it. The child learns to behave, for better or for worse, according to the response he gets from his authority figures. When a child gets encouraging responses to desirable behaviour, he is motivated to continue it. When a child gets unpleasant responses to desirable behaviour, it dies out. However, when a child gets lots of attention, positive or negative, for undesirable behaviour, it may continue, especially if that’s the only behaviour that gets a response. Be careful which behaviours you reinforce and how you do it. Most shaping of a child’s behaviour is a when-then reaction. (When Billy’s room is a mess, Mum says, “No more playing outside until it’s cleaned up.”) Eventually, the child internalizes these shapers, developing his own inner systems of when-then, and in so doing learns to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. (“When my room is a mess, it’s no fun to play there, so I better clean it up.”) He learns to shape his own behaviour. At each stage of development, your shaping tools change, depending on the needs of your little garden. In the pages ahead, we give you gardening tips to help you confidently shape your child’s behaviour and make his personality work to his advantage. He will be a more likable person who contributes to the garden of life. 9. Raise Kids Who Care Being a moral child includes being responsible, developing a conscience, and being sensitive toward the needs and rights of others. A moral child has an inner code of right and wrong that is linked to his inner sense of well-being. Inside himself he knows that “I feel right when I act right, and I feel wrong when I act wrong.” The root of being a moral child, and one of the main focuses of this book, is sensitivity to oneself and to others, along with the ability to anticipate how one’s actions will affect another person and to take that into account before proceeding. One of the most valuable social skills you can help your child develop is empathy – the ability to consider another person’s rights and feelings. Children learn empathy from people who treat them empathically. One of the best ways to turn out good citizens is to raise sensitive children. Besides teaching children responsible behaviour toward others and toward things, also teach them to take responsibility for themselves. One of the most valuable tools for life you can give your child is the ability to make wise choices. You want to plant a security system within your child that constantly reminds him:think through what you’re about to do. By learning to take responsibility for their actions in small things, children prepare to make right choices when the consequences are more serious. Our wish for you is to raise kids who care. 10. Talk and Listen Throughout each chapter we will point out ways to communicate with your child so she doesn’t become parent deaf. The best authority figures specialize in communication with children. Often rephrasing the same directive in a more child-considered way makes the difference in whether a child obeys or defies you. (see here (#litres_trial_promo).) Wise disciplinarians know how to open up a closed-off child and consider the Golden Rule: Talk to your children respectfully, the way you want them to talk to you. Besides learning how to talk to a child, it is equally important to learn how to listen. Nothing wins over a child (or adult) more than conveying that you value her viewpoint. Being in charge of your child doesn’t mean putting her down. In Chapter 8 we will show you how to help your child recognize and appropriately express her feelings. Once she is able to manage her own feelings she is more likely to become sensitive to the feelings of others. Each of these discipline points depends on the others. It’s hard to be an authority figure, a good model, a behaviour shaper, and an obedience teacher if you and your child aren’t connected and you don’t know your child. You may know the psychological principles of behavioural shaping, but shapers won’t work if you can’t communicate with your child. And even a connected relationship doesn’t guarantee a disciplined child if you fail to convey your expectation that your child obey you. These ten interdependent building blocks form the foundation of the approach to discipline advocated throughout the rest of this book. Put them all together, and you have a blueprint for raising children who are a joy to be with now and who will make you proud in the future. The balance of love and limits. chapter 2 birth to one year: getting connected (#ulink_01a74d73-caf0-5ed1-b44c-a75f070fffce) Why are some children easier to discipline? It took us more than twenty years of parent and baby watching to answer this question. Our conclusion is: the deeper the parent-child connection, the easier discipline will be. To help you appreciate the relationship between connecting to your child and disciplining your child, in this chapter we will share with you our observations of thousands of parent-child pairs, our experience in connecting with our own eight children, and what other researchers have observed about the relationship between parent-child attachment and discipline. What we observed. We noticed three features of connected kids that made them easier to discipline: • They want to please. • They are willing to obey. • They are more self-controlled. These are the kids you like to be around. We also noticed these features of connected parents: • They respond sensitively to their child’s needs. • They respond appropriately, neither giving too much nor too little. • They know their child. They are observant of age- and stage-appropriate behaviours. • They are in charge of their child in a guiding, not controlling, way. What others observed. In addition to our own observations, we read the most credible research that attempted to answer the age-old question, What can parents do that most affects the way their children turn out? These are known as attachment studies. Attachment researchers use the term “securely” attached children (we call them connected kids) or “insecurely” or “anxiously” attached children (we call them unconnected kids). The striking conclusion that we can make from these studies is that, in addition to our genetic wiring, how we become who we are is rooted in the parent-child connection in the first few years of life. Attachment researchers found that connected kids shine in nearly every area of competence and behaviour. The summary of their observations is shown in the chart on. Modern research is finally concluding what savvy mothers have always known: a healthy attachment in infancy is likely to turn out a healthier adult. How a mother and infant spend the first year together makes a difference, probably for the rest of their lives. The basis for discipline at all ages is being connected to your child. The earlier you get connected, the more successful your discipline will be. To guide your child you have to know your child, be able to read your child’s body language, and give age-appropriate responses. For your child to receive your discipline, your child needs to be able to read and trust you. This mutual connection allows discipline to flow naturally from you to your child, and prepares your child to want your guidance. As rational as this sounds, there are many families where this doesn’t happen. Our purpose in this chapter is to show you how to let this connection happen, right from the very beginning. martha and matthew – how they got connected (#ulink_7b589a9b-45b1-5834-b39b-b13c07de70a0) We love reading teacher’s reports about our nine-year-old Matthew: “He’s so focused.” “He’s so well-behaved.” Our friends give us compliments about Matthew: “He’s such a joy to have around.” “He’s a good influence on my son.” During a toy squabble between Matthew and a friend, an observing parent said, “Matthew is incredibly sensitive to other children.” A new mother watching Martha discipline a conflict between Matthew and a sibling remarked, “How did you know what to do?” How did Matthew come to be this way? Is he afraid of being punished, or is he just naturally “good”? Where did his self-control come from? How can one subtle look from Martha pull him back from the brink of trouble? How did this pair get so well connected? The story of disciplining Matthew goes all the way back to the day of his birth. Immediately after birth Martha gathered up Matthew and cuddled him to her breast. As Matthew lay skin-to-skin, no longer enclosed in the warmth of her womb, he found a new place where he fit. As he fed from Martha’s breast, snuggled against her chest, nested in her arms, he found a new “womb”. When he opened his eyes, he found Martha’s eyes gazing adoringly into his. Matthew arrived knowing where he belonged and feeling that this was a warm and comfortable place to be. Matthew felt right. Though no longer connected by the cord, the pair stayed connected by the hormonal high of new motherhood and the ability of a newly born baby to make his needs known. No distance – physical or emotional – developed between them. During the day Martha held Matthew close to her or wore him in a baby sling, fed him on cue, and responded sensitively to his needs. At night they slept side by side, Martha providing security and comfort to Matthew. This connection, the beginning of discipline, continued through Matthew’s baby days. When Matthew cried, Martha responded, and Matthew learned that his distress was followed by comfort. Because Martha gave Matthew a consistent response, Matthew learned to trust that his mother was responsive to him. Never mind that Martha did not always give the “perfect” response (Matthew may have wanted a change of scenery, but Martha offered to feed him). The important point is that she responded. Even though this was our sixth baby, Martha had to learn to read Matthew as an individual. With time and patience and through hundreds of rehearsals, Matthew and Martha worked at their communication until they got it right most of the time. As time progressed, Martha learned to anticipate Matthew’s needs. When a grimace appeared, a cry was sure to follow. So she responded to the grimace before a panic cry had a chance to develop. Mother and baby were comfortable and happy together. As I watched this pair grow together (and did what I could to support them), I noticed that while Martha’s initial responses to Matthew’s cues involved some trial and error, they quickly became more intuitive. There was harmony to their relationship, a flow of cue giving and caregiving between a little person with big needs and a mother motivated to meet those needs. This led to an inner feeling of well-being that is characteristic of a connected mother-baby pair. The same sparkle was in the eyes of both mother and son. We enjoyed being with him, and he enjoyed being with us. Because Matthew was connected, he felt valued – the beginning of a child’s self-worth, the basis of disciplined behaviour. Matthew’s smiles and contentment made Martha feel valued as well, the beginning of parental self-confidence. I saw a mutual sensitivity develop between Matthew and Martha. When Matthew was upset, Martha knew what he needed, almost as if she could get inside his mind. Martha seemed to feel what Matthew was feeling and vice versa. When Matthew’s behaviour deteriorated or when he was not feeling well, her sensitivity went up a notch. She clicked into motherly overdrive, with a higher level of acceptance and a higher level of giving. Matthew also became sensitive to Martha. When she was having a bad day, Matthew became less sparkly and more clingy. By the time Matthew was a year old, we were well on our way to having a disciplined child.We knew our child, and Matthew felt right. Once we put the initial investment of time and energy into getting to know Matthew, meeting his needs, and anticipating his behaviour, his entry into toddlerhood did not worry us. When Matthew drifted into undesirable behaviour, it was not difficult to rechannel his actions. He was willing to be redirected because he knew we respected his need to hatch. His sense of self was blossoming. (Bill’s connection to Matthew is described in Chapter 6, “Fathers as Disciplinarians” (#litres_trial_promo).) parenting – the key to early discipline (#ulink_6631713f-320b-585c-b1d9-b830273a8ab6) Martha’s style of parenting is called attachment parenting, a style that brings out the best in parents and baby. Attachment parenting begins with being open to the cues and needs of your baby, without fretting about spoiling or being manipulated. It gets discipline off to a good start by helping you get to know your baby. Alternatively, parenting styles that place the emphasis on parents getting their babies on a set schedule, under control, are likely to keep you from connecting with your baby and can undermine the development of true discipline. By knowing your child you learn her needs and preferences at each stage of development. You are able to understand why she behaves a certain way, what situations promote desirable behaviour, and which ones produce undesirable behaviour. You help her feel right by setting conditions that promote the best behaviour. The child who feels right acts right. She operates from an inner sense of well-being and so is less impulsive, less angry, and less likely to misbehave. Attachment parenting will help you reach two goals: to know your child and to help your child feel right. These two goals form the cornerstone of a strong disciplinary relationship with your child. Six features of attachment parenting that will help you get connected and shape the relationship between you and your baby are: responding to your baby’s cues, breastfeeding, wearing your baby, spending time playing with your baby, sharing sleep, and being a facilitator. Here’s how each of these attachments contributes to discipline. 1. Respond to Your Baby’s Cries Before you actually hold your baby in your arms you will wonder, “How will 1 ever know what my baby needs?” You will learn quickly because your baby will tell you. The key is to listen and observe. Babies are born with attachment-promoting behaviours (APBs). These behaviours are baby’s earliest language, cues that he uses to communicate his needs. You will find them irresistible; they’re designed to be that way, to penetrate parents to the core, demanding a response. The strongest APB is baby’s cry. Responding to your baby’s cries is the cornerstone of discipline. When your baby cries, pick him up and comfort him. Don’t waste your time wondering, “Should I pick him up?” “Is he trying to manipulate me?” “Will I spoil her?” Just do it. Don’t worry whether you’ve given the correct response. If your baby is hungry and you try to comfort her by holding and singing rather than feeding her, she will let you know she wants to be fed instead by gnawing on her fists or searching for your breast. With practice, you and your baby will work out the correct cues and responses. Your baby will learn to give you specific cues to specific needs, and you will learn to read body language that signals a specific need. Your response will become less calculated, more intuitive and natural. For some mothers this comes easily; others may need to overcome uncertainty or pre-conceived fears that their baby will control and manipulate them. At some time near the beginning of your parenting career you are likely to hear the advice “Let your baby cry it out” (meaning leave your baby to cry alone). Don’t do it! A baby’s cryis his language – listen to it. A baby’s cry is designed to ensure that his needs for food, holding, rest, and social interaction are met. His cry also develops his mother’s parenting skills. Responding to your baby’s cries is your first exercise in teaching your baby to trust you. It’s an exercise in disciplining your baby. Effect of mother’s response on baby’s cries. We do not mean to imply that it is your responsibility to make your baby stop crying. Only baby can do that. It is your job to help him stop crying. Yet there will be times when baby does keep crying because even your holding or feeding doesn’t help, and you’ll have some research to do. (#ulink_602f1785-2a6b-5e55-b7a5-99ec16b03d50) The difference is he’s not being left to cry alone. You continue to hold, rock, bounce, jiggle, take a walk outside – do whatever it takes to help him. Just being with him helps, and you’ll learn as you go. Keeping baby in arms as much as possible helps him cry less and feel supported when he does cry. The cry is baby’s first communication tool. Listen to it. After the first four to six months, your response to your baby’s fussing will seem to become intuitively less immediate. Baby gradually learns he can wait a bit and anticipate your holding. He can do this because he has learned to trust you and is familiar with that right feeling he gets when you respond to him. You’re in the midst of an activity you want to complete when baby wakes up or decides he’s tired. Instead of rushing over to tend to your baby’s cry you say, “Mummy’s right here …” which can be enough to satisfy baby for a minute or two. Baby develops the ability to wait because he knows you always come. You develop an ear for knowing how urgently he needs you to come. Teach your baby to cry better. Responding to a baby’s cries is not only good for the baby and the parents, it’s also good for the relationship. Some babies have ear piercing cries that distance them from their parents. These cries shatter nerves and provoke anger, diminishing parents’ enjoyment in being with their baby. Yet immediate responses can help mellow this kind of cry. The opening sounds of baby’s cry are not so aggravating. Instead they have a quality that strikes an empathetic chord in the mother and elicits a nurturing and comforting response. This is the attachment-promoting phase of a baby’s cry. We have noticed that babies whose early cries receive a nurturant response learn to cry better – their cries mellow and do not take on a more disturbing quality. Mothers call these “nicer cries”. But a baby whose cries do not receive an early nurturant response begin to cry in a more disturbing way as she grows angrier. These cries can make the mother angry, promoting an avoidance response. As these babies learn to cry harder, a distance develops between mother and baby. Mothers who follow the advice to let their baby cry it out soon begin giving their babies negative labels, such as “difficult baby” or “fussy baby”. These babies, because their cries go unanswered, use the attachment-promoting phase of the cry less, and the more irritating avoidance-promoting sound more and more. This relationship is at high risk for discipline problems because mother and baby are not communicating well. The ultimate in crying sensitivity happens when you become so fine-tuned to your baby’s body language that you read and respond to pre-cry signals and intervene before crying is necessary. Baby soon learns he doesn’t have to cry hard (or sometimes at all) to get what he needs. A very attached and nurturant mother who was well on her way to becoming a good disciplinarian told us, “My baby seldom cries. She doesn’t need to.” 2. Breastfeed Your Baby There is a special connection between breastfeeding and discipline. Promoting desirable behaviour requires that you know your child and help your child feel right. Breastfeeding helps you get to know your baby and provide the response that helps him feel right. Discipline benefits to mother.Breastfeeding is an exercise in baby-reading. Learning about your baby’s needs and moods is an important part of discipline. Part of learning how to breastfeed is learning to read your baby’s cues rather than watching the clock. You learn to read her body language so that you can tell when she needs to feed, when she’s had enough, and when she just wants to feed for comfort. One veteran disciplinarian told us, “I can tell her moods by the way she behaves at the breast.” Baby gives a cue asking for food or comfort, and you respond by offering to feed. After hundreds of these cue-response practice sessions, your responses become completely natural. What was initially a mental exercise (“Is she hungry? Restless? Upset? I wonder what she needs”) eventually becomes an intuitive response. A flow of communication develops between the little person in need and the big person who is in a position to meet those needs. You get in harmony with your baby. This harmony is especially helpful if you need to overcome preconceived fears of spoiling that restrain you from naturally responding to your baby. Jan, a first-time mother whom I talked with at a prenatal interview, had a lot of hang-ups from her past that threatened to interfere with her enjoyment of motherhood. She had been on a rigid schedule as a baby, and control was the big issue in her childhood. Jan was now entering motherhood feeling that her main task as a parent was to be sure that her baby did not control or manipulate her. She feared that picking up the baby whenever she cried would result in spoiling. As part of her parenting plans, she was going to train her baby to soothe herself by letting her cry it out. She also planned to put the baby on a feeding schedule, called parent-controlled feeding, and she felt this would be easier to do if she bottle-fed. She thought this would ensure that she would be in charge, and not the baby. I explained that in order to be “in charge” of her baby she had to get to know her baby and become intuitively responsive. Jan changed her mind and decided to give breastfeeding a try. I’m happy to report it not only worked very well for baby but was also therapeutic for Mummy. The right chemistry. Breastfeeding stimulates your body to produce prolactin and oxytocin – hormones that give your mothering a boost. These magical substances send messages to a mother’s brain, telling her to relax and make milk. The levels of these substances go up during breastfeeding and during other motherly activities such as looking at and caressing the baby. They may form a biological basis for the term “mother’s intuition”. Your reward for spending time touching and enjoying your baby and breastfeeding frequently is a higher level of “feel-good” hormones. A prominent psychotherapist we interviewed revealed her observation that “breastfeeding mothers are better able to empathize with their children”. Discipline benefits for your baby. Baby’s cues for food and comfort are met, so naturally baby learns to trust. Because he spends many hours each day at the breast, he feels valued and “in touch”. Baby feels right, and this inner feeling of well-being translates into desirable behaviour. Over my twenty-two years in paediatric practice I have observed how mellow breastfeeding babies are, especially toddlers who breastfeed through their second year. A nursing toddler seems to be at peace with himself and with his caregivers. Although in the last century of Western culture we have learned to think of breastfeeding in terms of months or even weeks, historically, in most cultures, babies have nursed for at least two or three years. The behaviour-improving effects of breastfeeding have been known for millennia. You will find breastfeeding particularly useful as a discipline tool when a toddler is going through the stage where he is easily frustrated or when his newfound independence frightens him. We knew a secure and independent two-and-a-half-year-old child who after experiencing a setback such as a toy squabble would come to his mother for consolation saying, “Nursie ’bout it.” the body chemistry of attachment Good things happen to the hormones of mothers and babies who are attached. Hormones regulate the body’s systems and help them react to the environment. One of these hormones is Cortisol. Produced by the adrenal glands, one of its jobsis to help a person cope with stress and make sudden adjustments in threatening situations. For the body to function optimally, it must have the right balance of Cortisol – too little and it shuts down, too much and it becomes distressed. Cortisol is one of the hormones that plays a major part in a person’s emotional responses. In reviewing attachment-chemistry studies, we conclude that a secure mother-infant attachment keeps the baby in hormonal balance. Insecurely attached infants may either get used to a low hormonal level, and so they become apathetic, or they may constantly have high stress hormones, and so they become chronically anxious. The securely attached infant seems to be in a state of hormonal well-being, and because the infant is used to that feeling, he strives to maintain it. Scientists are confirming what mothers have always known: Mother’s presence is important for keeping baby’s behavioural chemistry in balance. Besides attachment parenting helping the baby’s hormones, it also helps the mother’s body chemistry. Maternal behaviours, especially breastfeeding, result in an outpouring of the hormones prolactin and oxytocin. These “mothering hormones” act as biological helpers, giving mums motherly feelings. They may, in fact, be the biological basis of the concept of mother’s intuition. Prolactin levels increase ten- to twenty-fold within thirty minutes after mother begins breastfeeding. Most of it is gone again within an hour. Prolactin is a short-acting substance, so to get the best response a mother must breastfeed frequently – which is what babies want anyway. Hormones are biological helpers that improve the behaviour of the baby and the caregiving of the mother. Your choice in parenting style can make them work for you. “But won’t prolonged breastfeeding spoil a toddler? He needs to become independent.” Actually the reverse is true – children who are not weaned before their time are more independent. Premature weaning breaks a connection before the child is equipped to make other connections. Extended nursing, rather than encouraging a child to stay dependent, creates conditions that encourage independence. Offering a familiar connection (breastfeeding) during tumultuous toddlerhood gives the child an anchor from which he can explore the unfamiliar. The idea of breastfeeding past your child’s first birthday may seem strange to you, but we believe that it is important that children not be weaned before they show signs of readiness. Weaning is a part of growing up. It should take place gradually. We have noticed that children who have been weaned too early show what we call diseases of premature weaning: aggression, anger, more tantrum-like behaviour, anxious clinging to caregivers, and less ability to form deep and intimate relationships. Breastfeeding seems to mellow out the aggressive tendencies of toddlers and restores balance in their behaviour. In 1990, former surgeon general Dr Antonia Novello, after extolling the benefits of breastfeeding, added, “It’s the lucky baby, I feel, who continues to nurse until he is two.” (See “Weaning from Attachment” (#uf42ee25b-d1a9-4356-a4d0-8ff30b08317e).) Can a bottle-feeding mother achieve the same degree of closeness with her baby as the breastfeeding mother? We believe she can, but she has to work at it harder since she is not part of a natural feedback loop enjoyed by the breastfeeding baby and mother. The bottle-feeding mother is more likely to schedule her baby’s feedings, because formula-fed babies are easier to schedule (artificial baby milks take longer to digest). Bottle-feeders tend to worry more about spoiling their babies. A bottle-feeding mother does not have the benefit of the hormonal boost that happens with breastfeeding or the intimate skin-to-skin connection. Holding her baby lovingly in the breastfeeding position, caressing her baby during feeding, and giving a nurturing response to cries can stimulate her mothering hormones, yet the effects are not as great as with breastfeeding. By carrying her baby a lot, responding to her baby’s cries, and making feeding time a nurturing interaction, a bottle-feeding mother can achieve a level of sensitivity and knowledge of her baby closer to what comes with breastfeeding than if she didn’t add these attachment boosters. We realize there are mothers who would be deeply unhappy breastfeeding. It’s important for a mother to choose a method of feeding that reflects a happy mother to her baby. Perhaps as inner conflicts are explored she’ll want to breastfeed her next baby. 3. Wear Your Baby Beginning in the early weeks, hold or wear your baby in a baby sling for as many hours a day as you and your baby enjoy. Since 1985 we have been studying how babywearing improves behaviour. Parents would come into our surgery exclaiming, “As long as I wear our baby he’s content.” Research has validated this parental observation: babies who are carried more cry less. For centuries parents have known that motion calms babies, especially the rhythmic motion of parents’ walking. Carrying modifies behaviour primarily by promoting quiet alertness – the state in which babies behave best. Babywearing helps you know your infant. Babywearing also improves the way babies feel. The carried baby feels like a part of the parents’ world. He goes where they go, sees what they see, hears what they hear and say. Babywearing helps the baby feel included and important, which creates a feeling of rightness that translates into better behaviour and more opportunities for learning. The brain is stimulated through motion, increasing the baby’s intellectual capacity, a forerunner to the child’s ability to make appropriate sensory-motor adaptations in the future. Wearing improves the sensitivity of the parents as well. Because your baby is so close to you, in your arms, in constant contact, you get to know him better. Closeness promotes familiarity. Because your baby fusses less, he is more fun to be with and you tend to carry your baby more. The connection grows deeper. Like breastfeeding, babywearing promotes eye-to-eye contact. As I watch babywearing pairs parade through my surgery, I notice that not only are these babies and mothers physically connected, they are visually in tune. What a wonderful way to learn to read each other’s faces. As you will learn throughout this book, the ability to read and respond to each other’s “looks” is a powerful discipline tool. Over the years I have observed that “sling babies” become children who are easier to discipline. 4. Play with Your Baby What does playing have to do with discipline, you may wonder. Play helps you know your baby’s capabilities and age-appropriate behaviours at each stage of development. It sets the stage for you and your baby to enjoy one another. It opens the door to a valuable discipline tool you will need at all stages of your child’s life – humour. To smile, laugh, and giggle your way through a situation sidesteps a conflict, gets the child’s attention, opening his mind to your discipline. You want your baby to grow up to be a happy person, so it follows that you want him to have lots of practice being happy. And nothing makes a baby happier than to play with mum or dad. If the child is used to following instruction during play, he is likely to listen to you during correction. Play is part of discipline. Playing together gives your baby the message, “You are important to me”, a valuable feeling for growing self-esteem. Peek-a-boo, stacking blocks, doing puzzles, playing pretend helps you get behind the eyes of your child and view things from her perspective – a valuable discipline tool for you to learn. Play brings discipline down to earth. With the proliferation of parenting classes and the overemphasis on “techniques” of modern discipline, it’s easy for parents to get caught up in the science of discipline yet overlook the simplicity. Much of discipline is just being with your baby enjoying the simple things of life. 5. Share Sleep with Your Baby Nighttime is scary for little people, but our usual Western custom is to separate parents and babies at night. We would like you to consider nighttime not as a block of time for you to finally get away from your baby but a special time when you can strengthen your connection. Every family needs to work out a sleeping arrangement where all sleep best, and we believe the nighttime environment that can best strengthen your parent-child attachment allows for baby sleeping near you – a style we call sharing sleep. Our observations over more than twenty years, our examination of studies of mother-infant sleep-sharing pairs, and our own studies on one of our babies lead us to conclude that a baby’s overall physiological system works better when baby sleeps next to mother. The cardio-respiratory system is more regulated, less stressed; therefore, baby is less stressed and thrives better. Besides these physical benefits, there are emotional benefits to the sleep-sharing pair. Babies show less anxiety. They feel right at night, just as they do during the day. The connection continues. Sleep-sharing babies get the message “I’m just as valuable to be next to at night as I am during the day. I belong to someone twenty-four hours a day.” For a mother who responds to her baby’s cues, breastfeeds, and wears her baby, sleep sharing naturally becomes part of the attachment package. Our daughter-in-law Diane, who is a new and very attached mother, said, “I can’t imagine us sleeping away from each other. Nighttime with Lea is our special time to be together without interference.” The time in your arms, at your breasts, and in your bed lasts a very short while in the life of a growing child, but the messages of love and security last a lifetime. 6. Become a Facilitator At each stage of development, a child needs significant people who care about him and whom he cares about. These people act as facilitators, helping the child learn how to conduct himself in the world. A facilitator is like a consultant, a trusted authority figure who provides emotional refuelling to the child, a person to lean on who helps the child both develop his skills and take advantage of the resources around him with a view toward becoming self-sufficient. The facilitators don’t tell the child what to do; they help the child learn what to do. They don’t give commands; instead they take cues from the child and weave their wishes into the child’s wants. The child says, “I do it myself”; the facilitator says, “Yes, you can!” The facilitator watches for teachable moments and takes advantage of them. A wise disciplinarian in my practice describes her role as facilitator: “My job is to help my child glean from life’s experiences lessons he might not otherwise glean for himself.” Babies need facilitators. You have been functioning as a facilitator ever since the moment of birth. You positioned your baby at the breast to make it easier for her to feed. You held the chair steady to make it safer for the beginning cruiser to keep his balance. You arranged child-sized furniture, utensils, and cups to make it easier for your child to have a snack. A facilitator structures the environment so a child doesn’t waste energy. She helps the child focus on important tasks. There needs to be mutual trust between the child and the facilitator. They are interdependent (see meaning of “interdependence” (#ua05efc30-0cab-46ed-8cd8-cad895dff7b1)). The child relies on the helper’s availability and the helper is sensitive to the child’s needs, taking cues from the child and filling in the missing steps to help the child complete a task. The facilitator anticipates what the child needs at each stage of development in order to thrive. Thinking of yourself as a facilitator keeps you from hovering over and smothering your child with overprotection. Being on standby as needed helps you and your child negotiate an appropriate level of independence. When your child is going through a healthy independent stage you stay connected, but at a distance. Expect discipline problems to occur when the child lacks a facilitator. A child forced to function on his own will become frustrated and discouraged. I’ve watched children try to function without the help of a parent or someone else to act as a facilitator: The child seems angry, as if he senses that he is missing out on the help he needs. He will either withdraw out of insecurity or, if gifted with a persistent personality, make himself noisy enough to get help. Either way, his emotional and intellectual development are compromised. One of the main features I have noticed among attachment-parented children and their facilitator parents is these children know how to use adult resources to their advantage, and the parents know how to respond appropriately. Ideally, for two years, the facilitator is mainly the mother and then gradually both of the parents as the father helps the child move away from “mother only”. As children grow they may latch on to additional facilitators: grandparents, teachers, coaches, scoutmasters, and so on. It’s the parents’ job to monitor these, persons of significance in their child’s life. Behaviour often deteriorates when a child must function without these special persons. Throughout this book you will find many suggestions to help you become a facilitator. how attachment parenting makes discipline easier (#ulink_ec48dc61-6af7-5c14-8039-c940ce7d57d9) You probably never thought of these attachment tools as being acts of discipline, but they are. Attachment parenting is like immunizing your child against emotional diseases later on. Here are other ways this style of parenting improves the behaviour of your child and the way he experiences life. Jill, an attached mother of three, told us: “Knowing my children empowers me.” This kid knowledge becomes like a sixth sense enabling you to anticipate and control situations to keep your kids out of trouble. Our daughter-in-law Diane describes her experience with this style of parenting: “I know Lea so deeply at every stage of her development. Attachment parenting allows me to put myself in her shoes. I imagine how she needs me to act.” Attachment parenting promotes mutual sensitivity. At six years of age Matthew would come to me with a request, “Dad, I think I know the answer, but …” Because our mutual sensitivity and trust is so high, he knows when to expect a “yes” or a “no” answer. He tests me, but knows my answer. The connected parent and child easily communicate each other’s feelings. Once connected to your child you will be able to read his body language and appropriately redirect behaviour, and your child will be able to read your desires and strive to please. As one connected parent put it: “Often all I have to do is look at him disapprovingly and he stops misbehaving.” Attachment parenting produces people who care. General Norman Schwarzkopf once said, “Men who can’t cry scare me.” Many of the world’s problems can be traced to one group of people being insensitive to the needs and rights of another group. One of the mothers in my practice arranged a talk for a group of attachment mothers, and she invited one of the survivors of the Holocaust to come and tell her story. Commenting on the social benefits of sensitive parenting, the survivor concluded her talk, “Because of children like yours, this tragedy will never happen again.” an exercise in sensitivity Because of misguided teachings from “experts”, some mothers have to go through “deprogramming” before they can let themselves respond naturally. Try this exercise: When a baby cries (yours or someone else’s), examine the first feeling that comes over you. Does the cry bother you in the right way, prompting an irresistible urge to lovingly pick up and comfort the baby? Or does the baby’s cry trigger insensitivity: “I’m not going to let this little person control me.” If you have a less than nurturing response, you are at risk for a disappointing disciplinary relationship with your child, and you need to learn more about the needs of tiny babies and to rethink the giving end of parenthood. A mother I counselled in my surgery during a prenatal interview was worried that she wouldn’t be a good mother. I asked her how she feels when she hears babies cry. She responded, “I just can’t stand to leave a baby crying. I want to rush over and pick that baby up. It bothers me to see other mothers ignore their babies’ cries.” I assured this woman that she was very likely to be a good mother because she had the quality of sensitivity. Cries bother sensitive women – and men too. Cries are supposed to bother us. Attachment parenting organizes babies. To understand better how attachment parenting organizes infant behaviour, think of a baby’s gestation as lasting eighteen months – nine months inside the womb, and at least nine more months outside. The womb environment regulates the baby’s systems automatically. Birth temporarily disrupts this organization. Attachment parenting provides a gentle, sensitive, external regulating system that takes over where the womb left off. When a mother carries her baby her rhythmic walk, familiar from the baby’s time in the womb, has a calming effect. When the baby is cuddled close to his mother’s breast, her heartbeat reminds him of the sounds of the womb. When baby is draped across mum or dad’s chest, he senses the rhythmic breathing. Being kept warm and held close calms him and helps him control his reflexes. This high-touch style of parenting, with its emphasis on keeping the baby comfortable, has a regulating effect on the infant’s disorganized rhythms. Baby knows where he belongs. With his needs for food, warmth, comfort, and stimulation receiving predictable responses, the attachment-parented baby is physiologically better off. A 1993 study compared sleep-wake patterns and heart rates of breast- and bottle-fed babies. The breastfed babies showed more energy-efficient heart rates and sleep patterns. They were more organized. The researchers concluded that a baby who isn’t breastfed is like an engine out of tune. synthetic substitutes Soothing babies has become big business. There are vibrating beds, lullaby-singing teddy bears, battery-operated swings, and bottle holders. These synthetic sitters are snapped up by tired parents in hopes of making life with baby easier. While many parents need a break, and artificial soothers can provide this occasionally, a steady diet of synthetic subs will sabotage your discipline. Using your own resources when the going gets tough boosts your creativity, your patience, and your confidence – all of which you will need to discipline your child. And if the use of artificial substitutes gets out of balance, your baby is at risk of learning to be comforted by things rather than people. As you browse through baby stores, hold on to your credit cards. Relying too much on synthetic help early on may set you up for later disappointment when you realize there are no substitutes for disciplining your child. Attachment parenting promotes quiet alertness. Both research and our own experience have demonstrated that attachment-parented babies cry much less. So what do they do with their free time? They spend much of it in the state of quiet alertness. During waking hours, babies go through many types of behaviour: crying, sleepy, alert and agitated, and quietly alert. Babies are most attentive to their environment in the state of quiet alertness. By not fussing and crying, they conserve their energy and use it for interacting. The result is that they are more pleasant to be with. And because a responsive parent takes time to enjoy the baby when he is in this state, the baby is motivated to stay quietly alert for longer. Attachment-parenting promotes trust. Being in charge of your child is an important part of discipline. Children need to know that they can depend on their parents not only to meet their needs but also to keep them on the right path. Authority is vital to discipline, and authority must be based on trust. It is crucial for baby to trust that he will be kept safe. An attachment-parented baby learns to trust the one person who is strongly connected to him. When an infant can trust his mother to meet his needs, he will also look to her to help him behave. connected kids are less accident-prone Securely attached children do better in unfamiliar situations because they have a better understanding of their own capabilities. In parent parlance, they are less likely to “do dumb things”! The organizing effect of attachment parenting helps to curb their impulses. Even children with impulsive temperaments tend to get into trouble less if they are securely attached to a primary caregiver. A child who operates from internal organization and a feeling of rightness is more likely to consider the wisdom of a feat before rushing in foolishly. This may be because connected kids are not internally angry. Anger adds danger to impulsivity, causing a child to override what little sense he has and plunge headfirst into trouble. In essence, connected kids are more careful. Also, connected parents are naturally more vigilant and are more likely to keep on the heels of their toddler when visiting homes that are not childproofed. Attachment parenting promotes independence. If you are wondering whether attachment parenting will make your child clingy and dependent, don’t worry. Attachment parenting actually encourages the right balance between dependence and independence. Because the connected child trusts his parents to help him feel safe, he is more likely to feel secure exploring the environment. In fact, studies have shown that toddlers who had a secure attachment to the mother tended to play more independently and adapt more easily to new play situations than less attached toddlers. (To read more about how attachment fosters independence, see here (#ulink_14c43d50-62d6-5598-838c-62b4e7a05160)). Between one and two years of age, an infant perfects a cognitive ability called person permanence – the ability to recreate mentally the image of a person, even when that person is out of sight. A baby who is securely attached to his caregiver carries the mental image of that caregiver into unfamiliar situations. Even when mother is not physically there, she can be there in the child’s mind, and this gives the child further confidence to explore. Attachment parenting helps the child build a mental image that is loving and dependable, which helps the child feel confident and capable. A child who is pushed into independence before she is ready to maintain this mental image will be either anxious and clingy or she may register no concern whatsoever. Much of her exploring energy will be diverted to handling these feelings instead of into learning. the unconnected child Suppose parents, for fear of spoiling their baby or letting her manipulate them, restrain themselves from responding to her cries and develop a more distant, low-touch style of parenting. What happens then? The baby must either cry harder and more disturbingly to get her needs met or give up and withdraw. In either case, she finds that her caregiving world is not responsive. Eventually, since her cues are not responded to, she learns not to give cues. She senses something is missing in her life. She becomes angry and either outwardly hostile or else withdrawn. In the first case, the baby is not very nice to be around, and parents find ways to avoid her. In the second case, the baby is harder to connect with, and again, parents and child enjoy each other less. Either way, this child will be difficult to discipline. She comes to believe that safety and security depend on no one but herself. Problems in relationships develop when a child grows up thinking she only has herself to trust in. Since the parents don’t allow themselves to respond intuitively to their baby’s cues, they become less sensitive and lose confidence in their parenting skills, another set-up for discipline problems. You can tell the unconnected baby by his expression – or lack of one. He does not seek eye contact and he does not evoke the warm feelings so evident with connected babies. “He looks lost” is a comment we once heard about an unconnected baby. You can also tell an unconnected baby by the way he holds himself stiff as if moulded to fit his baby seat rather than to soft shoulders. As the unconnected child gets older, much of his time is spent in misbehaviour, and he is on the receiving end of constant reprimands; or he tunes out and seems to live in his own separate world. This child becomes known as sullen, a brat, a whiner, a spoiled kid. These undesirable behaviours are really coping strategies the child uses in search of a connection. The unconnected child doesn’t know how to regain a sense of well-being because he has no benchmark to measure attachment. He has difficulty finding a connection because he isn’t sure what he lost. This scene results in patch-up parenting, with perhaps much time spent in counsellors’ offices. The unconnected child is less motivated to please; he’s less of a joy to be around. As a result, unconnected parents don’t find job satisfaction on the domestic scene, so they seek fulfilment in professions and in relationships not involving their child. Parent and child drift further apart. Unlike the connected child who is a joy to be around and keeps making healthy friendships, peers may shun the unconnected child. He even puts off people who can help him form connections. The emotionally rich get richer, the emotionally poor get poorer. With professional counselling, children and parents can begin connecting and settle into a style of discipline that brings out the best in each other. It will require a lot of energy to accomplish this at a stage past when it naturally is designed to happen. Newborns are more into being held than six-or nine-year-olds. The best chance for staying connected later on is to get connected early. (See “How to Raise an Expressive Child” (#litres_trial_promo), and “Getting a Handle on Anger” (#litres_trial_promo).) Attachment parenting enables intimacy. Attachment-parented kids have a look about them. You can spot them in a crowd. They are the persons looking intently at other persons. They seem to be genuinely interested in other persons. I love to engage these children in visual contact because they are so attentive. The reason these kids will look you straight in the eye is that they have grown up from birth being comfortable connecting to people, and they connect appropriately. Their gaze is not so strained or penetrating as to put off the other person, or so shallow as to convey lack of interest. It’s just the right visual fix to engage people and hold their interest. Much of a child’s future quality of life (mate and job satisfaction) depends on the capacity for intimacy. Therapists we interviewed volunteered that much of their time is spent working with people who have problems with intimacy, and much of their therapy is aimed at re-parenting their patients. Because connected kids grow up learning to bond with people rather than things, they carry this capacity for intimacy into adulthood. Many a night I watch two-year-old Lauren inch over and snuggle next to Martha in bed. Even at this young age Lauren is learning a lifelong asset – the capacity for feeling close. Attachment parenting helps you discipline the difficult child. This style of parenting is especially rewarding in disciplining kids we call high-need children. Sometimes parents don’t realize until their child is three or four years of age that they have a special child who needs a special kind of discipline (for example, a hyperactive child, a developmentally delayed child, or a temperamentally difficult child). By helping you shape your child’s behaviour and increase your sensitivity to the child’s special needs, attachment parenting gives you the right start that increases your chances of having the right finish. Connected parents have a head start in disciplining high-need children because they are sensitive to their child’s personality. The connected high-need child is easier to discipline because he is more responsive to his parents. One of the reasons temperamentally difficult children are difficult to discipline is they are disorganized. As we discussed earlier, attachment promotes organization. In fact, studies comparing the long-term effects of early parenting styles on a child’s later development show that attachment parenting (or the lack of it) most affects the character trait of adaptability (the ease with which a child’s behaviour can be redirected to the child’s and parents’ advantage). Adaptable children are better prepared to adjust to life’s changing circumstances. They learn to accept correction from others and eventually correct themselves. Some children are born puzzles. Attachment parenting helps you put the pieces together. reconnecting What if, due to medical problems, domestic changes, or just bad parenting advice, you weren’t able to connect with your infant during the first two years, and now you are having discipline problems with your child? The beauty of human nature is its resiliency, the ability to bounce back from a poor start and have a happy ending. Yet reconnecting can be complicated by developmental mistiming. If you connected early, you were bonding when your baby wanted to bond. Trying to connect with the older child is more difficult because you are trying to bond when the child is working on breaking away. Still, it’s never too late to get attached. If you are having discipline problems with your child, no matter what your child’s age, step one on the road to recovery is to examine the depth of your parent-child connection. If it is weak, strengthen it. Remember, a child’s attitude wasn’t built in a day, and behaviour doesn’t change overnight. You may need to devote six to twelve months to the reconnection process. This time may include drastic lifestyle changes, involvement in your child’s projects, a high frequency of focused attention, and lots of time just having fun with your child. One parent we know home-schooled her six-year-old for a year; another father took his seven-year-old with him on frequent business trips. One parent described his reconnecting process with a difficult child: “It was like camping out with our five-year-old for a year.” Whatever you need to do to shorten the distance between you and your child, do it; and discipline will follow naturally. Timing is important. Developing children take two steps forward when they need to act and feel independent. The child may be generally negative; “I do it myself.” During this stage parent-child conflicts are likely to occur. Then they take one step backward, a positive stage when they return to home base for some needed emotional refuelling. During this stage, the child is most open to reconnecting. Watch for openers: the child sits next to you on the couch while you are reading; stop reading the magazine and read your child. Your older child reappears for the nighttime story to the toddler and hints for “one night” sleeping in your room; honour this request. When your child shadows you, take the opportunity to reconnect. If you try to bond while your child is trying to break, you are likely to meet resistance. building better-behaved brains The developing brain of an infant resembles miles of tangled electrical wire called neurons. At the end of each neuron tiny filaments branch out to make connections with other neurons, forming pathways. This is one of the ways the brain develops patterns of association: habits, and ways of acting and thinking; in other words organization. Attachment parenting creates a behavioural equilibrium in a child that not only organizes a child’s physiology but her psychological development as well. In a nutshell, attachment parenting helps the developing brain make the right connections. The unconnected child, however, is at risk for developing disorganized neurological pathways, especially if that infant has come wired with even more than her average share of disorganized pathways. This child is at risk of developing behavioural problems later on, namely hyperactivity, distractibility, and impulsivity – features of one of the most increasingly prevalent “diseases” in childhood and now adulthood – attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A person’s brain grows more in the first three years than anytime in life. Could the level of nurturing during those formative years affect the way the behavioural pathways in the brain become organized? We believe it does, and we also believe that research will soon confirm that many later child and adult behavioural problems are really preventable diseases of early disorganization. (See related topic, “Disciplining the Hyperactive Child” (#litres_trial_promo).) Attachment parenting encourages obedience. The real payoff of attachment parenting is obedience. This style of parenting, besides opening up parents to the needs of their baby, also opens up the baby to the wishes of the parent. The universal complaint of parents is “My child won’t obey”. How compliant your child is depends upon his temperament, which you can’t control, and the depth of your parent-child connection, which you can influence. Because your minds mesh, the connected child is more open to accept your perspective and switch from his mind-set to yours, to listen to you instead of being closed to you. The connected child trusts that parents know best.The attached child wants to please. Even the iron-willed child bends to the will of the mother or father who operate on the parenting principle “The stronger my child’s will, the stronger must be my connection.” It is this connection that gives parents confidence. Wanting to please and trying to obey are the behavioural trademarks of the connected child. Jenny, the mother of a high-need baby, who is now a strong-willed four-year-old volunteered: “Initially attachment parenting took more energy and was less convenient. Now caring for Jonathan is easier because discipline flows naturally between us. I’m finally beginning to cash in on my investment.” For more benefits of attachment parenting and discipline, see: Chapter 3, “Understanding Ones, Twos, and Threes” (#litres_trial_promo); Chapter 7, “Self-Esteem: The Foundation of Good Behaviour” (#litres_trial_promo); Chapter 8, “Helping Your Child Express Feelings” (#litres_trial_promo); and the special feature “Inner Peace” (#litres_trial_promo). (#ulink_72f8d418-1be8-552a-8cdc-b7d7c3362ee4) We discuss each of these attachment tips in greater detail in The Baby Rook (Thorsons, 2005). We treat them here in briefer form to show how they lay the foundation for discipline. chapter 3 understanding ones, twos, and threes (#ulink_de577dc5-f765-5f9f-8427-9f4cf3f8f5e8) Hold on to your hat – the fun begins. Babies turn into toddlers, and their new skills add challenges to being a parent. As a child’s physical and mental world grows, parents begin to think about how to shape his behaviour to help him learn, yet keep him out of trouble. This is an important learning period for parents as well. To understand how to discipline a toddler, it’s helpful first to understand toddlers and their behaviour. Let’s get into the mind and behind the eyes of the typical toddler to learn why this fascinating little person is so challenging. how toddlers act – and why (#ulink_c36480c2-c11c-5692-ac3d-a0fe6d862c2a) At each stage developmental skills dictate behaviour. To cope with toddler behaviour it helps to remember the basic principle of development discipline: The drives that babies have in order to develop are the same ones that create discipline challenges. Babies need a strong desire to explore so they can learn, yet these ventures can lead them into uncharted territory. By understanding what skills click in when, you can be prepared for the actions that result and channel them into positive behaviours. From one to two years of age a baby gets a lot of what he needs to be more independent – “wheels” to roll on and a “horn” to blow. With these tools he feels ready to travel the roads of the world – or at least the immediate neighbourhood. Here are the changes you can expect. Wheels to run on. Imagine how it must feel to learn to walk! Baby can see all those tempting delights around the room, and he finds ways to get his hands on many of them. Once the developmental skill of walking appears, children have an intense drive to master it. So toddlers toddle – constantly. And they can toddle into unsafe situations. Walking progresses to running, and climbing a few stairs turns into scaling kitchen counters. growing out of it How often have you heard, “Oh, just wait, he’ll grow out of it”? Though partially true, this lame excuse for not bothering to correct certain behaviours shows an incomplete understanding of child development. Growth and development used to be pictured like clothing sizes. The child outgrows an outfit, discards it, and puts on a bigger one that fits better. In reality, it’s not that simple. Children don’t always discard behaviours from one stage of development when they grow into another. Misbehaviour that is not corrected at one stage may linger into the next. On the other hand, don’t get too excited or worried when you see “good” or “bad” behaviour in your children. It may be a one-off thing that children try on for size and quickly discard when it doesn’t fit. A child’s behavioural development is like a lift through a department store. The doors open and two children get off to find what they need on each floor. One child gets no sales help. He explores freely, puts on a bunch of new clothes, and gets back into the lift to go to the next floor. When he gets there he realizes that he still has the old clothes on underneath, and his new ones don’t fit that well. But he keeps going up on his own, putting new clothes over the old ones, carrying more and more excess baggage to each new floor. Soon he is weighed down with layers of clothing that he should have discarded earlier. Eventually, there is less and less room for new stuff. The other little shopper gets the help of a wise and experienced disciplinarian. She has seen many children get out of that lift and knows just what he needs. “Let me help you try on some new clothes”, she offers, adding, “but we’ll have to figure out what to do with your old clothes. Some seem to fit you just fine, so we’ll keep them. They’ll be useful to you later. Let’s get rid of the ones that aren’t nice to make room for the ones that fit you better.” The disciplined child goes to each new floor not only with better clothes that fit but without excess baggage slowing his progress. Which behaviours will children outgrow on their own and which need your attention? Behaviour that is linked to specific needs, tasks, or limitations of a certain developmental stage are probably best left alone; for example, thumb-sucking in a toddler, negativism in a two-year-old, shyness with strangers in a four- or five-year-old. Behaviour that may be understandable at a certain age but is nevertheless obnoxious should be worked on; for example, throwing food from the high chair, teasing the family dog, aggression toward parents. Children need limits that help them grow up to be polite, thoughtful, and caring. Your job as parents is to arm your children with the self-control tools that will help them make the transition from one developmental stage to the next. Hands as tools. Along with learning how to get things, the year-old baby develops hand skills to manipulate what he gets. Doors are to be opened, taps turned, drawers pulled, dangling cords yanked, and waste cans emptied. Everything within walking and grabbing distance is fair game, or so he figures. To the inquisitive adventurer, the whole house is an unexplored continent, and he intends to leave no stone unturned. Out of the mouths of babes. The development of language – verbal and body – makes parenting a bit easier. Baby can now begin to tell you what she needs with words. This new skill is a mixed blessing. While baby words are entertaining, they can also be frustrating as the parents struggle to understand just what “da-boo” means. Toddlers like to try on different noises to hear how they sound and how they affect their audience. They screech and squeal, yell and jabber. Sometimes their little baby words are pleasing to your ears, at other times they are nerve–wracking. Language also gives expression to feelings; a feisty “No” from your formerly agreeable child can raise your eyebrows. guiding little hands Exploring hands are always looking for things to handle, so give the young explorer word associations to help him sort out what he may touch. Try “yes touch” for safe things, “no touch” for objects off-limits, and “soft touch” for faces and animals. To tame the impulsive grabber, try encouraging “one finger touch”. Other words (“hot touch”, “owie touch”) will come to mind as you discover the world of touch together. respecting little grabbers Your toddler has a jar of olives, and you have visions that there will soon be a mess to clean up. You hastily snatch the jar from her clutches. And within a millisecond you have set off a protest tantrum. You’ve saved yourself a mess to clean up on the floor, but now you have an emotional mess to care for. Grabbing a prized object from a child for whatever reason is not socially appropriate: it violates the personhood of the child. And it’s not good discipline – you’re teaching your child the very thing you tell her not to do. “Don’t grab”, you say, as you grab back what was grabbed. Snatching the jar away from her is bound to anger her, as well as reinforce the grabbing mentality. There is a better way. For a young toddler, make eye contact and divert her attention to something else she’d like. For an older toddler, tell her you’ll help her open the jar so she can have an olive, and point to where you want her to put it. This is simply an exercise in politeness and respect, and “adult-in-charge” approach. Children need adults to communicate and model the behaviour adults expect. nerve-wracking. Language also gives expression to feelings; a feisty “No” from your formerly agreeable child can raise your eyebrows. A mind of their own. Toddlers think, but not logically. Just as motor skills take off during the first half of the second year, toward the last half mental skills blossom. The one-year-old plunges impulsively into activities without much thinking. The two-year-old studies her environment, figuring out a course of action in her head before venturing forth with her body. But a baby’s desire to do something often precedes the ability to do it successfully. This developmental quirk drives toddlers into trouble and caregivers to the brink. Even though you know that baby hasn’t mastered a skill yet, your explanation won’t stop him from trying. For example, one morning our son Stephen insisted on pouring his own juice. He had the ability to manoeuvre the cup and jug but lacked the wisdom to know when the cup was full. He did not want us to pour it for him. So we let him stand at the sink and pour water into cups while we poured the juice at the table. After a pouring party at the sink he accepted my hand on his hand and followed my nudge about when to stop pouring. thinking “kid first” Kids do annoying things – not maliciously, but because they don’t think like adults. You are likely to have a miserable day if you let every kid-created mess bother you. As you enter the kitchen, you see your two-year-old at the sink splashing water all over the floor. You could sink into a “poor me” mind-set: “Oh, no! Now I have to clean up the mess. Why does she do this to me?” Here’s a healthier choice. Instead of first considering your own inconvenience, immediately click into your child’s viewpoint: “This is fun. Look at all the different things you can do with dishes and water.” You’ll remember that what she is doing is developmentally appropriate. She’s exploring and learning. You’ll also realize that because two-year-olds get so engrossed in their activity, she is likely to throw a tantrum if you try to remove her. If you wait a few minutes, she’ll go on to something else; and, besides, water cleans up easily anyway; no big deal. She won’t do this anymore when she’s six. You’ll find yourself smiling. Getting out of yourself and into your child saves mental strain. You don’t have to clean up the mess in your mind along with the water on the floor. During the second year your baby’s temperament will become more apparent. “Bubbly”, “daredevil”, “determined”, “cautious”, and “adventurous” are labels toddlers acquire. Children come wired differently, and different kinds of children need different kinds of discipline. Matthew, a relatively cautious toddler, seemed to think out a task carefully before attempting it. And if he got himself in too deep he would not protest being rescued. Our two-year-old Lauren came wired with a different programme. She sees an enticing gadget on top of the kitchen counter and she is willing to risk life and limb to get it. Because of her personality, we don’t often let her out of our sight. Her drive helps her keep going, to get up after falling, to persist after being told “no”, to struggle with words to make her needs known. It also inspires her to climb higher if the biscuit tin has been moved to the top shelf. The parents’ task, in the words of one frazzled toddler manager, is to “keep my child from breaking his neck, and yet encourage him to learn.” talking with toddlers: what they can understand, what they can’t (#ulink_1199b052-5a6d-505a-b5a8-bf823561586b) Even though toddlers don’t say much, that doesn’t mean that they don’t comprehend what you are asking. As a general guide, take what you imagine your toddler understands and double it. She is probably picking up at least that much. Follows directions. Around age fifteen months toddlers can begin to follow one-step directions: “Get the ball.” By two years they can follow two-step directions: “Please find your shoes and bring them to me.” Prior to eighteen months toddlers seldom follow verbal warnings unless accompanied by action. Shouting “Don’t pull the cat’s tail” is meaningless unless you get up, cross the room, pry his fingers loose from the cat’s fur, and show the child as you tell him: “Pet the cat. Be gentle to the cat. Don’t pull the cat’s tail.” By two, children can follow most verbal commands without physical help. A one-year-old baby can understand that “no” or “stop” means that she should stop what she is doing, and that is about the limit of her understanding. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t offer an explanation: “Stop. Don’t touch”, you say as you pull her hands away. “Hurt baby.” As time goes by, make your explanation more complex: “Stop. Don’t touch. Hurt baby. Cooker hot!” Parents can usually tell how much of their explanation sinks in by their child’s reaction. For the toddler, keep explanations simple and brief. Better to spend your creative energy devising alternatives to misbehaviour than defining terms. A useful developmental fact that parents need to remember is that toddlers think concretely. They cannot generalize concepts. An eighteen-month-old can learn that your cooker is hot (usually by experiencing it solo – the hard way – or by some supervised exploration), but when he goes to Grandmother’s house, don’t rely on his knowing that all cookers are hot. This ability to generalize develops around age four. Discipline through talking. A toddler’s growing receptive language skills (what she understands) make discipline easier. Between eighteen months and two years, children may say little, but they understand all. (All brief, simple sentences, that is.) Capitalize on this developmental achievement by announcing what you’re going to do before you do it: “Daddy’s going to change your nappy.” Rather than catching your toddler by surprise, a prior announcement at least gives daddy a fair chance of getting the child’s cooperation. (See related feature, “Discipline Talk” (#litres_trial_promo).) Baby’s expressive language skills (what she says) also make discipline easier. Not only can she now understand what you want her to do, she can tell you what she wants: “Off” means she wants her nappy off. Here’s when your wise investment in responding to your baby’s cues begins to pay off. A baby who trusts that her signals will be responded to learns to give more readable signals. Between eighteen and twenty-four months of age another developmental perk makes discipline easier, the ability to think before acting. How consistently a toddler does this depends more on temperament than intelligence. Impulsive children often rush into a feat instead of first figuring out the consequences and plotting an alternative course. Just watching your child play will teach you where he is in his developmental thought processes. At fifteen months Lauren used to drive us bananas by trying to go up a flight of steps carrying a bowl of cereal. To prevent the inevitable spills, we didn’t allow this activity. At nineteen months Lauren grabbed a bowl of cereal and started for the steps. She stood at the bottom, looked up turned around, and handed the bowl of cereal to Martha before taking off up the steps. Reaching the top, she turned around and reached out for Martha to bring the bowl of cereal up to her. She now had matured enough to figure out the consequences of her action and develop creative alternatives using her adult resources for help. These improvements in language and cognitive skills also decrease the likelihood of tantrums, since the child is less frustrated and better able to figure out alternative ways to get what she wants. developmental discipline Think “age-appropriate behaviour” and you’ll be able to give age-appropriate direction. Here are some helpful reminders that will help your discipline be developmentally correct. Some challenging behaviours are developmentally correct In the normal course of development those same behaviours the child needs to exercise in order to move on are the very ones that can get him into trouble. As a child goes from dependence to independence, he will often merit labels like “defiant”, “won’t mind”, “bossy”, “sassy”, and “impulsive”. Some of these behaviours are simply a by-product of the child’s need to become an independent individual. And the “stubbornness” that keeps your child from obeying is the same spunk that helps him get up after a fall and try again. Get in “phase” with your child Developing children take two steps forward and one step backward. In each stage of development, they bounce back and forth from equilibrium to disequilibrium. While they’re stepping forward into uncharted territory, finding new friends, trying new things, expect discipline problems due to the anxiety that tags along with experimenting. In each stage, expect the calm to come after the storm. The same child who spent two months in a sulk may act like an angel for the next three. This developmental quirk can work to the child’s advantage and yours. Spot which phase your child is in. If he’s trying to move away and grow up a bit, let out the line. During this phase, your child may seem distant from you; she may even answer back and defy you. Don’t take this personally. This phase will soon pass. The child is just in the “do it myself” phase and needs some space and coaching (including correcting) from the sidelines. One day soon, as sure as sunrise follows nightfall, you’ll find your child snuggling next to you on the couch asking for help with tasks, suggesting activities you can do together. You may even wake up one morning and discover your six-year-old nestled next to you in bed. This child is now in a reconnecting phase, a pit stop in the developmental journey when your child needs emotional refuelling. Take advantage of this intermission. It’s time to patch up breaks in communication, cement your relationship, and recharge your child and yourself for the next unsettled phase. When parents and child are out of harmony, discipline problems multiply. If your child is trying to break away when you are trying to bond, you are likely to overreact to what may be normal behaviours of independence. If you are too busy while your child is in the reconnecting phase, you miss a window of opportunity to strengthen your positions as comforter, adviser, authority figure, and disciplinarian. Respect negative phases When your child is developmentally negative don’t take it personally. This is hard sometimes because life does have to go on. This is why a project such as toilet training should not be undertaken during a negative phase. To do so would just frustrate you and give your child more to say no about. Another way to respect negativity is not to punish behaviour that a child is developmentally incapable of (such as saying “yes” during a negative phase). Use non-punitive methods of directing developmental negativity. Above all, do not punish for any aspects of toilet learning. As with food discipline, it’s your child’s body. Trust him to learn its natural functions. Plan ahead Discipline problems are likely to occur when a child is making the transition from one developmental stage to another, or during major family changes: a move, a new sibling, family illness, or so on. I recently counselled a family whose previously sweet child had turned sour. The mother had started a new job, and at the same time the child started a new school. If possible, time major changes in your life for when a child is not going through major changes herself. What is “normal” may not be acceptable “I don’t care what the book says, Bobby and Jimmy, fighting is not going to be normal in our home”, said a mother who knew her tolerance. Part of discipline is learning how to live with a child through different developmental stages, and the child’s learning how to live with you. A child’s early family experience is like boot camp in preparing for life. A child must learn how to get along with family members in preparation for future social relationships. He needs to be adaptable, to learn to adjust his behaviours to a particular family need. Billy is boisterous by temperament. Yet Billy is expected to play quietly for a few days because mummy is recovering from an illness and has a headache. It is healthy for the child to learn that the sun rises and sets on other people beside himself. Children must learn to adapt to house rules to prepare them to adjust to society’s rules. Disciplining in a developmentally correct way does not mean becoming lax. While it is necessary to tailor your discipline to the temperament and stage of your child, widen your acceptance when the going gets tough, there is no excuse for not expecting and helping your child to obey. It is easy to pass off behaviour by saying “He’s just going through a stage” or “That’s just part of his temperament”, yet it’s important to keep a balance between the child’s need to develop and the family’s need for well-being. channelling toddler behaviours (#ulink_ca48b999-d9e6-5aa1-a935-e8ad8c1b0049) Paying attention to your toddler’s emotional needs and understanding his developmental level are the first steps in disciplining a toddler. Once you realize how and why toddlers act the way they do, it will be easier for you to tolerate behaviour you shouldn’t change and change the behaviour you shouldn’t tolerate. When your baby learns to walk he officially becomes a toddler. This and other developmental milestones, mental and motor, bring a new set of challenges. Your role as disciplinarian expands from simple nurturing to providing a safe environment in which your toddler can explore and learn. Have realistic expectations for normal toddler behaviour: toddlers are curious, driven, strong-minded. They need these qualities to learn, to persist, to bounce back in spite of life’s little setbacks, to get up and try again. Toddlers also begin to think of themselves as individuals separate from Mummy. This is both exciting and frightening: The toddler is ready to shed the restrictions of being a baby but not ready to leave behind the security. The lessons an attachment-parented baby learns during his first year help him cope with the ambivalence of toddlerhood. Because he is used to feeling right he is less likely to get himself into situations that make him feel wrong. Because he enters toddlerhood trusting in himself and in his caregivers, there is a balance in what he does and how he acts. There is a purpose to his actions that make him fascinating to watch. The attachment mother reads her child like a book and anticipates what will happen on the next page. She will learn specific ways to channel her toddler’s behaviour. Offer redirectors. A baby’s mind is filled with hundreds of word associations. One pattern of association we noted in Matthew’s developmental diary was that when I would say, ?C;Go” to sixteen–month–old Matthew he would get the baby sling and run to the door. distract and divert Your one-year-old is toddling toward the lamp cord. Instead of scooping him up and risking a protest tantrum, first get his attention by calling his name or some other cue word that you have learned will stop him in his tracks long enough to distract him pleasantly. Then, quickly divert him toward a safer alternative. For example, when Lauren was younger (and it still works now sometimes), as soon as she would head for mischief we’d call out “Lauren!” Hearing her name took her by surprise and caused her to momentarily forget her objective. She’d respond “Yeah?” Once we had her attention, we’d quickly redirect her interests before she’d invested a lot of emotional energy into her original plan. “Go” to sixteen-month-old Matthew he would get the baby sling and run to the door. We used this ability to associate for distraction discipline: When we saw Matthew headed for major mischief we’d say, “Go.” This cue was enough to motivate his mind and body to change direction. We filed away a list of cue words to use as “redirectors” (“ball”, “cat”, “go”, and so on). Of course, you must carry through and go for a walk or play ball or find the cat; otherwise your child will come to distrust you and you will lose a useful discipline tool. Toddlers from fourteen to eighteen months need lots of energetic catering to. Past eighteen months you can start saying things like “Not now. Maybe later.” (See other discussions of redirectors (#ulink_0962d77d-6d52-541c-a317-5b03f88c4f33) and here.) Our strong-willed Lauren, at seventeen months of age, was stubbornly bent on going into the next room and finding her mother, who was trying to write. As I put out my arm to stop her she angrily pushed it away and began to throw a tantrum. I conveyed to her that she must stay with me, but I decided to make a game of it. Instead of physically restraining her, I let her play with my arm while using it to keep her from getting by. This turned into a “Give Me Five” game; and then, as she used her hand to push my arm away, I would take her hand and show her how to stroke my whiskers and she would laugh about it. Soon Lauren forgot her strong desire to go into the other room, deciding it was fun to stay and play with daddy. It took time and extra effort to distract Lauren, but it saved a lot of wear and tear on both of us. Instead of getting into an unpleasant father-daughter power struggle, I was able actually to improve our relationship. The stronger the will of the child, the more creatively a parent has to work at steering the child into good behaviour. Distract and substitute. Set limits. Much of your discipline depends upon your ability to set limits. Humans need limits, and the younger the human the more defined should be the limits. Boundaries provide security for the child whose adventurous spirit leads him to explore but whose inexperience may lead him astray. Consider the classic experiment: After a school playground fence was removed, the children, who previously roamed free all over the playground, huddled toward the centre of the grounds, reluctant to explore the formerly fenced-in corners. Limits do not really restrict a child but rather protect the curious explorer and his environment, freeing him up to function better within those confines. For example, your toddler doesn’t want to hold your hand as you cross a street or parking lot together. You firmly set a limit: street or car park crossing is only done while holding hands. There is no option. We worked hard to achieve the right balance between freedom and constraints for our toddlers. It was not easy. We wanted them to learn about their environment and about themselves, but not at the expense of harming themselves or others. They liked having rules and knowing how to apply them. When a rule needed applying they would often recite the rule to us just to hear it and see if it still applied. Limit setting teaches a valuable lesson for life: The world is full of “yeses” and “nos”. You decide what behaviour you cannot allow and stick to that limit. This will be different for every family and every stage of development. Setting limits introduces a new level of frustration, which every child must experience at home before he is hit with it in the world outside the door. You decide you don’t want your toddler to throw rubbish around, so you keep the lid on or the door closed. You keep the door to the utility room closed because you don’t want the shelves mindlessly emptied. You make him stop pulling the dog’s fur and teach him to pat nicely. Scissors and sharp knives are off-limits. You learn to keep them out of reach, and you firmly “distract and substitute” when the inevitable happens. Setting limits helps the whole family. The toddler needs to learn how to share the house with the whole family, and parents need to be realistic about their tolerances. As one mother put it, “I know my child’s limits – and mine.” Some parents fail to set limits because they can’t stand to see their baby frustrated. Healthy doses of frustration help a baby have just the right amount of resistance to keep him reaching for his full potential. No frustration, no growth. All frustration, no life. Be sure you model the healthy way to handle frustration. Adults have limits, too. If you know how to deal with your limits, you’ll know how to provide limits for your baby. Attachment parenting doesn’t imply you won’t have parent-child conflicts, yet it prepares you to better handle them. Toddlers want someone to set limits. Without limits the world is too scary for them. They intuitively know they need the security that limits bring. When they test the limits they are asking you to show them how dependable you and your limits are. Take charge. As each of our babies graduated into toddlerhood, we had to examine our roles as authority figures – what that meant and how we would maintain that status. We wanted to be clearly in charge of our toddlers so that they would feel safe and secure with someone standing between them and the dangers of the big world, with a place to go for help. We didn’t want to control them like puppets so that we ourselves could feel powerful. And contrary to the opinion of some theorists, we did not believe that our toddlers wanted to control us. It was themselves that they wanted to learn to control. We helped them in two ways: by letting them know by our tone of voice and our actions that we are mature adults, and by being available as a safe and secure home base that they could leave and return to at will, exploring the world then returning for comfort and reassurance when needed. In this way we could help them develop their own inner controls. helping your child play alone Part of self-discipline is the ability to enjoy playing alone. Before eighteen months of age, a baby will do this only in short spurts and will be eagerly checking in with mother frequently, either physically coming to her or finding her with his eyes. Attachment-parented babies may prefer to be in touch with mother almost constantly, and this is healthy. It seems as though allowing the baby to have his fill of mother’s presence as an infant and young toddler prepares him for time on his own. He will know how to manage himself and won’t need to be entertained as much as the baby who is not well connected. The time between the ages of fourteen and eighteen months is very hard for mothers. The high-energy toddler wants to do everything, but he still needs mother involved “big time”. Mothers of one-year-olds need to gear up for this marathon spurt of giving, because the tendency is to think, “Ah, now he’s one – I’ll be able to ease off.” You will eventually, but not yet. Hang in there through age eighteen months, then be alert for signs that your toddler is trying to make space between you. Some mothers might tend to hover and smother and continue to hang on, but remember, the one-and-a-half-to-two-year-old needs to become his own person. You will see these efforts more and more. At first you won’t believe your eyes. Your toddler will do what he sees you doing. She will tend doll babies, get out pots and pans, want to play at the sink, dig in the dirt with spoons. You name it – the possibilities are endless. She’ll want you to pretend with her a bit. It’s fun to be a dog or a lion, but she really only needs you to get her started. Pretend tea parties or picnics where you gobble up everything she hands you don’t require much involvement from you. By age three, a child’s imagination and creativity will allow him to be able to have fun with anything. Keep toys simple and basic – building blocks, balls, dolls and blankets, cars and trucks (no batteries please). A four-year-old alone in a room with nothing to play with will figure out how to use shoes and socks as cars and people or as cradles and dolls. By the time your child is six, you will have reached what one psychologist we talked to calls “planned detachment”. Your child will look in for breakfast, go out the door, look in for lunch, and be gone again. You’ll say, “You’re looking well, dear”, you’ll write a note to remind him of chores, and finally at dinner you’ll get to talk a little. After dinner some card playing, singing, or other family-oriented activity reconnects you with this individual who used to stick to you like Velcro. We gave our toddlers chances to mess up. They learned from their parent-supported failures. When Stephen insisted on having juice in an open cup with no help from Martha, she let him try it, and he spilled it all over himself. The cold juice running down his body startled him. For the next sip he was willing to be less impulsive; he listened closely to Martha’s advice to tip the cup “slowly”. Because of the mutual trust and sensitivity that we developed during their first year, it was easier for our toddlers to respect us as authority figures. We were able to convey to them what behaviour we expected, and their actions often showed that they wanted to please themselves by pleasing us. Once we reach that level of discipline, we feel tremendous job satisfaction. This is really what discipline is all about. It is not what we are doing to our children, it is what we are doing for and with them, and what they are doing for themselves. providing structure (#ulink_f30a8782-3795-5f60-9910-d546b5f630ca) When your child reaches one year of age, another tide is added to the parenting job description: architect of your child’s environment. By taking on this job you steer the child’s energies toward enjoyable learning experiences and away from harm. You create structure, which does not mean being inflexible, repressive, or domineering. On the contrary, what we mean by “structure” is setting the conditions that encourage desirable behaviour to happen. Structure protects and redirects. You free the child to be a child and provide the opportunity to grow and mature. Structure creates a positive environment for the child. By a bit of preplanning you remove most of the “nos” so that a generally “yes” environment prevails. Structure changes as the child grows. At all developmental levels restructuring the child’s environment is one of your most valuable discipline strategies. When your infant reaches the grabby stage, you are careful to set your coffee cup out of his reach. When your toddler discovers the toilet, you start keeping the lid latched or the bathroom door closed. The preschooler who fights going to sleep at night gets a relaxing bedtime routine. The nine-year-old struggling to keep up with her homework gets a quiet, enticing place to work in, as well as firm restrictions on school-night television. Structure sets the stage for desirable behaviours to override undesirable ones. Create a toddler-friendly, toddler-safe environment. Toddlers get frustrated easily trying to live in a house furnished only for bigger bodies. Your role as designer of your child’s environment involves making your house safe for your toddler and safe from your toddler. Toddlers are full of interest. Your job is to facilitate that interest safely. This is much easier to do at home, of course. When a child sees something enticing and sparkly, he will naturally want to touch it. It’s the parent’s job to get down and help the child explore that object without damaging it, or himself, and then redirect the child’s attention. Putting away the breakables and the family heirlooms in your home is not a capitulation to toddler power; it is simply a way to avoid having to be constantly on guard and having to always say no to your child, causing a build up of frustration and anger in both of you. This is a much better alternative to being ever watchful and protective, or punitive toward a natural urge to explore. You, as the adult, have the maturity to put your own things aside (up or away) for a while until your child has the maturity to respect adult valuables. Keep in mind that this is only for a short time. We found that when our babies mastered crawling, we had to remove all our plants from floor level. Six months later we put the plants back down and the babies completely ignored what had been irresistible before. When your child starts to crawl, take a tour of your house from his perspective to discover what needs childproofing. There are many inexpensive products available that will help you make your home safe for your child (toilet seat latches, door-knob covers, drawer and cupboard latches, electric socket and plug covers, and so on). These and some ingenuity will enable you to protect your little scientist. Effort spent baby-proofing your home will pay off in less conflict with your toddler. Plus, you will be more relaxed parents. Childproofing also provides your young explorer with guidance from the controlled environment itself. Here’s a room-to-room guide to start with: Living room/family room: • Cover electrical sockets. • Secure lamp cords so lamps can’t be pulled down. • Anchor floor lamps, or remove them. • Cover controls on the television, stereo, DVD or video. • Cushion sharp corners on coffee tables and hearths. • Display breakables out of baby’s reach, or put them away for a few years. • Reorganize bookshelves (toddlers love to empty these, tearing covers and dust jackets). • Move plants. Dining room/eating area: • Push chairs all the way up to the table to prevent climbing. • Install latches on drawers or cupboards holding breakable dishes. • Push items on the tabletop to the centre. • Fold tablecloth corners under and up, out of grabbing distance. Bathroom: • Keep medicines, razors, pins, mouthwash, cosmetics, perfume, nail polish and remover, scissors, and other dangerous objects out of reach. • Keep medicine cabinet latched. • Pad bath taps. • Place a non-slip mat in the bath. • Use rugs with non-slip backings. • Keep the toilet seat down and latched. • Empty the bath after use. Don’t leave children unattended in the bath. • Use plastic, not glass or ceramic, cups and soap dishes. • Keep the bathroom door shut. Kitchen: • Store knives out of reach. • Unplug small appliances. Don’t leave cords dangling. • Store cleansers, solvents, bleaches, dishwasher detergent, and other poisons out of baby’s reach in a latched cupboard. • Cook on the back burners, and turn pot handles toward the back. • Cover the hob controls, or remove them. • Store breakables, things your baby can choke on, and other dangerous objects out of reach. Remember, that toddlers can climb onto kitchen surfaces. • Use unbreakable dishes when your baby is around. • Store plastic bags and plastic grocery bags out of reach. • Hold hot drinks where your baby can’t grab them, and keep them away from the edge of tables or counters. Windows and doors: • Keep sliding glass doors closed or locked. • Place stickers at toddler eye level on glass doors. • Lock windows. • Shorten the cords on curtains and blinds to get them up out of children’s reach. • Use netting to enclose the rails on balconies so that your baby can’t squeeze through. Miscellaneous: • Don’t forget the garage, with paint thinners, antifreeze, gardening tools, supplies, insecticides, and other hazards. • Use a safety gate at the top and bottom of stairs, especially if they are steep and unpadded. Some parents choose instead, if their stairs are carpeted and not too steep, to let the baby learn to crawl up and back down and keep a close eye on the ungated stairs for the few weeks it takes baby to learn. • You can move an adjustable safety gate from doorway to doorway to keep your child away from temptation when you can’t be right on his heels to supervise. Being able to block off the kitchen, for example, can save a lot of wear on mum and dad – you may not want the saucepan cupboard emptied at every opportunity. It’s safe, but sometimes mum can only take so much. Once you have the “don’t-touch” items out of the way, consider positive steps you can take to encourage good behaviour in your toddler. Give him his own drawer in the kitchen, filled with interesting items to pull out, sort, and study, things like measuring spoons, plastic dishes, a potato masher. Provide things of his own around the house that he can push, pull, turn, and manipulate. Give him a safe outlet for climbing. Let him experiment with pouring water in a saucepan outside or in a bath, or at the sink under your supervision. Uncooked rice or oatmeal are easy-to-clean-up indoor substitutes for pouring sand. Placing child-sized furniture around the house encourages the busy toddler to sit still longer and “work” at her own special table. A step stool will help her reach the kitchen sink for hand washing, tooth brushing, and for “helping” in the kitchen. Toddlerhood is an exciting time in a child’s life. It can be great fun just to watch your little one play. Being observant will also help you know when to step in and help out and when to let your child work out a problem on his own. A safe environment allows him to do this. Organize your day to fit your child. It’s easier to shuffle your daily schedule around a bit than to change the temperament of your toddler. Do not set yourself up for impossible struggles. You know your own child best, and you will learn by trial and error what works. Try these tips: • Use wisdom when shopping. When you shop with a toddler, be sure you are both well rested, well fed, and be ready with a nutritious snack to keep his mind off the cereal boxes, lettuce, and egg cartons. Be prepared to have it take twice as long – take your baby sling along, let baby ride in the trolley, have fun and a short list. If you’re in a hurry, feeling distracted, or stressed, shop without baby. (See “Supermarket Discipline” (#litres_trial_promo)). • Plan ahead. Know your child’s up and down times of the day. Most toddlers behave best in the morning, worst in late afternoon or just before naptimes. Plan outings during what we call “easy times”. Martha finds mornings one of the easiest times of the day to get our children to fit her agenda. During “tough times” of the day, our toddlers stay at home. • Anticipate your child’s moods. Provide snacks, lunch or supper, before he gets ravenous. Sit down to share some quiet activity before he’s so wound up he can’t fall asleep at night. • Provide regular routines. You don’t have to be a slave to a schedule, but toddlers need predictability: breakfast first, then get dressed; put on socks and shoes, then go bye-bye; supper, quiet play, bath, brush teeth, then bedtime stories. Routines give a child a sense of mastery. Organize your child to fit your day. While children are not machines set to behave according to the design of the parent engineer, there are simple ways to channel little minds and bodies to make your day run smoother: • Rested mind and full tummy. If you have no choice but to take a toddler to a place where it’s difficult to be a two-year-old, plan ahead. Suppose you have a meeting with your older child’s schoolteacher at four o’clock and you have to take along your two-year-old. Encourage your child to take a one-and-a-half-to two-hour nap at one-thirty, give a snack just before leaving home, and take along some quiet but fascinating toys. Be sure your child has had sufficient attention earlier in the day. This may help him behave better while you concentrate on the meeting. Invite him to sit on your lap while you talk. • Provide workable playtimes. Life with a toddler can seem like a roller-coaster ride unless you know what sets off the highs and the lows. Note what prompts desirable behaviour, and cut out what stirs turmoil. Some play environments foster good behaviour in your child and fewer hassles for you. Seek out the ones that work; avoid the ones that don’t. It may be a who, when, and how-many-playmates decision. Recognize who your child has the most fun with (this may not be the child of your best friend) and the time of the day he plays best. Does he play better one-on-one or beside two or three other mates? Most toddlers do best playing alongside a carefully selected playmate with a compatible temperament. Many children under three are not developmentally ready to play together cooperatively. Playgroups for toddlers work well when the mothers are willing to be present and observant, able to be involved as the toddlers learn the social “ropes”. An alternative to same-age playmates would be four-to-six-year-old playmates for your two-year-old. The older ones like playing with “babies” and they won’t end up fighting. Eliminate high-risk toys. Plastic bats are great for solo play but a disaster in a group. Select age-and temperament-appropriate toys. An impulsive thrower needs soft toys, not metal cars that he can use as projectiles. If a toy habitually excites squabbles among playing children, shelve it. Children under three do not yet have the developmental capacity to share. (See “Sharing” (#litres_trial_promo).) Busy the bored child. A bored child is a breeding ground for trouble. Let your child be busy with you, sometimes have things to do on his own, and sometimes play with him yourself. The fourteen-to-eighteen-month-old will need you a lot. After that, a toddler is more and more able to self-stimulate. The bored child with a busy parent is a high-risk mismatch. An attachment-parented child who has been connected well from birth will always be able to make her own fun by age four. Until then, count on the old standby: “Want to help Mummy?” Her “help” may slow you down, but this is less time-consuming than dealing with an “unbusy” child. going from oneness to separateness: behaviours to expect (#ulink_9d580a57-2df3-518a-8e90-94e2c00e8967) During the last half of the first year babies begin a developmental process known as hatching. Baby realizes there is a whole wide world out there apart from mother. Throughout the second year, your baby’s understanding of himself matures from a feeling of “Mummy and me are one” to “me different from mummy” to “me” as an individual. Words like “my”, “me”, and “mine” show a struggle for identity apart from the mother. Besides an intellectual desire to be “me”, the little individual now has the motor and language skills to help him be himself. How a baby develops this concept of “me”, and how the parents discipline the behaviours that naturally go along with this “me” stage, are vital to the emotional health of the child. Child and adult psychologists believe that pleasant separation experiences in early life act as a sort of psychological vaccine against the anxiety of stressful separations that come in later childhood and adulthood. The infant who was never connected misses the healthy “Mummy and me as one” stage. This infant will have more difficulty transitioning into the healthy “me” stage. The infant who is pushed into the “me” stage prematurely is also likely to develop a shaky self-image, leading to insecurity, withdrawal, and anger. Finally, parents who misinterpret the normal behaviours that go along with this oneness-to-separateness process are likely to have the most problems with discipline. Certain behaviours happen along the way in the child’s journey from oneness to separateness. Some of these behaviours that help him become more independent are the very ones that may get him into trouble. By understanding why these occur and how you can help, discipline becomes easier. Ambivalence. Baby wants and needs to separate, but she is not certain how soon or how far. Baby is constantly testing what is a comfortable distance from you. One minute she’s a clinging vine, a few minutes later she’s happily playing across the room. This requires moment-by-moment parenting decisions. Baby is up and down from floor to arms like a yo-yo. If you’re relaxed, amused, and unhurried you may hardly notice. If you’re bored, hurried, or feeling needy yourself it will drive you crazy. Stranger anxiety. Independence has its price. Anxiety in the presence of strangers begins in the last half of the first year. This is where being connected to your baby once again pays off. The connected baby relies on parents to assess the security of a situation. In an unfamiliar social situation, baby rates strangers by your reaction. She sees strangers through your eyes. If you are anxious, baby is anxious. As the “stranger” approaches, baby will notice that you reflect an “It’s OK, there’s no need to be anxious” attitude in your body language. In the cautious mind of the baby if the stranger is OK to you, she is OK to baby. Hopefully, the “stranger” will also have enough knowledge of baby development to allow time and space for this evaluation to occur. A baby knows it is inappropriate just to barge into his personal space and will react strongly against the intrusion. The parent can act as a buffer in this situation. Some babies are more stranger sensitive than others. When I see a new baby in my surgery, I’ve noticed that the baby often reacts to me the way the mother reacts. If the baby initially clings to the mother and the mother clings to the baby, often adding an anxious “He won’t hurt you”, she reinforces the anxiety and baby clings harder. But if mother relaxes her grip and clicks right into a happy-to-be-here dialogue with me, baby often clings less to mother and cooperates with me, sensing that I am a “mum-approved” person. The ability to create a mental image of mother helps baby to separate from her. Separation anxiety. The fear of separating from mother is another normal development beginning in the last half of the first year. Understanding this stage helps parents cope with separation anxiety and not inflict separation when the baby is clearly saying it would make him anxious. It used to be thought that if a mother got too attached to her baby during the first year she would spoil her baby and the baby would cling to her forever. Many people still believe this, even though attachment research has shown the opposite to be true. The babies who are the most connected early on are the ones who later separate with less anxiety. The physical and mental presence of the connected mother during play situations acts as an anxiety regulator, giving the baby the message “It’s OK to explore.” The connected infant has such a rich storage file of mental images of his mother that he is able to take mother with him mentally even when he no longer has a visual connection to her. When encountering a strange play situation with mother, an infant has to balance the desire to explore a novel situation against the need to remain attached to the familiar caregiver. This is why even secure infants, upon entering a strange situation, initially cling to the mother before beginning to explore. Attachment parenting helps babies develop a balance between clinging and exploring. Infants check in with mother periodically for reassurance while they explore the strange situation. Mother’s presence seems to add energy to the child’s exploration. Since the infant does not need to waste effort worrying about whether mother is there or might leave, he can use all his energy for exploring. In time he will cling less and comfortably explore the environment, increasing his distance from the maternal home base, though checking in from time to time for emotional refuelling. If you watch toddlers in play groups, you’ll notice that they periodically run over to their mother, sit on her lap, and get a reassuring cuddle or even a brief chance to nurse – an emotional pit stop before darting off again to play. Insecurely attached babies have more difficulty developing this balance. They are likely to spend more time clinging or may withdraw from both mother and the play situation. The late British psychologist Dr John Bowlby, one of the most influential researchers of attachment theory, stated, “A child with no confidence does not trust that his attachment figures will be accessible to him when he needs them. He adopts a clinging strategy to ensure they will be available. He is uncertain of the mother’s availability, and thus is always preoccupied with it; this preoccupation hinders separation and exploration, and therefore his learning.” Attachment parenting acknowledges the developmental principle that an infant must go through a stage of healthy dependence before she can comfortably handle independence. (See related feature “Becoming Interdependent” (#ua05efc30-0cab-46ed-8cd8-cad895dff7b1).) Some babies are more separation sensitive than others; so one of your discipline goals in the second year is to find out in what situations, how often, and how long baby can comfortably separate from you. Some infants are anxious separating from their mothers because their mothers are anxious about them separating. The healthier the connection between you and your baby the first year, the more willingly your toddler may separate from you between the second and third year. Every baby has his own separation timetable. Around two years of age our toddlers would usually happily wave “bye-bye” to Martha if I, or a sibling, were with them for connection. By three-and-a-half our “big kids” were happy to be on their own in Sunday school; and by four, they could securely spend the night at a close friend’s house. Tantrums. Baby’s desire to have it all gives way to the realization he can’t. His desire for bigness and power gives way to the frustration that he is not all-powerful. Tantrum behaviour is a natural by-product of the normal determination that is needed in the development of a healthy self. (See Chapter 5, “Taming Temper Tantrums” (#litres_trial_promo), for an understanding of why tantrums occur and how to help your toddler through them.) It’s important not only to structure the toddler’s environment to lessen the need for tantrums, but also to allow and support the child’s need to express feelings. leaving a baby the right way A highly attached, separation-sensitive baby has a hard time if mother leaves. The clue here is intuitively to know when your older baby can handle short absences (not counting the hour or so you may leave her with daddy now and then). In times past, grandmothers, aunts, even a neighbour were so intimately involved in a family’s life that baby would feel secure with one of these familiar people for three or four hours at a time. If you don’t have such a person in your life, look for a friendship you can cultivate – spend time together several times a week with another mother and child your toddler enjoys. Play and work together and be consistently in one another’s home. This mutual attachment will give you and your friend “the perfect babysitter” with a similar parenting style. Between ages two and three a child’s inner life becomes more transparent. Feelings children cannot express in words they communicate through symbolic play, giving you a clue to what they are feeling by how they act. Mary “nurses” her doll while mummy nurses the new baby. She’s feeling like a little mummy. Jimmy pounds his teddy bear to show he’s angry when things don’t go his way. becoming interdependent Many child-rearing theories teach that a prime parenting goal is to get the child to be independent. This is true, but gaining independence is only part of becoming an emotionally healthy person. A child must pass through three stages: • Dependence: “You do it for me.” The infant under one year of age is totally dependent on his parents. • Independence: “I do it myself.” During the second year, the exploring toddler, with the encouragement of parents, learns to do many things independent of parents. • Interdependence: “We do it.” This is the most mature stage. The child has the drive to accomplish a feat by himself but has the wisdom to ask for help to do it better. For a child to have the best chance of becoming an emotionally healthy person, she should be encouraged to mature through each of these stages gradually. Getting stuck in the dependent stage is as crippling as being forced out of it too soon. Remaining in the independent stage is frustrating. Maturing into interdependence equips children with the ability to get the most out of others, while asking the most of themselves. Interdependence means the parent and child need each other to bring out the best in each other. Without your child challenging you as he goes through each stage, you wouldn’t develop the skills necessary to parent him. Here’s where the connected pair shines. They help each other be the best for each other. Learning interdependence prepares a child for life, especially for relationships and work. In fact, management consultants teach the concept of inter-dependence to increase productivity. The ability to know when to seek help and how to get it is a valuable social skill that even a two-year-old can learn: “I can do it myself, but I can do it better with help.” Throughout all stages of development a child goes from being solitary to being social, from wanting to be independent to wanting to be included. In fact, going back and forth from oneness to separateness is a lifelong social pattern among interdependent people. You want your child to be comfortable being alone and with other people, and which state predominates depends on the child’s temperament. Inter-dependence balances children who are predominantly either leaders or followers. The independent individualist may be so tied up in himself that he misses what the crowd has to offer. The dependent child is so busy following the crowd that he never gets a chance to develop leadership. Learning to be interdependent ties in with the child learning to be responsible. When children get used to seeking help from other persons, they naturally learn to consider the effects of their behaviour on others. Truly happy and healthy persons are neither dependent nor independent; they are interdependent. Defiance. Understanding why your toddler says no helps you not to be threatened by this toddler behaviour. Your toddler is not actually being defiant or stubborn. He is not saying, “I won’t”; rather, he is saying, “I don’t want to.” Often he will give you two or three “nos” before he says, “OK”. Or he is experimenting, thinking, “What happens when I say no?” He is thinking, “I am into my thing now. This is my time, my space, and I have a right to it.” This behaviour is a normal part of your toddler’s struggle to develop a sense of self. Around two, we would be met with a “No!” when we tried to remove a toddler from mischief, as if he perceived we were encroaching on the territory he had staked out. He was trying to see what power he had to enforce that right. During this stage, both parents and their toddlers need to learn a vital developmental lesson: the ability to give and take “no”. When a parent feels threatened by a toddler’s “no”, harsh words are likely to come: “Don’t you say that to me.” A confident parent will not perceive this as a threat to authority but rather as a healthy stage all toddlers need to go through. A mature adult does not react anxiously or punitively when the attachment-parented toddler says no. Instead, the parent calmly takes each situation as it comes and guides according to his or her wisdom. helping a toddler ease into independence (#ulink_b806346e-6393-5c45-beb4-231f57db9be6) The child needs to break from the mother in order to learn about his environment and about himself; the mother needs to let her child go and learn how to maintain their connection over a longer distance. As with so many aspects of discipline, it’s a question of balance, giving the child enough slack to become independent, yet keeping the connection. Mother does not let the child go off entirely on his own, nor does she keep him hanging on to her apron strings because of her own fears or need for his continuing dependence. Throughout the second year, parents may feel they are walking a fine line between being over-restrictive and being negligent. One way carries the risk of hindering a baby’s development, the other of allowing the baby to hurt himself or others or damage property. Here are some ways of keeping connected while helping your baby separate. Play “out of sight” games. Beginning around nine months of age or earlier, play peek-a-boo and chase around the furniture with your baby. As you hide your face with your hands or you hide your body on the other side of the couch, the baby has the opportunity to imagine that you exist even though you’re out of sight. Separate gradually. Best odds for a baby developing a healthy sense of self are for the baby to separate from the mother and not the mother from the baby. Discipline problems are less likely to occur when baby separates from mother gradually. When the baby inside the toddler remains connected, the toddler part of this growing person feels more secure to go off on his own. The connected child takes a bit of mother with him for comfort and advice during his explorations. It’s like having the best of both worlds – oneness, yet separateness. We learned to appreciate this feeling during our family sailing adventures. Because our sailboat was fitted with an electronic homing device that kept us “connected” to a radio control tower on land, we felt secure venturing farther out into the ocean. Connection provides security. weaning from attachment Weaning means a child is ripe – the needs of one stage of development are filled so that the child is ready to take on the challenges of the next stage. The key to weaning is that it be gradual because weaning is a process, not an event. In the process of gradual weaning, the parent sees to it that the child is filled with one set of competencies as she becomes ready to take on the next set. Consider the close connection achieved by practising the baby basics: being responsive to baby’s cries, breastfeeding, and babywearing. These are natural discipline tools that can lessen the anxiety of toddlerhood, freeing up this little person to tackle challenges smoothly. A toddler who still breastfeeds, spends some time being worn in a sling, and gets responsive parenting continues to get the attachment tools that equip him to become gradually independent. This process cannot be rushed. When the baby inside the toddler stays connected, the toddler has the self-assurance he needs to separate. Many toddlers I see in my practice are not like some I read about. These infants, who are not prematurely weaned, are positive kids, not at all the negative persons or the terrible twos commonly portrayed in baby books and child magazines. In my twenty-two years in paediatric practice I have noticed that the most well behaved children are those that were not weaned before their time. But won’t prolonged attachment spoil a child? Yes, if mother is possessive – holding on to her toddler to fulfil her own needs for attachment at the expense of her child moving on. No, if the mother allows a weaning from each attachment stage as mutually agreed upon by mother and toddler. Contrary to the popular belief that extended attachment hinders independence, we notice that babies who are not prematurely rushed through any attachment stage and weaned before their time actually become more independent. And many attachment studies support our observation. Mothers who wean early believe they may gain some freedom. Possibly, yes, but there is a trade-off. With early weaning you lose a valuable discipline tool. Attachment mellows toddler behaviour. We believe that much of toddler misbehaviour, such as anger and aggression, and behaviours that are passed off as “normal twos” are really behaviours of premature detachment. We pay a price for precocious independence. Early weaning from the breast, from primary caregivers, and from the home is a norm in Western society. A great deal of confusion about discipline methods is also characteristic of this same society. Any connection? The best way to build age-appropriate discipline into your parent-child relationship is to allow the child to separate from the parent instead of the parent prematurely separating from the child. The problem with many of the modern theories about discipline is that they focus so much on fostering independence that they lose sight of the necessity for a toddler to continue a healthy dependence. Try to achieve the delicate balance between maintaining the connection and encouraging self-reliance. Take leave properly. Our eighteen-month-old grandson Andrew has very polite parents. Bob and Cheryl are careful to let him know when one of them plans to “disappear” into the next room. Because Andrew is separation-sensitive, he taught them to do this from a very early age. Especially important is saying “Good-bye!” “See-ya”, and “Daddy’s going to work.” Andrew is able to handle even his mother’s leave-taking because there have never been any rude surprises. Including your child in your leave-taking helps him know what the score is at any given moment. He can trust his parents to keep him posted. Be a facilitator. Children will naturally become independent. It is not your job to make them independent but rather to provide a secure environment that allows them to become independent. As your child is struggling for a comfortable independence, you become a facilitator. You are like a battery charger when the little dynamo needs emotional refuelling. One moment he is shadowing you, the next moment he is darting away. How much separation can he tolerate and does he need? How much closeness? The child needs to maintain the connection while increasing the distance. Toddlers who behave best are those that find the balance of attaching and exploring as they go from security to novelty. Your job as facilitator is to help the child achieve that balance. That’s the partnership you and your toddler negotiate. Substitute voice contact. If your young toddler is playing in another room out of your sight and starts to fuss, instead of immediately dropping what you are doing and rushing to baby’s aid, try calling to him instead, “Mummy’s coming!” Maintaining a dialogue with a toddler outside the shower door has prevented many a separation protest. Shift gears if separation isn’t working. Sometimes even a baby who was “easy to leave” suddenly becomes a toddler who is separation-sensitive. If baby isn’t taking well to your absences, you might try more creative ways of staying happy yourself that don’t involve leaving your baby. What you may perceive as a need to escape may actually be a need for you to give yourself more nurturing. Provide “long-distance” help. Exploring toddlers get stuck in precarious places. The protector instinct in all parents makes us want to rush and rescue the stuck baby. Sometimes it’s good to encourage from the sidelines and let the young adventurer get herself out of the mess. While writing this section, I observed two-year-old Lauren trying to negotiate her doll buggy down a short flight of steps. Halfway down, the buggy got stuck and Lauren began to protest. Instead of immediately rushing to help her, I offered an encouraging “Lauren do it.” That was all she needed to navigate her buggy down the rest of the steps. Encouraging toddlers to work themselves out of their own dilemmas helps them develop a sense of self-reliance. Watch for signs of separation stress. There are times when toddlers still need to cling, some more than others. On days when your usually fearless explorer won’t leave your side, honour his wishes but try to figure out why he is staying so close. Does he feel ill? Have you been distracted or too busy to attend to him? Has he had more separation than he can handle lately? Refuel his connectedness “tank” with some time together, and he’ll be off on his own again soon. Have “just being” time. Take time to let your toddler just be with you, on your lap cuddling and talking, if he wants, at various times throughout the day. Says Martha: “First thing in the morning is a favourite time for our Lauren to want this, especially if she’s slept in her own bed that night, or if I got up before her and we miss that snuggle time in bed. If I let her ‘be’ until she calls a halt, she charges herself for a nice long stretch of independent time. It’s not always easy for me to sit still long enough to let this happen, yet I’m always glad when I do.” Encourage relationships with other significant adults. Grandparents, family friends, a substitute caregiver you use regularly can help your older toddler learn to depend on adults other than his parents. Invite significant others into your child’s life so that as he separates from you he learns that he can depend on a variety of people for help. Remember, children’s behaviours are more challenging to deal with when they are making the transition from one developmental stage to the next. By easing the transition, you lessen the discipline problems that tag along. from two to three (#ulink_3075851d-0475-540a-8ef6-6cfdca39ee19) Not only is “the terrible twos” a terrible term, it’s unfair. Though admittedly challenging, the twos (and threes!) are also terrific. The big transformation that takes place in a child’s abilities is in the area of language. The toddler has fairly good receptive language – he understands most of what you say. The child of two can make himself understood much better; expressive language blossoms. This two-way verbal communication makes discipline easier. Language lets the two-year-old use adult resources to his advantage and helps him feel “big”. Of course, there will be frustrating moments when your two-year-old struggles to make himself understood or discovers that he can’t make the world fit all his expectations. Fitting into family. The two-year-old begins to have an awareness of the balance of power within the family. This little person begins to size up limits, how far he can go with mum, dad, brothers and sisters, and familiar caregivers. He is more in control of his home environment and can make things happen there. He has explored every nook and cranny and has conducted independent research on every room in the house. He sees himself as king of the domain. He claims all for himself. To older sibs, he becomes imperious: “My mummy” (not yours). Two-and-a-half-year-old Lauren summed it up the other day when she spotted some cut flowers Hayden had just received from a boyfriend. She assumed what was obvious to her and blurted out, “Oh, Brandon, is this for me?” Advance notice. Twos don’t make transitions well. They get so engrossed in their own agenda that they don’t easily conform to someone else’s. When it’s three o’clock and time for your daughter to leave the playgroup, she won’t want to go. Respect this developmentally appropriate quality of engrossment, and give your child advance warning of departure. (For practical departure tips (#ulink_23857479-30af-576a-8672-bf824feedc1b).) Fixed mind-sets. Twos and threes thrive on rituals and routines. The drive for organization at this stage makes them intolerant of changes that seem trivial by adult standards. If you get into the mind of a growing child and see how it operates, you’ll understand this developmental thinking. In the early years a child stores thousands of patterns of association in the mind. These patterns help the child make sense of the world, but some children greet any variation from the pattern with a protest. For example, when Matthew was three, the jam had to be on top of the peanut butter in the sandwich. That is what he was used to and that was the pattern fixed in his mind. If we forgot and spread the jam first, he fell apart. This did not mean he was being stubborn or unreasonable; the new way just didn’t fit his expectations. Order in the house. This may not be readily apparent, but twos and threes actually behave better in an orderly environment. A disorderly environment invites disorderly conduct. Young children’s developing nervous systems are searching for organization. Heaps of clothes and toys can bring out a frenzy of flinging in children. Instead of toy boxes, try toy shelves. Low shelves with one-foot-square compartments, each containing one or two treasured toys, are much better than a pile of toys in a big box. This makes it easier to choose something to play with. Too many piled-up toys confuse a child and give the message that care is not needed. Rotate toys frequently to keep interest high. Besides creating an ordered environment, giving your child a place for her belongings encourages a sense of responsibility. Show your child how to use eye-level pegs or plastic hooks for hanging clothing, and have a special place for shoes. One of the most frustrating moments of a parent’s day is not being able to find a child’s shoes – or worse, finding only one shoe when it’s time to go out. Show your child how always to place shoes together (or when older, tie them together) “so that they will be easy to find in this special shoe place.” Children will be as messy as we let them be, or as neat as we help them to be. Living in a world that is chaotic disturbs children at a stage of their development when they are trying to put order in their lives. Threes have the mental ability to follow directions, and they retain the memory of familiar places. They can remember where things in the house go, and they begin to realize that each toy has its place. Capitalize on this mental maturity by giving your child credit for knowing this. Instead of “Put the book in the bookshelf”, try “Please put your book where it belongs.” Social chairman. Your child’s job at this age is to learn social skills, to learn to play cooperatively, and to be sensitive to others’ needs and feelings. Your job as disciplinarian is to set the conditions that allow your child’s social skills to mature. This job description includes seeking out well-matched playmates, refereeing squabbles, and, if necessary, selecting appropriate day care or preschool. Weaning from you as the primary playmate and from playing alone to playing with other children is a mixed blessing. The good news is your child learns developmental skills in the company of other children. The bad news is he may learn behaviours you don’t want him to learn. This is why one of your main jobs as disciplinarian for the two- and three-year-old is to structure the child’s social life to work to her advantage. Beginning manners. Two- and three-year-olds are ready to learn manners. It helps to understand just how far a child is mentally and emotionally capable of carrying out these social graces at this stage. A true understanding of sharing and politeness is based on the ability to get into other people’s minds and appreciate their viewpoint. This level of understanding seldom clicks in prior to age five. Also, children under five think in particulars, not generalities. You can teach your child to say thank you when grandma gives her a biscuit. But she may say thank you without prompting only when granny gives her a biscuit, not when you do. Around five years of age the child develops the ability to generalize “thank you” and discovers that it is the appropriate response anytime anyone gives her anything. Even so, it is still good to establish the habit of politeness in a child’s growing mind, even if the child is polite mostly for the sake of parental approval and to get what she wants. It is easier for the meaning of manners to take hold in the child’s mind if the custom has already been stored there. Children learn manners by how mannerly you are toward them. At two-and-a-half, Lauren learned that if she tacked on the word “please” (“pees”) to her request, it got her a very gracious and usually positive response. Twos soon learn which social charms give them a richer life. Expect and model politeness toward adults and toward other children, yet keep in mind that a two-year-old’s abilities to cooperate with others are limited. (See “Sharing” (#litres_trial_promo).) “I do it myself.” Yes, your child can, with a little help from a friend. Expect this normal show of independence to bloom fully between ages two and three. Take advantage of this opportunity to foster responsibility and self-help. Allow plenty of time whenever you can to wait for your child finally to fit that foot in that shoe. Then when you are in a hurry you can matter-of-factly say without guilt, “Not this time, Mummy wants to hurry.” Says Martha: “I remember two-year-old Lauren, watching her four-year-old brother hop out of the car seat and car himself, deciding that she didn’t want my help once her restraint strap was off. She was ready for a change in the routine but hadn’t notified me ahead of time. As I reached for her she stiffened and resisted my lifting her out, yelling ‘no’ and ‘me.’ I knew intuitively she wasn’t being defiant. It was her first ‘do it myself.’ It took three times as long as it would have if I had scooped her up as usual, but I put on my brakes and called up patience and good humour, seeing this as a time for her to try out being big. Once again, a toddler is teaching me to slow down and enjoy life.” discipline gets easier (#ulink_acf77204-47dc-5695-b51e-0f333921663e) Threes are easier to live with. The three-year-old now has the language skills that let two-way communication become real conversation. She is a more settled person, having spent a whole year refining her language skills. You can take Three shopping and actually enjoy it. Internalizing. “I’ve told my eighteen-month-old over and over not to pull the cat’s tail.” Sound familiar? Mothers find themselves saying things over and over and over to their toddlers, and “it’s as though he never heard it”. Many directives don’t sink in; not because your child is being defiant but because most children under two don’t yet have the cognitive ability to remember and reflect on prior instructions. You’ll just have to keep saying things – that’s how he learns at this age. One day you’ll realize you haven’t warned him about the cat’s tail for a week. Between two and three years children begin to internalize what you say to them. They pay more attention to directions and store them in their memory bank as part of their own operating code. When you say “No street” to an eighteen-month-old, he may act like he never heard it before. When you say the same thing to a three-year-old, he seems to reflect, “Oh, yes, I remember.” The ability to make instructions part of himself makes discipline easier. Sharing emotions. The three-year-old is less egocentric and realizes there are people in the world who are as important as himself. This budding sensitivity can work to a caregiver’s advantage or disadvantage in discipline. While Two notices her parents’ emotions, Three gets involved with them. An entry from Matthew’s baby journal noted this event: Martha asked three-year-old Matt to pick up his wooden blocks as part of our daily kids pick-up time. Matt balked and then was slyly letting his older sister do all the work. Because she was irritated at the moment, Martha yelled that she was unhappy with his not obeying but then realized Matt needed time to reconsider his position. She backed off for a few minutes, and Matthew then willingly did his job. As he was picking up his blocks he said, “Do you still love me?” Martha reassured him, “Even when you cry and yell and disobey, I love you.” Matt persisted, “Do you like me?” Martha answered, “Yes, I like you, but I don’t like it when you don’t listen and help. I like it when you make the right choices.” Job done, Matthew came over, hugged Martha, and said “I’m sorry, Mummy.” Martha hugged him back and said, “I’m sorry for yelling.” A few minutes later he said, “Are you happy to me?” This is the depth of emotional exchange you can expect between three and four years of age. They really want to make you happy. You will find living with children much easier if you give them many opportunities to please. Three becomes more satisfied with herself or himself. Three begins to praise “self”. One night our three-year-old Matthew announced, “I turned on the Christmas tree all by myself.” We acknowledged his triumph by exclaiming, “Wow!” He said, “I’m so happy to myself.” House rules. Three is often described as the “absolute mother’s dream” stage, mainly because threes are obedient. The “nos” of two become “yeses” for three. “OK, Mum” comes more quickly and willingly. While disagreements still happen, you can now breathe easier knowing that you are likely to meet a willing Three rather than a negative Two. While Two thinks no one else’s agenda could possibly be as important as her own, Three considers the needs of others. Expect her to come when asked, put away toys when asked (usually), and generally want to please, though these changes will not come overnight. Three understands house rules and consequences for breaking them, and he begins to internalize parents’ values. You can gradually expand your explanations of what you expect according to your child’s mental maturity. While Two still operates on an association of act and consequences (“I hit, I get put in the time-out chair”), Three can now understand why he shouldn’t ride his tricycle into the street. Threes are beginning to think before they act; but don’t count on it. When they do think about the consequences of their act, they do not yet have the ability to consider the rightness or wrongness of the action; they just click into what you have taught them – ride the trike into the street and it gets put away in the garage. Discipline at this age involves conditioning the child to act a certain way rather than teaching him to make moral judgments. (The concept of right and wrong develops around ages six or seven.) Discipline techniques that were marginal for Twos, work better at three. Parents wonder how much their three-year-old actually understands. As a rule of thumb, at all ages, estimate how much your child understands and double it. The out-of-control Three can understand time-out as a time in the “quiet corner” to regain control. Choices, choices, choices. Threes thrive on choices. Sharing in the selection process makes them feel important, and they are more likely to cooperate. Share your choice making with Three. (“Which dress should Mummy wear, the blue one or the red one?”). Children with persistent personalities (“power kids”) need choices. (Be sure you like all the alternatives you offer.) Most kids do best with two choices; more may overwhelm them. Don’t feel you have to be psychologically correct all the time. In some situations you just have to pull rank and give your child a matter-of-fact command. Vivid imagination. This is the stage where children spend much of their time immersed in pretend play. They create imaginary scenes for their own personal enjoyment. The ability to live in a make-believe world helps children learn about the real world. They role-play endlessly: pretending to be animals, mummy and daddy, doctor and patient, truck drivers, teachers, and princesses. Share in your child’s imaginative play (“Who will come to your tea party?”). Your child’s pretend play is a wonderful window into what’s going on in her mind. Try using your child’s imagination to get him to cooperate. Here’s how one mother taught her three-year-old to brush his teeth: “On Billy’s toothbrush there is a little picture of Oscar the Grouch, so I become the voice of Oscar the Grouch. I say, ‘is there any trash in your teeth? Let me come in and see.’ He immediately opens his mouth for Oscar to come in and look at his teeth and eat up the trash that’s in there. Then we talk about having clean teeth, and how we don’t want to leave trash in our teeth. Brushing Billy’s teeth has not become a big issue because I help him cooperate.” The mind of the preschool child is rich with fantasy. To three-year-olds Big Bird and Barney are real. They don’t waste energy separating real from pretend; they sit back and enjoy. While parents may feel it’s their disciplinary duty to purge their child’s gullible mind of things unreal, resist this urge. Strike a balance. Let the child enjoy his fantasies, and as his thought processes become more sophisticated he will accept that these fictitious characters are only pretend. You don’t have to manipulate his environment in order to maintain the fiction, the way some parents do to keep a child believing in Santa or the Easter Bunny. Just enjoy these games for what they are – pretend. Santa at best is a jolly, benevolent figure, not a punishing one. Everyone enjoys fantasy, and even for adults it’s therapeutic. Use your child’s behaviour as a barometer of whether his imaginary experiences are helpful or harmful. The same imaginative mind that creates the fantasies also creates fears. We make sure our children know it’s Mummy and Daddy who give them gifts at Christmas. We’ve never agreed with telling children that “Santa Claus” is watching to see if they’re good. Be especially vigilant about cartoons. (See “Helping Your Child Handle Fears” (#litres_trial_promo).) chapter 4 saying no positively (#ulink_2ac59906-f14f-599d-8cd7-7a163779ac99) Parents spend the first nine months saying “yes”. From nine to eighteen months you’ll do a lot of distracting and redirecting. Baby will be introduced to frustration gradually as your responses to his wants and needs become less and less immediate. After that the “nos” become more direct. “No” is a power-packed word, quick on the lips, easy to say; it gets results if you expect it to and say it without being abusive. Your child will hear this word often from you; you will hear it from your child as well. Here’s how to use this negative little word to teach positive messages. the importance of saying no (#ulink_6014aa50-52d6-5e6b-8a44-de00d5cdac2b) It’s necessary for a parent to say no to a child so the child can later say no to herself. All children – and some adults – have difficulty delaying gratification. “I want it now” is a driving desire, especially in toddlers. Learning to accept no from someone else is a prelude to saying no to oneself. What gets children (and adults) into trouble is a knee-jerk, impulsive reaction to a want – an immediate yes – without taking time to run it through their internal sensor and consider the necessity of saying no to themselves. Strike a balance. Too many “nos” and too many “yeses” cripple a child’s self-discipline. It’s important to achieve the right blend of “yeses” and “nos” in a child’s environment. If you rarely say no to your child, the few times that you do he’ll disintegrate because he is not used to being frustrated. If his whole day is full of “nos”, the child believes the world is a negative place to be and will grow up a negative person. The real world will always be full of “yeses” and “nos”. In many homes, children soon learn who is the “yes” parent and who is more likely to say “no”. Even the Ten Commandments have dos and don’ts. As the child gradually learns this lesson of life, she’s on her way to having a healthy, balanced personality. “Nos” grow too. The art of saying “no” develops along with your baby. During the first year, a baby’s needs and wants are the same, so that you are mainly a “yes” parent. During the second year, baby’s wants are not always safe or healthy, so you become a “yes” and “no” parent. From nine to fourteen months, no-saying is straightforward. We call them “low-energy nos”. Between fourteen and eighteen months, as babies click into overdrive, they get easily frustrated and are likely to protest being steered in a direction other than the one they want to go. This is when you will need both high-energy “nos” and very creative alternatives, such as the distraction and substitution approach, which is intended to minimize wear and tear on you and your child. By eighteen months, no-saying can begin to be more matter-of-fact. Parents can begin to convey an attitude of “that’s life, and I’m confident you can deal with it”. By two years of age toddlers become infatuated with saying no themselves. (See “Defiance” (#ua05efc30-0cab-46ed-8cd8-cad895dff7b1).) creative alternatives to “no” (#ulink_06988f9a-770d-5352-8703-e83308dcb58b) One morning when she was eighteen months old our daughter Lauren, who was going through an impulsive phase, was flitting around the house climbing on and getting into everything. She was endangering herself and trashing the house. After the twentieth “No”, I was tired of hearing that word and so was Lauren. On the wall in one of our children’s bedrooms I noticed a poster of a kitten stuck out on a limb at the top of a tree. The caption read, “Lord, protect me from myself.” I realized that Lauren needed rescuing from her impulsive self. She needed a change of environment. We spent the rest of the day outside. Parks and playgrounds provide space and a “yes” environment in which to roam and climb. If you find yourself isolated with a curious toddler who is flitting from thing to thing, and you’re chasing him around the house saying no, consider changing to something more fun. Go outside; take along a good book and plant yourself in a safe location to let him run. The fewer “Nos”, the better your day goes. Teach stop signs. Even in the early months, teach your baby to recognize body language that means stop. Your baby needs to be exposed to “stop” body language long before hearing the no word. The first nip on Mother’s nipple during breastfeeding will invoke an “ouch” sign on your face; the first time your baby reaches for something dangerous, your face will register alarm. You are likely to get best results from your stop signs if your baby has been so used to positive body language that any change makes him sit up and take notice. Your “nos” will be more meaningful during toddlerhood if your baby sees a lot of “yes” body language: looks of pride and approval, gestures of delight and pleasure, eye-to-eye contact, hugs, tickles, and a sparkly face that says “I love you. You’re great!” We have noticed that attachment-parented children, because they spend hours a day in their parents’ arms and in face-to-face contact, easily learn to read parents’ faces and body language. Having lots of face-to-face contact in the early months makes face-to-face communication easier in the months and years to come. Some children are so impressed by body language that you can get your point across without saying a word. An expressive mother of a connected two-year-old told us: “Usually all I have to do is glance at her with a slight frown on my face, and she stops misbehaving.” Teach stop sounds. Often a change in your mood or body language is not enough to redirect impulsive actions. Words are needed. Children soon learn which discipline words carry more power and demand quicker response than others. And children soon learn which tone of voice means business and which allows for some latitude. Arm yourself with a variety of “stop-what-you’re-doing” sounds so that you can choose one that fits the occasion. Tailor the intensity of the sound to the gravity of the behaviour. Save the really big sound for the true danger. Create alternatives to the n-word. Constantly saying no causes this word to lose its power. Since stop sounds are used mainly to protect, try using more specific words that fit the situation. Consider this example: when a toddler is about to reach into the cat’s litter tray your first reaction is to say “No!” but you follow it up with an explanation, “Dirty! Make you sick.” Next time the child goes for the litter tray (and he will do it again), instead of no, say, “Dirty! Make you sick.” That and a disgusted expression on your face will help the child learn the why as well as the what of good behaviour, and the litter box will lose its attraction. (We are assuming here that the litter tray is kept in a location well away from the toddler’s beaten path. Cat litter, like sand, is irresistible to babies.) Babies start reaching for “no-nos” around six months. A good phrase to use early on is “Not for Josie”. By the time baby is a toddler this phrase will be familiar and matter-of-fact. mastering “the look” You can often correct a child without saying a word. I have noticed that master disciplinarians use a look of disapproval that stops the behaviour but preserves the child’s self-image, a type of “I mean business” look. Martha, after disciplining eight children, has mastered “the look”: head turned a bit, eyes probing, just the right facial gesture and tone of voice to convey to the child, “I don’t like what you’re doing, but I still feel connected to you. I know that you know better.” Remember, your eyes will disclose what you are really thinking and feeling. If you are feeling anger or contempt toward your child, that’s what she will read in your eyes. If one or both of you recognize this is happening, you will have to apologize for the harshness of the feelings communicated toward her person by “the look”. Be sure that stop signs and stop sounds stop the behaviour and not the growth of self-worth in your child. Your child should understand that you disapprove of the behaviour, not the child. Follow the look with a hug, a smile, or a forthright explanation: “I don’t like what you did, but I do like you.” “the voice” Besides mastering “the look”, reserve a special tone of voice for those occasions when you must get your point across vocally. A veteran disciplinarian shared her secret with us: I am an easy-going mummy, but my children know just by my tone of voice when they have crossed the line. One day our two-year-old was misbehaving and our four-year-old said, “Don’t mess with Mummy when she talks like that!” Coincidentally, one day while we were writing this chapter, two-year-old Lauren came prancing into our study clutching a bag of peanuts. Instead of grabbing the peanuts from her and shouting “No!” (they are on our chokeable food list for children under three), Martha looked Lauren straight in the eye and calmly said, “Not for Lauren.” Her tone of voice and concerned look stopped Lauren in her tracks. Martha picked Lauren up (still clutching the peanuts) and headed off for the pantry, where they found a safer snack. By using our standard “not for Lauren” phrase and giving her a safe alternative, she didn’t have time to consider throwing a fit, which a no surely would have produced. (For more alternatives to no, see discussions of redirectors (#ulink_97142149-015f-552a-a6d9-082d927ed185) and here). In any family there will be items that are “not for” the little one. When you use this phrase calmly and consistently from early on, the toddler understands you are protecting him. “No” is so easy to say. It requires no thought. It’s knee-jerk automatic, yet irritatingly oppressive. Saying “cannot” communicates more, and you’ll use it more thoughtfully, reserving it for situations where baby truly cannot proceed. You’re respecting his mind as you protect his body. In our experience, babies respond to “Stop!” better than to “No!” It gets the child’s attention, and stops behaviour long enough for you to plan other strategies. “Stop” is protective rather than punitive. “No” invites a clash of wills, but even strong-willed children will usually stop momentarily to evaluate a stop order, as if they sense danger ahead. Strong-minded children often ignore “No” if they’ve heard it a thousand times before. Even “Stop” loses its command value if overused. Give positive substitutes. Present a positive with your negative: “You can’t have the knife, but you can have the ball.” Use a convincing expression to market the “can do” in order to soften the “can’t do”. “You can’t go across the street”, you say with a matter-of-fact tone of voice, and then carefully state, “You can help Mummy sweep the drive.” There is a bit of creative marketing in every mother. Avoid setups. If you’re taking your child along with you to a toyshop to buy a birthday present for your child’s friend, realize that you are setting yourself up for a confrontation. Your child is likely to want to buy everything in the shop. To avoid the inevitable “No, you can’t have that toy”, before you go into the shop tell him that you are there to buy a birthday present and not a toy for him so that he is programmed not to expect a toy. respectfully, no! (#ulink_7513d70b-f6bf-5315-8bd8-b8c3b0548343) Each stage of development has its “yeses” and “nos”; the stakes just get higher as children get older. Learning how to give and receive a “no” is part of maturity and part of discipline. “No” is a child’s word too. Prepare yourself to be on the receiving end of “No”. Your two-year-old has just run out the door. You ask her to come back. She yells, “No!” Your first reaction is likely to be, “This little pipsqueak is not going to talk back to me that way. I’ll show her who’s boss …” (In our family, being disrespectful is a real “no-no”.) Understanding what’s behind that two-year-old and that two-letter word will help you accept this normal toddler behaviour. Don’t take “No” personally. Saying no is important for a child’s development, for establishing his identity as an individual. This is not defiance or a rejection of your authority. (See the meaning of defiance (#ua05efc30-0cab-46ed-8cd8-cad895dff7b1).) Some parents feel they cannot tolerate any “nos” at all from their children, thinking that to permit this would undermine their authority. They wind up curtailing an important process of self-emergence: Children have to experiment with where their mother leaves off and where they begin. Parents can learn to respect individual wishes and still stay in charge and maintain limits. The boundaries of selfhood will be weak if the self gets no exercise. As your child gets older, the ability to get along with peers in certain situations (stealing, cheating, drugs, and so on) will depend on her ability to say no. By eighteen months Lauren had surmised that “No” meant we wanted her to stop what she was doing. One day she was happily playing with water at the kitchen sink. As she saw me approaching, and in anticipation of my stopping her play, she blurted out an emphatic “No, Dad!” Lauren had staked out her territory, and she had concluded she had a right to do this. Her “No” meant she was guarding her space. I verbalized what I thought her “No” meant: “You don’t want me to stop you. You want to play with the water. Go ahead, that looks like fun.” If I had wanted her to stop I would have said, “Sorry, not now. How about a squirt bottle with water in it?” the humour of “no” One afternoon Martha walked into the TV room and saw Matthew and his friend watching a video that the older children had rented and watched the day before. (Later we found out Matthew had also watched it at that time.) She took one look at the movie and realized she would have to ask him to turn it off. Besides, it was the middle of the day and the boys should have been playing outside. As she stood watching the movie for a few moments, planning her course of action, Martha caught the flavour of the character in the movie and in a spurt of inspiration decided to use humour to say no. As she clicked off the TV, she spun around on her heels and launched into a monologue using the character’s facial expressions, accent, and hand gestures. She must have done a good job of impersonating this actor because both boys sat staring at her wide-eyed as though they couldn’t believe a mum was capable of such improvised insanity. They both jumped up and headed out the door as the voice of this character told them to find something better to do. They were still laughing. Personalize “No”. We are convinced Lauren is destined for public relations. Her “No, Dad” was the diplomatic way to say no. By adding “Dad” she personalized her message. Rather than giving a dictatorial “No”, we add the child’s name. If you tend to shout, personalized address at least softens the sound and shows respect for the listener. Some parents confuse respecting the child with granting him equal power, but this is not a power issue. The person with the power should respect the person taken charge of. That consideration holds true in parenting; it holds true in other relationships as well. Be considerate. When you have to stop a behaviour, there is no reason to be rude. For example, your baby discovers the tape dispenser someone left out. This is a wonderful toy. Instead of descending on him and snatching it from his hands, causing him to wail pitifully as you carry him off, you can take a few moments to explore it with him. Then you say “bye-bye” to the tape and hand him a decent length of the fascinating stuff to compensate for not getting the whole roll as you turn his attention to a perhaps less interesting but more age-appropriate activity. When you say it, mean it. Follow through on your directives. For months we said to Lauren that in order to have bedtime stories she had to submit to tooth brushing. And for months it worked, sometimes easily, sometimes with a certain amount of coaxing and saying, “OK, no stories …” One night she decided to test. Martha She could tell by the set of Lauren’s jaw and firmly shut lips that she finally was “calling our bluff”. So rather than proceed with coaxing and humouring, Martha calmly said, “OK, no stories!” turned off the lights, and carried her to bed. She fussed a bit as Martha lay there with her because she realized Martha had called her bluff and now the lights were out – the irreversible sign that the next step was to go to sleep. After that, tooth brushing went unchallenged and stories were reinstated. making danger discipline stick (#ulink_db598f6c-b091-5d0a-90c4-3b0c463ac3d7) Your toddler reaches for the handle of the soup pan on the stove. Instead of shouting “No!” try “Stop!” As soon as baby stops in her tracks, issue a quick follow-up – “Hurt baby.” As you firmly grab her exploring hand (thinking next time you’ll keep the handle turned in and use the back burner), look into her amazed big eyes and continue your serious look: “Hot. Hurt. Don’t touch what’s on the stove. Ouchie!” You’ve made your point without saying no. Follow up with a hug, especially if you found yourself speaking harshly. Reconnect with your child so that one incident doesn’t ruin your child’s whole day. (“Hot” is another helpful stop word, especially once your child has some personal experience with the sensation. Carefully hold her hand where she can feel the heat so she understands the connection.) negotiate or hold your ground? Children, especially those with a strong will, try to wear their parents down. They are convinced they must have something or their world can’t go on. They pester and badger until parents say “yes” just to stop the wear and tear on their nerves. This is faulty discipline. If, however, your child’s request seems reasonable after careful listening, be willing to negotiate. Sometimes you may find it wise to change your mind after saying no. While you want your child to believe your “No” means no, you also want your child to feel you are approachable and flexible. It helps to hold your “No” until you’ve heard your child out. If you sense your child is uncharacteristically crushed or angry with your “No”, listen to her side. Maybe she has a point you hadn’t considered or her request is a bigger deal to her than you imagined. Be open to reversing your decision, if warranted. Make sure, though, that she knows it was your fairness and not her “wear down” tactics that changed your mind. Our daughter Erin seems destined to become a trial lawyer; she pleads her case with logic and emotion. It’s even harder to say no to her when she raises those eyelashes you could paint a house with. Eventually we learned to say no without discouraging Erin’s creative persistence. When Erin wanted a horse, we said no (we had too many dependents already). Erin persisted. By trial and error we had learned that any big wish in a child, no matter how ridiculous, merits hearing the child’s viewpoint. We listened attentively and empathetically while Erin presented her horse wish. We countered, “Erin, we understand why you want a horse. You could have a lot of fun riding and grooming a horse, and some of your friends have horses.” (We wanted Erin to feel we understood her side.) “But we have to say no; and we will not change our minds. Now let’s sit down and calmly work this out.” (Letting the child know her request is non-negotiable diffuses the child’s steam and saves you from getting worn down.) “You are not yet ready to care for a horse.” (We enumerated the responsibilities that went along with the fun of owning a horse.) “When you have finished another six months of lessons and you show us that you can be responsible for a horse, we’ll talk about it then.” Nine months later Tuny was added to our list of dependents. Erin got her horse and she learned two valuable lessons in life: how to delay gratification and that with privileges come responsibilities. As young parents with our first few children, we believed that smacking was appropriate in life-threatening situations, such as toddlers running out into the street. We reasoned it was necessary to make a lasting impression on mind and body to prevent the child from running into the street again. At the time we concluded that safety comes before psychology. But as we learned more about discipline, we realized there are better ways than smacking to handle even danger discipline. And we realized toddlers don’t remember from one time to the next, even with the “physical impression”. Here’s what worked for us: mothers who can’t say no In their zeal to give their children everything they need, some parents risk giving their children everything they want. Mothers who practise attachment parenting risk becoming totally “yes” mothers, with “no” being foreign to their parenting style. It is important for the mother to feel comfortable saying no to her little one from the very beginning. In fact, it begins when she teaches her newborn to latch on to the breast correctly. It is the mother’s first discipline situation – to show baby how to latch on properly so that he can get fed sufficiently and she can avoid sore nipples. (Some mothers cannot do this. They are afraid to be assertive for fear of causing baby to cry. They would rather let the baby do it wrong and put up with the pain.) She says no early on when she stops him from yanking her hair or biting her breast while feeding. By telling him to stop because it hurts her, she is beginning to teach boundaries. Serious no-saying comes with toddlerhood. Besides the literal word “no”, there are many ways to communicate that something is not safe or appropriate. Whether she says “Stop that” or “Put it down” or “Not safe”, or physically redirects her toddler’s activity, she is consistently and gently redirecting behaviour and teaching boundaries. Whatever the terminology, saying no is not a negative thing. It is a way of giving, and it takes a lot of effort. Mothers who can’t say no have a big problem on their hands down the line. They become the mums that we see getting yanked around like puppets by their preschoolers. When mothers begin saying no – confidently, firmly, and lovingly – at the appropriate times, it does not threaten the child. It might wrinkle him for a few minutes, because he doesn’t like hearing “Stop” or “Wait” or whatever the word might be that you pick. But he has had the foundation of attachment and he trusts the parent. Limit setting is not the big undoing that some think it might be, and mothers cannot wait until the pre-school years to start. It needs to happen very naturally, very confidently, and intuitively, and very early on. Danger “No”. When a toddler was in the driveway, Martha watched him like a hawk. If he ventured too close to the street, she put on her best tirade, shouting “Stop!! Street!!” and she grabbed him from the kerb and carried on and on, vocalizing her fear of his being in the street. She was not yelling at him or acting angry. She was expressing genuine fear, giving voice to that inner alarm that goes off in every mother’s heart when her child could be hurt. It was very important that he believe her, so she didn’t hold back. And it worked! He acquired a deep respect for the street and always looked for permission, knowing that Mum would take his hand and they would cross together. A few times Martha had to reinforce this healthy fear by issuing a loud warning sound. She saves this sound for times when an immediate response is needed for safety. This sound is hard to describe in writing, but it is a very sharp, forceful “Ahhh!” Once she had to use it from a distance of about two hundred feet at a park where Stephen had wandered off and was about to step into the street. To her intense relief, he stopped in his tracks and looked back at her, giving her time to get to him. She never uses it casually, and doesn’t use it often. Day-to-day, moment-by-moment situations need to be handled more normally. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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