I finally finished reading the book Positive Discipline by
Jane Nelsen, Ed.D. over the weekend. It
took me a few months not because it was not a good book, but because I kept get
distracted by life and other fictional books that were waiting in the wings for
me to read. I read a chapter at a time
and tried to digest the information. I
will let the information settle for a bit, then I plan to re-read the book to
catch things that I missed before. I definitely recommend reading this book to my friends and family.
I am hoping to get hubby to read the book soon. I may have to do a reading trade. Hubby has been wanting me to read Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey for quite a while, so that may have to be our trade.
So what is Positive Discipline? It is the concept of using encouragement to create positive behavior in children. “The primary goal of Positive Discipline is to enable both adults and children to experience more joy, harmony, cooperation, shared responsibility, mutual respect, and love in their life and relationships (p. 289).” It is an interest concept that I am working on meddling into our family’s daily dynamics. This book provides basic concepts that are like a tool box. You can mix and match tools until you find something that works to accomplish the task at hand.
The book helped me to discover the niches that my children play in both birth order and personalities. Thereby, helped me to determine how those characteristics can be used to help create a more positive environment for them to feel like they belong. This book also focused on adults and how their personalities play into parenthood with strengths and weaknesses. Suggestions for areas for adults to work on to improve the parent child relationship are also given. A family is a TEAM effort and there is no I in team, so all members of the family need to work together to create a loving and encouraging environment.
One concept that I have been using for a few months are curiosity questions. Curiosity questions are used to help the child explore the consequences of their choices without a lecture from an adult. This concept helps the child to focus on solutions rather than punishment for a problem. It helps them to take ownership of the problem or the set routine. For example: “Princess, we need to go to the car. What do we need to do before we go to the car?” “Put shoes on.” Then like magic the shoes go on instead of constant arguing and delaying tactics. Or “Pumpkin, how would you feel if someone called you a name? How do you think Princess feels? What could we do different next time?”
We tried our first family meeting last night. Pumpkin and Princess seemed pretty receptive to the idea once we got started. We talked about what a weekly family meeting is: agenda (a list of issues that family members feel need to be addressed and solved by the family as a team), compliments (everyone needs to come with a compliment about each person at the meeting), problem solving (working as a team to help find solutions to problems on the agenda), planning a fun family activity for the future (family outing or movie night), and ending with a fun activity (like a game). We ended the meeting by creating an evening picture routine chart for both Pumpkin and Princess. Pumpkin’s chart is: play time, dinner time, clean up, homework, brush teeth, bath, pick out clothes for tomorrow, story time, then bed time. Princess’s chart is: play time, dinner time, clean up, pick out clothes for tomorrow, brush teeth, bath, story time, and then bed time. Next week we will create morning routine charts.
I do have to say that homework time seemed to go more smoothly tonight, only 45 minutes instead of 2 hours. Pumpkin has math, spelling/phonics, reading, and memory work every evening. First grade is quite a change from kindergarten. Princess walked up to me this morning and told me that she wanted me to put “Pumpkin is bothering me all the time and hurting me. Can you help me fix the problem?” on the agenda list to talk about at the next weekly meeting. Quite cute! I hope this helps with a few of the issues we have been having lately. Pumpkin and Princess both love each other, but they are the typical brother and sister at times with the teasing and horseplay.
I am hoping to get hubby to read the book soon. I may have to do a reading trade. Hubby has been wanting me to read Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey for quite a while, so that may have to be our trade.
So what is Positive Discipline? It is the concept of using encouragement to create positive behavior in children. “The primary goal of Positive Discipline is to enable both adults and children to experience more joy, harmony, cooperation, shared responsibility, mutual respect, and love in their life and relationships (p. 289).” It is an interest concept that I am working on meddling into our family’s daily dynamics. This book provides basic concepts that are like a tool box. You can mix and match tools until you find something that works to accomplish the task at hand.
The book helped me to discover the niches that my children play in both birth order and personalities. Thereby, helped me to determine how those characteristics can be used to help create a more positive environment for them to feel like they belong. This book also focused on adults and how their personalities play into parenthood with strengths and weaknesses. Suggestions for areas for adults to work on to improve the parent child relationship are also given. A family is a TEAM effort and there is no I in team, so all members of the family need to work together to create a loving and encouraging environment.
One concept that I have been using for a few months are curiosity questions. Curiosity questions are used to help the child explore the consequences of their choices without a lecture from an adult. This concept helps the child to focus on solutions rather than punishment for a problem. It helps them to take ownership of the problem or the set routine. For example: “Princess, we need to go to the car. What do we need to do before we go to the car?” “Put shoes on.” Then like magic the shoes go on instead of constant arguing and delaying tactics. Or “Pumpkin, how would you feel if someone called you a name? How do you think Princess feels? What could we do different next time?”
We tried our first family meeting last night. Pumpkin and Princess seemed pretty receptive to the idea once we got started. We talked about what a weekly family meeting is: agenda (a list of issues that family members feel need to be addressed and solved by the family as a team), compliments (everyone needs to come with a compliment about each person at the meeting), problem solving (working as a team to help find solutions to problems on the agenda), planning a fun family activity for the future (family outing or movie night), and ending with a fun activity (like a game). We ended the meeting by creating an evening picture routine chart for both Pumpkin and Princess. Pumpkin’s chart is: play time, dinner time, clean up, homework, brush teeth, bath, pick out clothes for tomorrow, story time, then bed time. Princess’s chart is: play time, dinner time, clean up, pick out clothes for tomorrow, brush teeth, bath, story time, and then bed time. Next week we will create morning routine charts.
I do have to say that homework time seemed to go more smoothly tonight, only 45 minutes instead of 2 hours. Pumpkin has math, spelling/phonics, reading, and memory work every evening. First grade is quite a change from kindergarten. Princess walked up to me this morning and told me that she wanted me to put “Pumpkin is bothering me all the time and hurting me. Can you help me fix the problem?” on the agenda list to talk about at the next weekly meeting. Quite cute! I hope this helps with a few of the issues we have been having lately. Pumpkin and Princess both love each other, but they are the typical brother and sister at times with the teasing and horseplay.
I will slowly work on integrating concepts into our family dynamics. We will be learning as a family, one concept at a time. Rome was not built in a day, and family dynamics do not change in a day. So slow and steady, we will work on encouraging our children to be the best individual that they can be.
