Kate Halim
Sometimes when parenting become challenging, some fathers become hard on themselves because they think they need to come up with the perfect solution whenever their child misbehaves.
As a father, the discipline techniques you choose would have to depend on your child’s age, the type of behavior your child displays, your child’s temperament and your parenting style.
One of the positive discipline techniques that help disciplining children is creating diversions. If your child is less than a year in age, you shouldn’t ideally be thinking of disciplining your child. However, you need to tell them what to do and what not to do so that they don’t harm themselves.
In such cases, you can get your child’s attention by calling his or her name, offer a toy to play with, or make a funny sound – anything that diverts or distracts the child’s attention. Kids this age are easily distracted, so you can easily do that without using harsh tones with them.
Fathers need to reward their child after he or she has done something good, so that the child is encouraged to repeat that behaviour.
Some parents don’t realize the importance of rewarding their children for their good behavior, which can work like magic. So, become a better father and encourage your children’s good actions more.
Pat your child on back, compliment and praise him or her to show it’s the behavior you want. But this should not be mixed up with bribing a child, which is given beforehand to motivate your child to do things that you want – both are very different.
Kids who are bribed tend to learn to manipulate their parents and work their way to gain more bribes. Some work only when they are bribed and not otherwise. Bribing should be avoided.
Don’t expect perfection from your child. No one is perfect, and it’s unrealistic to expect your child to be well behaved always. If you expect it so, it might stress your child and he or she might misbehave just to ease the tension. So, set specific, realistic, and limited goals to help your child so that you and your child both succeed.
Grounding is another effective discipline technique for school going kids and teenagers, where you restrict your child to a certain place, like his or her room as a way to punish him or her.
Positive reinforcement is better and more powerful than punishment or negative reinforcement. Small rewards like an ice cream treat or car ride can be more effective than big rewards, like a promise of a bicycle. Kids might stop trying if they feel they can’t earn the big reward that has been offered.
Effectively punish your child by taking away privileges. Your child should learn that privileges come with responsibility and he or she needs to earn it. This technique is effective only when it’s used occasionally.
Such discipline technique works best if the privilege is something the child values, if it’s related in some way to the behaviour, and if it’s taken away as soon as the inappropriate behaviour occurs.