How To Discipline Your Child

Mar 03, 2002

IT is a month today since children went back to school. How have you assessed your stay with your child for that long? Did it seem too long a holiday and you couldn’t wait for schools to open?

By Margaret LubegaIT is a month today since children went back to school. How have you assessed your stay with your child for that long? Did it seem too long a holiday and you couldn’t wait for schools to open? Was your child giving you constant headaches and stomach upsets? Did you, more often than not, scream your voice hoarse because they would not listen? Did they go out for a dance, a party, or in town without caring to let you know? Do not throw in the towel yet. Effective parenting requires wisdom, patience and persistence. Loving your child is not good enough. Understanding and self control are highly essential ingredients.Proper discipline calls for children to know that there are limits. Psychologists tell us that emotional problems among the youth are caused not by firm discipline, but by lack of it. Our children need limits and it is us parents to set those limits. Without learning the limits at home, the child will have difficulty living within the reality once they move into outside world.The following tips may help you in disciplinary process.- Punishing the child for bad behaviour usually does not produce instant good behaviour. You may have to draw out, encourage and build good behaviour to take the place of the bad.- You will have to both “nurture and prune” the child. You see a good gardener nurtures and prunes the plants for good fruit. And so must you! Talking of discipline will include all the things you say and do to the child to help him or her develop to a mature responsible person.- Keep asking yourself why you want your child to behave this way and not that way.- In disciplining, look ahead at the child’s problem areas and seek solutions before the conflict arises. - Work towards fairness.- Always listen to explanations before making final conclusions. - Try as much as possible to be consistent and flexible. - Set definite clear limits of behaviour avoiding arbitrary rules that confuse the child. - Delay serious punishment until when you are calm. - It is an injustice to hold off discipline because you think it may hurt!- Guess what, if you hope to rear disciplined children, it is imperative that you set an example. What parents do in their own lives is far more important than what they say or the limitations they set! Sociologists and psychologists have proved that children learn by example.The writer is a mother of four and a lecturer at the Institute of Teacher Education, Kyambogo (ITEK.)Ends

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