Teaching your child self-control can feel like a herculean task and it can be easy to fall into scolding habits as a way of correcting poor behavior. But children will make choices each and everyday (good and bad) and it’s your job to teach them how to exercise self-control and good decision-making skills all while keeping your cool.
Before you decide I’m asking way too much of you, take a look over the steps I’ve found help me effectively work with my children and see if you can’t implement a few of them into your own household.
Delay The Rewards For Better Behavior
One way to instill good behavior with our children (in our society full of instant gratification) is by teaching with delayed rewards.
In our family, we use screen time as a reward for good behavior and NOT as a digital pacifier. While grocery shopping, you may feel tempted to distract your child with a tablet or phone. But I have found my children behave better when they know the treat is waiting for them at home once they’ve acted appropriately in the store.
Now we can engage as a family at the store, which makes the whole experience more enjoyable for all parties. The kids get to pick their own produce and contribute ideas to our meal planning. Then I have some quiet time when we arrive home and they have their reward. Wins for everyone!
Follow The Golden Rule
If you want your children to act in a certain way, then you should be displaying the same behavior. They will mirror your tone, attitude, and choices. Obviously, there is some flexibility with this step as you will be doing things you would prefer your children not do yet. Such as explaining to my 7-year-old son why he wasn’t quite up to driving my car.
But there are many traits your children will learn best through your example:
- Honesty – If you want honest children, model the behavior for them in all you do. Don’t even use “white lies” as your children will decide there are times where lying to you is appropriate.
- Tone – If you are reactive or explosive to your children, they will be reactive and explosive to their siblings. They will mirror the way you approach discipline and conflict resolution which is way remaining calm, clear, and reasonable in stressful situation is so valuable as a parent.
- Tactfulness – This pairs closely with honesty, especially as children are not known for either trait! You will have to explain why blunt honesty isn’t always the correct thing to do and how to be tactful and honest. Especially as your children may be enticed to point out strangers in the store or on the street who are dressed differently or acting inappropriately or smoking.
- Responsibility – Your children need to see you fulfill your responsibilities, be it going to work, taking care of household chores, or coming to their activities to support them. By your example they will learn how to behave as responsible people and you will build a strong bond of trust.
Explain Consequences For Poor Behavior
We focus less on punishment and more on set consequences for choices. This goes for good and bad choices. Each choice has an outcome and we have discussions about the outcome of our choices at any opportunity. As parents, we choose to recognize and discuss the positive outcomes from our kids choices in as much detail as the negative outcomes to their choices. If kids can recognize positive outcomes for good behavior, they’ll be more inclined to make good choices. But you can’t avoid the scenarios when poor choices are made resulting in negative consequences. So what do you do when this happens?
Our children can be fairly predictable. We know areas in which they struggle, we know how enticing it is for a kid or teen to watch an inappropriate show, put off doing their homework, or sloppily breeze through their chore list. Many of their negative choices can be anticipated and planned for. The key here is to openly discuss consequences with your teen before the bad choice takes place. If they are in clear understanding of the consequence, they can then be held accountable without guilt or fear of misrepresentation. Taking this idea one step forward, if you allow your teen to reasonably set the consequences for their actions and all parties can come to an agreement of these consequences, they can be held further responsible for their actions.
One more benefit to setting consequences before choices are made is that this conversation alleviates stress and explosiveness when poor choices are inevitably made. If your teen shows up late for curfew, you will still be frustrated but you will lessen your chances of being explosive. You won’t have to worry or wonder what you should do or say, you’ll know (and they will know) exactly what’s going to happen when they walk through the door because the consequence to this action was set in place long before it happened.
Photo: Getty Images
