Discipline

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Health Topics
Discipline

1
Overview
The nature/nurture conflict gives parents and child
development specialists cause for much discussion.
A child's temperament and, therefore, his actions
are indeed greatly affected by his gene pool. How a
parent is able to deal with that child and his
actions will considerably affect the outcome of his
upbringing.

2
Overview
It is widely accepted that a child whose needs are
attended with reasonable speed will learn that the
world is a dependable place. This trust in others
gives him the base he needs to develop trust in the
most important person in the world - himself.

3
Overview
Some parents believe they will spoil a child if they
give too much attention to the child as an infant.
They do not hold the child frequently, do not
believe in rocking a child, and allow the child to cry
for long periods of time instead of picking him/her
up. Children cannot be spoiled by parents who
provide loving care. But the parents must respect
themselves enough, not to allow the child to
become a tyrant over them.

4
Overview
Parents who are realistic and consistent in their
expectations of their children will raise children
with firm foundations for independence.
Independence for their children should be the goal
of parents. What do parents need to do for their
children, to show they are realistic and consistent,
and to pass along the love and respect children
need?

5
Overview
Infants' needs must be met reasonably. If a child
cries, he/she is signaling he/she is either hungry,
wet, or uncomfortable. A parent must attend to an
infant in a reasonable time to teach the infant
trust. Infants need verbal and tactile stimulation
from the parent. A parent's talking, cooing, or
singing to an infant increases the child's learning
process. Tactile stimulation of holding and rocking
are necessary for the infant's emotional health and
growth.

6
Overview
On the practical side, infants should live in clean,
safe surroundings. This includes regular baths and
diaper changes, being fed regularly as directed by a
physician, and receiving regular checkups and
immunizations.
What a parent does for and with an infant is
expanded, as the child grows older and more
independent.

7
Overview
The older child continues to need verbal and
tactile stimulation. This can be provided in the way
a parent shows affection and teaches his/her child
about life. The older child needs consistent care,
which includes encouragement to learn by being
allowed to explore his/her surroundings. When the
child is school age, the parent must express
encouragement of learning by being interested in
his/her school attendance and progress.

8
Overview
As a child becomes an adolescent the parenting
task becomes different, yet the same. The older
child is preparing to become independent of the
parent. It is at this time that realistic and
consistent parenting will pay off. A child raised
with respect will generally respond with respect to
his/her parent.

9
Overview
A parent should never relax in his/her role as a
parent. A parent must always be on the job to
provide nurture, love, acceptance, guidance,
discipline, and the many other needs of his/her
children. Unfortunately, many parents do not have
this knowledge. Or if they have the knowledge, do
not or cannot put it to use.

10
Overview
The Children’s Service Worker's job with his/her
clients is to retrain them in their parenting task.
The younger the child they parent, the easier is our
task. The workers must teach the parent about
child development, parenting
techniques, alternative discipline methods, and
self-respect. The worker does not have to wait
until self-esteem is in place to begin the other
lessons. It is essential for the parents to realize self
respect is the most important thing they can
provide the child.

11
Overview
A Children’s Service Worker can provide the
personal counseling for self-esteem building and
can provide the parenting information needed.
Also available are CTS providers, such as parent
aides, therapists, and referrals to Parents as First
Teachers.
The earlier a parent learns how to nurture their
child, the better chance that child and family has in
succeeding.

12
Techniques: Infancy
The parents' objectives in relation to the infant are
to develop a mutually satisfactory, reciprocal
relationship and to actively help the baby learn to
trust a dependable adult. Note the words
"mutually satisfactory." It is as important for the
parent as for the child to feel good about the
relationship.

13
Techniques: Infancy
Two obstacles to parental satisfaction are 1) it may
be some time before the baby can respond in a
recognizable way, as by smiling or laughing, and 2)
the baby doesn't talk, which means he/she is
pretty hard to understand. It is easy to get
frustrated by the one-sided conversation. Several
important parenting techniques follow.
**Learn to read your baby**

14
Techniques: Infancy
This can be summarized by the old railroad
sign: "Stop, Look, and Listen."
-- Stop: Pay attention.
-- Look: Facial expressions and body movements
like back arching (distress) or turning toward
someone (usually pleasure). Among other cues,
there are signs of tension or relaxation that can
guide the parent.

15
Techniques: Infancy
-- Listen: To sounds such as
vocalizations, crying, gurgling.
Taken together, “look” and “listen” can help the
parent figure out the puzzle and can help the
parent learn how to respond. If one thing does not
work, try something else. Guessing is part of the
game with infants.

16
Techniques: Infancy
**Don't be afraid of spoiling**
Babies cannot be spoiled. They do have needs and
try their best to express them - often by crying.
When the parent attends to the distressed
baby, he/she is helping to instill trust - trust that
mom or dad will take care of the infant.

17
Techniques: Infancy
Because some parents have little knowledge of
child development, their expectations in the area
of infant care may be inappropriate. Many infants
are in serious danger because a parent cannot
understand why a child cries. A child's crying is
extremely frustrating to a parent when they
cannot calm or hush their child.

18
Techniques: Infancy
In Dr. Benjamin Spock's book "Baby and Child
Care" he devotes several pages to this subject. He
discusses several types of infants who cry. The
infant with colic (pain, distension, gas), periodic
irritable crying (no distension), fretful baby (fretful
spells during early weeks) and hypertonic baby
(tense and restless during early weeks). Dr. Spock
recommends various methods of dealing with
children's crying from limited walking and rocking
to looking for medical reasons.

19
Techniques: Infancy
**Talk and read to the baby. **
A parent can sing or hum, even recite the traffic
regulations. What a parent says is less important
than the parent saying it. Even newborns move in
rhythm to the sound of a human voice. For older
babies, the parent's voice establishes the
possibility of communication and also helps the
baby to begin to understand language.

20
Techniques: Infancy
**Deal with undesirable behavior appropriately**
Being full grown means that a parent can easily
alter most baby behaviors that bothers the parent.
For example, a parent can:
-- Change the baby's environment by turning him
or her around or taking the baby to another room;

21
Techniques: Infancy
**Deal with undesirable behavior appropriately**
-- Distract the baby with a different object;
-- Use motion to change the scene by walking the
baby or lifting him/her to the shoulder.

22
Techniques: Infancy
**Don't hit, slap, or shake**
The baby is still too young to understand social
requirements. Sadly, from physical punishment the
baby learns that the people one loves can cause
pain and that aggression is an acceptable way to
express feelings.

23
Tecniques: Toddlers
Formerly horizontal (laying down), the child can
now stand/walk and is full of energy as he/she
strikes out to explore the world. As motor skills
improve, nothing is too bizarre to try - for example,
climbing up on dresser drawers or hopping out the
window. The child's energy seems inexhaustible,
especially to the caretaker, who must be on the
lookout for possible dangers.

24
Tecniques: Toddlers
Also inexhaustible is the child's curiosity. Each new
experience is received with a burst of delight. The
toddler can absorb all kinds of stimuli, which will
be grist for his/her developing cognitive processes.

25
Tecniques: Toddlers
During this period, the child begins to give up the
infantile needs of the first year. The child leaves
the parents to explore new situations and new
people, but continues to need to come back to
them as a place of safety.

26
Tecniques: Toddlers
At this time the child may also show a need to
overreact, to be overly negative in speech and
behavior, to defy, to do whatever is forbidden. This
is another way of separating from the parents and
asserting independence. It is also a response to the
parents' insistence on curbing dangerous or
antisocial behavior.

27
Tecniques: Toddlers
The goals of the parent are to define the toddler's
area of functioning and keep him or her out of
danger, to help the child begin to differentiate
acceptable from unacceptable behavior, to support
the budding sense of identity, and to help the child
separate as comfortably as possible. Basic to these
goals, of course, is the sense of trust that was
fostered in the infant. In addition, the alert parent
will provide a range of experiences to satisfy the
child's boundless curiosity. Some useful te

28
Tecniques: Toddlers
**Let the toddler go**
Let him or her move away from the parent, then
back, over and over. Toddlers need to practice
repeatedly in order to get the feel of the new
experience, to try out their abilities, and to test
his/her parent's reactions. The repeated nature of
the performance may be annoying to parents, so it
helps to view this period as a learning time, a step
toward the separation that will be signified by
school attendance. In adult life, too, hours of drill
are necessary for a finished performance, be it ty

29
Tecniques: Toddlers
**Be ready with affection, but don't press it**
Some of the time it's essential for the toddler to
be the bold explorer. Eventually, the toddler will
return to have his or her "motor" charged with the
kind of affection enjoyed before.

30
Tecniques: Toddlers
**Continue to read to the toddler**
The time spent reading to the infant should
continue into the toddler phase. It provides
excellent parent-child interaction and stimulates
the child's desire to learn new things.

31
Tecniques: Toddlers
Stay away from a tangled mass of rules. Like all
children, the toddler needs
structure, continuity, and firmness, but these
should arise from the way the family is organized
rather than from rules. For the toddler to
remember and obey them, the few rules should be
important and basic, such as do not turn on the
stove, or no playing in the driveway.
**The parent makes the decisions**

32
Tecniques: Toddlers
Tell the toddler what will happen next and assume
that he or she will go along. Major decisions are
hard for a child in this stage, which is characterized
by ambivalence. Take, for example, the situation
where a toddler is to be examined by a doctor. The
child may choose which ear will be examined first,
but he or she should not have the say as to
whether the examination occurs at all.

33
Tecniques: Toddlers
**Realize that a toddler's ability to understand a rule
does not imply ability to act on it**Toddlers have an amazing comprehension of
language and can understand most simple
communications. At this age, however, they have
not acquired the inner control we call conscience.
One can sometimes observe a child in the midst of
a forbidden act, while he or she
murmurs, "No, don't do it." Understanding and
acting on the understanding are two separate
things with many months of maturing in between.

34
Tecniques: Toddlers
**Recognize and deal with your frustrations**
To handle the toddler's no's and negative
behavior, a parent needs a saving sense of humor
plus the realization of what the child's behavior
means - the beginning of independence.

35
Tecniques: Toddlers
As with most individuals, adults and children
alike, a boost for good behavior is more effective
than criticism for unwanted behavior. The boost
might be a pat on the back, an arm over the
shoulder, a word of praise, a smile, or a kiss. But
what do you do when the toddler has exhausted
all patience, humor, and tolerance - especially
when a crucial safety rule has been broken
endangering the child?

36
Tecniques: Toddlers
This is a good time for what Thomas Gordon,
founder and president of Effectiveness Training Inc.
calls an "I" message - verbally expressing how you
feel and why. For example, "I get awfully upset
when you pinch the baby, because she may get
hurt." And then a parent has to follow the "I
message" with something to impress the child with
the seriousness of the act - keep him or her seated
for five minutes, hold in abeyance a special treat,
or something similar.

37
Tecniques: Toddlers
But in addition to talking to the child, a parent
needs a way to work out their feelings. Kids can
make parents angry. There is nothing wrong with
that. But, a parent has to find his or her own way
to handle the anger so that he/she feels better but
doesn't take it out on the toddler.
**Toilet Training**

38
Tecniques: Toddlers
In his book "Baby and Child Care", Dr. Benjamin
Spock goes into a lengthy discussion of toilet
training. He discusses looking for signs of a child's
readiness to train, parental attitudes, type of chair,
and time frames. He concludes by recommending
training is best done when a child is between 18
and 24 months.

39
Tecniques: Toddlers
By knowing this kind of information about their
infants, parents can be helped by knowing their
child is not crying on purpose to harass the parent
or the child's refusal to use the potty chair is not
because he is enjoying seeing his parent fail. The
more education parents have, the more able they
are to handle the situation in a non-punitive way.

40
Techniques: School-Age
The back and forth process of separating from and
reuniting with parents has been largely settled by
the time the child reaches school age, and the
child is ready for the first major step away from
home.

41
The new tasks are to tackle academic subjects and
learn how to get along with peers and authorities
other than mom and dad. The child is curious
about how things work and is willing to spend
many hours on hobbies and intriguing games. The
early school years are the time for laying down
work attitudes that will be useful throughout the
child's life.

42
Parents can do much to help. They can help the
child interpret the new world of school. When the
child has accomplished something, the parents can
provide an appreciative audience. At other times
they can be the refuge as he or she experiences
inevitable failures. Most importantly, the parents
can assist the child in understanding and beginning
to take responsibility for himself or herself.
Following are some ways to do these things.

43
**Communicate together**
Always important, communication is vital at this
stage, if the child is to adapt to the world of
learning. There's school, other people, and the
child himself or herself - each new encounter
crammed with surprises and interesting
discoveries that need to be discussed. Sometimes
the child will boast a bit, or a lot, at this stage. This
is the way a child of this age continues building
self-esteem.

44
**Let the child go backward sometimes**
No child can win all the time. When the child
makes a mistake and feels bad, he/she may want
to act like a baby again for a little while. This
doesn't last, but it can be a valuable source of
comfort when things get tough.

45
**Help the child find alternate ways of behaving**
School-age children often don't give much thought
to their actions or responses. When something
goes wrong and the child is hurt or in trouble as a
result, the parent can use the opportunity to talk
about the troublesome behavior and help the child
understand. Help the child figure out other ways of
acting that might have had a happier outcome. A
child gains confidence as he learns of alternatives
and chooses among them. Thus the child's limited
repertory of behavior is expanded and at the same

46
**Assign appropriate responsibilities**
Children like to contribute to the family, at least
they like it part of the time. Responsibilities within
the child's abilities should be assigned with the
expectation that they will be carried out.

47
Techniques: Adolescents
This is a stage of mixtures. The adolescent reviews
and repeats all the developmental stages to date
as he/she struggles toward adulthood. Learning to
trust another person, acquiring a solid identity,
addressing the question of careers - all these and
more come together for a final rerun and one
hopes for settlement. Questions of intimacy,
affective relationships, morality, peer associations,
and life goals are tremendously important as the
adolescent tries on various hats in an attempt to
choos

48
A new element is the physical evidence of
maturing sexuality, accompanied by strong, often
conflicting feelings. All at once, it seems, there is a
new kind of body, which is feeling and acting and
thinking in strange and somewhat frightening
ways. This means the adolescent must rework his
or her self-image, still distressingly fragile. No
wonder so many children are tormented by self-
consciousness at this stage of life.

49
The adolescent goes from child to adult and back
with the speed of light. Changes in a boy's voice
symbolize the adolescent's status; when he opens
his mouth the boy himself does not know whether
he will sound like an eight year old Boy Scout or a
28 year old football hero.

50
The adolescent demands more privileges and
freedoms than ever before (for
example, concerning dating and driving) but may
still have little sense of responsibility for his or her
actions. At this stage much adolescent behavior is
geared to peer standards because the approval of
peers is far more desired than parental approval.
Parents are viewed as impossibly
naive, embarrassingly square, and very ancient.

51
The bewildering and rapid changes in the
adolescent suggest that the parents' role at this
stage is limited. The adolescent is again going
through the separation process, this time for
keeps, and must make his or her own decisions to
the greatest extent possible. The wise parent does
not intrude except in cases of dire need, painful as
it may often be to all concerned.

52
What a parent can do is to maintain and uphold
the values established over the long years of
rearing the child, now an adolescent. The
adolescent can be expected to abandon those
values sometimes and to come back to them at
other times. Important techniques for parents of
adolescents are described below.
**Trust the adolescent to come through to
responsible adulthood. **

53
This is a tall order, especially when a parent is
worried sick about the adolescent's
friends, activities, and attitudes. It is hard to
represent family values, and trust that the child
will eventually adopt them. Take hope in the fact
that even adolescence cannot last forever, and
things will settle eventually.
**Provide structure, limits, and standards. **

54
Important for a child of any age, these concepts
are crucial for the adolescent who is subject to so
much rapid change in himself or herself. Despite
objections and defiance, the adolescent needs the
knowledge that some things remain constant and
dependable. Reasonable limits and standards also
help withstand the inevitable testing. If parents fail
to uphold their own commitments, the child will
continue with more and more testing, he/she will
become increasingly anxious if he/she perceives no
b

55
**Let your affection show. **
When the child reaches adolescence, even
formerly demonstrative parents may begin to
withdraw physically just at the time when the child
may need such evidence of affection.

56
**Let the child go**
Letting go can be hard, especially if the adolescent
is the first or the last child. Just as the adolescent
must establish an identity, the parent must be
willing to permit his or her own identity to change.
Following this period, the parent will no longer be
essential for protecting, nurturing and teaching.
His or her role with the new young adult will have
a flavor of colleague to colleague.

Discipline

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