I don’t like the term ‘discipline,’ to describe helping my young daughter to moderate her behaviour and in truth I didn’t expect to be even thinking about the idea until she was a few years older. But, having discovered that toddlers are a lot smarter than I realised, I suddenly had to work out a consistent strategy for reacting to behaviours I didn’t want to see continue. I recognise I have an existing bias against punitive parenting strategies, but am pretty comfortable saying there is little to be gained by making a two year old scared of me. However I also didn’t think it was too soon for her to see that I react very predictably (but also very calmly) to particular behaviours. As a teacher, one of the mantras I repeat to myself regularly is that children are not just smaller version of adults who (sometimes) know a little bit less. Their ability to regulate their emotions and think calmly when under stress is not the same (again, sometimes- I have met a number of adults who make a lie of this). So it becomes important to understand what level of processing an individual is capable of and not hold expectations that set them up to fail. But equally, I think it is really important to have high expectations of children, whether they be my students or my daughter. So once I discovered that my daughter could already recognise patterns of behaviour and draw causal links, it was important I didn’t inadvertently create patterns of behaviour I didn’t want to see continue. Conversely, I wanted to help her understand that certain behaviours, especially confected tantrums, will not be effective in achieving what she wants. The most immediate need for behaviour interventions are around her safety- touching hot appliances, climbing in unsafe spaces and crossing roads, etc. And if I can’t convince my headstrong daughter to act safely in a situation, I explain to her that I will either remove the dangerous object or take her away from the situation. She doesn’t always appreciate it when I have to follow through with these actions, but she bounces back very quickly.
But a lot of thought also has to be put into how we respond to deliberate difficult behaviour, such as micro tantrums. 99% of a day she is happy and charming, but all this can change at (sometimes literally) the drop of a hat. If something goes wrong, or she doesn’t get her way, my daughter can seemingly fly into rage and inconsolable tears in an instant. But she is not really inconsolable. Unless she is hurt or scared (in which case we respond quite differently), she regains her composure and cheer very quickly, showing that some of the rage is more for show than real distress. Obviously these outbursts are not something we want to encourage so we felt it was important our responses didn’t provide reinforcement or reward. For this reason, we have to be quite mindful of our response when she appears upset. If we can see this is a confected tantrum, we don’t immediately pick her up and try to comfort her, nor do we give in to what she wants or try to distract her with food. But we don’t abandon a two-year-old to cry herself out either. We ask her to stop crying and talk to us (a request which is usually denied), and then I tell her I am going to count to three. If she is still counting after that we go and sit in a rocking chair together to calm down. She will resist this at first, trying to hold my fist closed with her hands (apparently I can’t count without the use of my fingers) and shrieking loudly when I pick her up and carry her to the rocking chair. But within seconds of sitting down on the rocking chair she starts to quieten down. As we rock in the chair gently, I remind her that she has to be totally silent before I can count to ten for her to get off the chair (Daddy can’t count when it is too loud). In no time the room is silent so I quietly and slowly count to ten. At the end of that time, we decide what we are going to do next and she runs off happily, seemingly forgetting whatever had made her so upset minutes earlier. I have been amazed at how quickly my daughter has adapted to this routine, underlining again how much I underestimated the capabilities of toddlers. Thankfully she doesn’t see the rocking chair as a frightening place and often wants to sit there at other times. I still have to remember her age and she will inevitably do a lot of things by accident that I would prefer don’t happen. She spills drinks, she rips books, she jumps on me… you get the idea. But none of these types of behaviours really concern me. If I can prevent it before it happens, all the better, but when they do happen, we just explain why it happened and what she should have done instead, before moving on.
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Dad thoughtsI haven’t had much chance to write much over the last couple of weeks. This has largely been to do with the birth of my daughter, which has had a profound impact on my life. As a corollary of this, a fair amount of my thoughts and observations may shift to the new topic of parenthood. I’m not planning on stealing from Sonia Kruger’s playbook and use the phrase, “as a parent,’ to make claims with no factual basis, but parenthood is a complex and fascinating area so I will be making a few comments about my experience of it. Archives
October 2020
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