Discipline is something we're doing a little differently in our family. We have decided to throw out the current model of rewards and punishments. I believe it stifles the self discipline that is already present within each child. I believe that children naturally want to do what is right and to use punishment or rewards to "teach" them right from wrong seems to contradict that. So far the hardest part of this has been to not tell him "Good job!" for every little thing he does. I have been working really hard to substitute in phrases like: "Thank you," "You worked really hard for that," "You must be really proud of yourself," and "I can really tell you like to take care of your toys and keep your house clean!" Since I believe that children naturally want to do what is right, I don't really have to resort to punishment right now (hopefully never). My latest example of this is something we've been working on for months now. L loves to get into the refrigerator and pull out the glass bottles from the door. He's never been gentle with anything so we've had to work with him on that in almost every area of our lives. Anyway, I have repeatedly demonstrated how to gently set the glass bottles in the floor. He would always watch intently and then give it a try....except his try looked more like slamming the glass bottles on the floor LOL. He has worked so hard to be gentle with these bottles and it has not been at all easy for him. However, today I think it clicked. It was so wonderful to watch him pull out a glass bottle and set it every so gently on the floor!
Another area we have recently made progress in is being gentle with faces. L was really into hitting faces for a while (no idea where that came from haha). Every time he would begin to hit my face (or someone else's) I would take his hand and gently stroke my face with it and say, "Gentle, aaahhhh that's nice." Then I would take my hand and gently stroke his face repeating myself. Lately he has been coming up to me at different parts of the day and gently stroking my face and saying, "Aaaaahhhh" haha it's pretty adorable. He's such a great little guy, I'm amazed by him daily.
Another big part of how we discipline is that we see mistakes as a learning opportunity rather than a reason to get angry or shame the child. When he slams glass down on the floor I say, "Uh oh, it looks like it broke and made a big mess! That's why we have to be gentle, here's a rag let's clean this mess up together!" rather than, "See I told you that would happen, this is why I can't trust you." Admittedly the latter is sometimes very tempting to say. What I've learned though is that he DOES want to do it right, he's worked hard for months to do this right! Another example would be when he throws food in the floor at dinner. We respond by saying, "Uh oh, food doesn't belong on the floor, it belongs on your plate." Sometimes he'll even start to throw the food in the floor before he stops and decides not to. Yet another example was when I filled a pool full of dried beans for his birthday party. He put a bean into his mouth and I said, "Oh those don't go in your mouth, these are all to play with." I've done this with various different sensory bins BTW. After spitting out the bean I caught him out of the corner of my eye beginning to put another bean in his mouth. I pretended to be preoccupied and he stopped himself, threw the bean down, and kept playing.
