How Positive Discipline: The First Three Years has helped me to become more patient and connected with my twin toddlers.
Parenting is hard. I have twins who are almost three, and these three years have been wonderful but also incredibly challenging at times. It is amazing to me how quickly time has passed and how much my boys have grown. As a parent, I am determined to raise my children to be confident, capable adults in the most positive and loving way that I can. Positive Discipline is helping me to do just that.
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I appreciated how Positive Discipline works as a foundation to guide parents like me to find non punitive ways to approach behavior in young children. It is so easy to forget that what we may see as "challenging" behavior is just a toddler's normal (and wonderful!) curiosity about their world. Positive Discipline helped me to better understand these age appropriate behaviors and how to manage my reactions to them.
Positive Discipline also provides practical advice and tools for dealing with a wide variety of common issues that face parents of very young children including sleeping, eating, and potty training.
How Positive Discipline Has Helped Our Family
Before I read Positive Discipline, I was struggling with being patient with my boys. We were coming off of a long winter being cooped up more than normal, several bouts of illness (all of us!), and they are at an age where they are testing every limit that they can find. I found myself losing my temper more often than I'd like to admit. In addition to all the other wonderful information in the book, these key points have really helped us to regain our family harmony.
Create a Connection
Connecting with your child is a theme that repeats throughout the book. It seems simple, but in the heat of a tantrum or a power struggle you can easily forget to connect. Taking a moment to crouch down to your child's level, asking what you can do to help them, or even just holding them can make all the difference in the world.
Encourage Autonomy & Choices
This has helped us so much. My boys are at the age where they want to do everything for themselves and they desperately need a sense of control over their world. Taking time to allow them to do things on their own and giving them appropriate choices has really boosted their confidence and cooperation.
Teach Respect by Showing Respect
I love this quote from the book: "Children learn respect by seeing it in action." If I am not being respectful to my children, how can I expect them to 1) know what respect looks like and 2) treat others with respect? This is such an obvious concept, but I found that there were things that I was doing that were not truly respectful. Positive Discipline really helped me to improve in this area and I can see the difference real respect is making in our family.
Positive Discipline has become a wonderful tool in my parenting toolbox to guide me as I work to raise my boys to be confident, respectful, and capable. It has helped me to give them what they need at this stage in their lives and to also feel more in control of my own reactions and emotions. All of which is helping to make our family thrive.