MONTESSORI AT HOME: Positive Discipline

hi my name is Ashley and I'm a mom of two little girls one is a 27 month old toddler named Kylie and the other is a 3 month old baby named Mia Mia is actually playing on the floor right here next to me so you hear any baby noises in the background that's who it's coming from I know that when I first started implementing Montessori at home with my daughter one of the first things that I was constantly thinking about and worrying about is how do I handle certain situations and what might be considered a Montessori fashion and what I mean by that are behavioral situations so I was super excited when I stumbled across this idea of positive discipline which is something I had never heard of until I started researching Montessori and it is perfectly in line with everything that you could possibly want for a Montessori environment in your home and to be totally honest it has completely changed my relationship with my children as a parent I truly believe that positive discipline is one of the keys to helping raise a capable and confident child so from one busy parent to another today I am super excited to share with you all that I know about positive discipline and how to implement it at home with your children so first and foremost let's tackle what the word discipline means most people unfortunately equate the word discipline with some form of punishment and in reality discipline actually derives from the Latin word discipline which means learning or teaching or knowledge so keeping that in mind that's kind of our frame for this whole idea of positive discipline it's very different than what we probably typically grew up with for most of us anyway and what I mean by that as many of us are probably used to the phrases how many times do I have to tell you why won't you listen to me how dare you do that if you don't eat your vegetables right now you're not getting dessert and you can get a toy if you're good at the store all of these phrases kind of revolve around punishment and rewards or as I like to call them bribes because really that's what they are and fortunately positive discipline completely does away with all of those things instead of raising your children on a punishment or consequence model where they're basically only being obedient out of fear of what's going to happen or on the flip side of things constantly bribing them and offering some kind of extrinsic motivation in order to get them to be positive discipline really focuses on respectful parenting and respectful interactions between you and your child so that they want to obey and they want to obey because they love you it's based on that connection that you build with them punishment may work in the short term but there are many research studies that have proven that it does not work in the long term so you really need to focus on that connection with your child first to help build that trust and typically the discipline that follows is a lot easier positive discipline kind of requires a reframing of basically everything you've probably ever known about parenting up until now especially if this is your very first time hearing about it but honestly it's a reframing that is going to be for the better so stick with me here so before we jump into the what to do aspect whenever there's an issue with your child let's talk about some proactive strategies of things that you can do to kind of help prevent some of those classic battles that parents have with their children the first and foremost number one strategy that you can implement is to constantly be modeling how you want your child to speak and interact with other people it's pretty common knowledge that children will do as you do not as you say so if they see you modeling respect in the way that you speak to others and the way that you interact with others not just in your family but outside of the home as well they are so much more inclined to imitate those actions and kind of ingrain that for themselves and that's how they will interact with other people as well just a simple example I can think of if you're constantly reminding your child to say excuse me to people when someone is in the way but then you turn around and say move they're not going to say excuse me or be polite about it at all they're just gonna say move because that's what they say you doing all the time another simple strategy that you can implement every single day is the use of routines toddlers are hard-wired to kind of appeal to this sense of order so having routines where they know what to expect every single day from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed is absolutely key to kind of avoiding some of the battles all right so Mia has decided that she wants to join us for the video so when I talk about routines I don't just mean like a bedtime routine although that is something that you definitely want to do I mean like a general routine throughout your day so for example they know that as soon as they wake up you brush your teeth and then you go have breakfast followed by a little bit of playtime maybe a nap in the afternoon depending on how old they are followed by more afternoon playtime and then dinner bath bed time that kind of thing when toddlers are constantly being bombarded with changes to their day and changes in their routine they tend to get really crabby you guys have probably already noticed that so the more that you can stick to routines the better off you'll be another simple and easy strategy is redirection toddlers are not exactly the most logical creatures in fact their prefrontal cortex in their brain is not even nearly developed enough to use logic until they're at least 6 years old so if you can kind of keep that in the back of your mind and think about ways to redirect your child from an activity that maybe is unsafe or something you just don't want them doing to something else that they might be interested in it's much easier than simply just telling them no so for example if your child is throwing something in the house instead of just telling them no and yelling at them for it you can redirect them you can say hmm it looks like you really want to throw things right now but throwing blocks in the house is not safe let's go take this ball and let's go throw a ball outside obviously if you don't have time to go outside right then and there with your child then you can offer them other alternatives for example you can give them a stuffed animal and say we're only allowed to throw the stuffed animals in the house another proactive strategy that you can implement is telling your child what to do as opposed to what not to do all right so I'm editing this video right now and I realize that in the craziness of taking care of kids while trying to film the video at the same time I completely forgot to finish my thought about the whole idea of telling your child what to do as opposed to what not to do and I wanted to make sure I elaborated on that point because it's definitely a really useful one I use it all the time and it's a pretty simple one basically all I mean is instead of telling your child stop running through the house just say something like please walk through the house or if your child is yelling really loudly you can say let's use our inside voices not always you children respond emotionally better to being asked to do something as opposed to being told what not to do it also just makes a whole lot more sense for toddlers to word it that way because it really helps them to focus on what needs to be done instead of taking the extra step of trying to figure out like okay what am I doing wrong and then trying to figure out what there supposed to do on their own it's just an easy way to set them up for success and to help you out also I also wanted to add two more really important points that slipped my list of things to talk about when I did film earlier today the first is to pick your battles or basically say yes whenever you can and this is something that I always tried to do on a daily basis anytime my toddler is asking me for something I always think to myself before I say no why not that's just a simple question you can ask yourself so just an easy example that I can think of that I actually did earlier today I took my toddler outside to the pool she was soaking wet we came in to get cleaned up I had originally brought out a fun beach towel for her to get dried off with but as we made our way upstairs it got kind of forgotten about and it did end up in the bathroom with us but after she showered she ended up using just her regular bath towel but because toddlers or toddlers she saw it on the counter behind me and she said mommy I want to use my beach towel and even though I really just wanted her to use the bath towel and to keep that towel clean and dry because it hadn't been used at all I could already sense where this was going if I said no so I thought to myself why not it's just a towel I can wash it with the laundry it's not a big deal and I will completely avoid her meltdown so I said yes we dried off with the beach towel and that was that and we moved on with our day so again saying yes whenever you can is a really helpful tip try to choose your battles wisely and the last item that I wanted to touch on before we get back to the original video is this whole notion of avoiding overly praising your child especially praise that's not really necessary you don't want to turn your child into a praise junkie and what I mean by that is praising your child for every day normal things that normal people wouldn't ordinarily be praised for so for example if they put one of their toys away of their own accord without you asking you don't need to go into overdrive and say good job honey I can't believe you put away your toys all by yourself that's so great oh my goodness if your child is working with one of their activities for example a puzzle and they fit two pieces together you don't need to be hulking over their shoulder saying good job honey Wow you put those two puzzle pieces together all by yourself not only does it actually get really a annoying after a while to your child I mean if you can just imagine if that were you working on something and someone was hanging over your shoulder constantly praising you for every little thing you did not only does it become annoying for them as I mentioned but it also turns into this sort of expectation for praise for all of the things that they do throughout the day and as soon as they stop receiving that priest they stop doing it so if your child does something that you're really proud of or you just feel the need to comment on it and you just can't help yourself you can do one of two things depending on what the situation is the first one is sports casting so you can basically just kind of describe what you saw them do for example if they are drawing a picture instead of saying WOW good job honey that's a beautiful picture you can just say oh it looks like you made a purple circle this way your child knows that you're paying attention to what they're doing and they can tell what portion of their art project it is that you appreciate the other thing that you can do and this works especially well if your child has done something nice for example put their own toys away or thrown out their own piece of trash as you can treat them exactly like you would any other person you don't need to go overboard you can just say a simple thank you this simply lets your child know that you observed what they did and that you appreciate it so it's simple hey thanks for putting your toys away is all it takes I can tell you right now toddlers are listening to everything you're saying and they are bound to notice that you thank them for doing that one task and they're going to do it again toddlers naturally want to please you so you don't need to bribe them with praise to make them do it alright so that's all I wanted to add for now so back to daytime Ashley okay so I'm a little bit closer to you guys now because Mia decided that she was hungry so now I'm nursing her so if you see her little hand coming into the frame from time to time that's why we are so accustomed to giving our children commands and what I mean by that is things like clean up your toys right now and honestly it's not a very effective way to get your child to cooperate with you if you can just put yourself in their shoes for a minute and imagine how you would feel if your boss at work was constantly issuing commands like that and barking orders at you you would probably become pretty resentful really quickly so a better way of doing it is giving your child information and kind of helping them figure it out for themselves so for example if you are cleaning up with your child you could say something like hmmm I see a few toys over there on the floor and then just wait it's almost like an invitation to your child and I can almost guarantee you that they're going to look at that toy and think to themselves hmm that belongs over there on that cubby and they're gonna go pick it up and put it away even if that doesn't work in the moment then you definitely want to make sure that you model putting that toy away but a good chunk of the time it does work toddlers naturally want to be helpful creatures so if you can phrase it in a way that makes them feel like it was their idea and they're helping you all the better another great strategy to use with toddlers is offering them two choices that you were okay with so for example when you're getting dressed together in the morning instead of leaving all of their clothes out including things that are not seasonally appropriate the better way to go about it to avoid a battle over what to wear is to give them two choices do you want to wear the red shirt or the blue shirt do you want to wear your flip-flops or your sneakers obviously you want to make sure that whatever the two choices are that you're offering are things that you're okay with them wearing another easy proactive strategy is to ask your toddler for their help if your toddler is resisting leaving the house instead of saying something like okay time to go to the car you could say something like hey can you carry my keys for me to the car and again nine times out of ten toddlers want to be helpful so they're probably going to take you up on that offer another thing you can do is to always give your child a heads-up whenever you're about to change activities if you can just imagine for a moment with me if you were in the middle of some really important work tasks and your boss barged in and said okay we need to leave right now not only would your workflow be interrupted but you probably wouldn't be very happy about having to stop right then and there especially if you were so focused and that's exactly how your toddler feels when they're engaged in play play is a child's work so if they're in the middle of some super engrossing activity or toy or what have you and you walk up and tell them hey it's time for dinner stop what you're doing right now and come sit at the table your child is probably not going to be very happy about it and they are gonna put up a fight or if you're at the playground they're going down this line there on the jungle gym they're having the time of their life and you walk up and say okay it's time to go home there again not going to be very happy about it so the easiest thing that you can do to kind of help avoid that is to give them a heads up say hey honey we're gonna be leaving the park in five minutes just to let you know do you want to go on the slide or do you want to go on the swings before we this way you're not totally taking them by surprise not only will it help you avoid a battle with your toddler but it's also just simply about being respectful so those are just some of the simple proactive strategies that you can use to help prevent issues but let's say you do encounter a situation where you are having an issue with your child and you're wondering to yourself now okay so how do I deal with that positive discipline is not about permissiveness it's not about letting your child do whatever they want it's about setting kind firm limits and sticking to them in a gentle way that teaches your child what does that look like what are you supposed to do when your child has an epic meltdown in the middle of the grocery store how do you handle it when your younger child purposefully knocks down their older siblings block tower what do you do when they start yelling and crying because they don't want to go to bed or because you've turned off the TV or iPad because screen time is over we as parents deal with these situations every single day and the good news is that it doesn't have to end with your child crying and you feeling bad about it later so first and foremost is positive discipline you are not going to use a timeout timeout is punitive and it accomplishes absolutely nothing and helping your child especially if they're a young toddler to learn about what they've done you might think that's what it's supposed to accomplish because again that's how many of us were raised but I urge you to think back to when you were in timeout if you ever were when you were a child were you actually sitting there on the stuff thinking to yourself man I'm such a bad kid I should never have done that no you were probably sitting there thinking about how it was completely unfair that it wasn't your fault and maybe even considering how to get revenge next time or how to be sneaky so that you don't get caught the next time timeout almost never accomplishes what it was meant to accomplish so what you need to do instead is have a time in instead of a time out and what that looks like is getting down at your child's level keeping open arms offering a hug if they need it while they're having their emotional meltdown holding them as they cry reminding them that you're there and that you love them even though they're having these ugly feelings and that they will pass now if your child does not want to be touched while they're upset because some children don't then you can gently remind them hey honey I'm here with a hug when you're ready for it ignoring their behavior is not going to help the situation if you yourself can remain calm enough to do so stay in the room with to stay nearby to your child until the emotions pass because they will emotions are like a rollercoaster they go up but they also come back down again this is all about connection before correction you cannot possibly do any correcting or teaching regarding what happened until your child is no longer upset because when they're upset they're in fight-or-flight mode they're not thinking logically whatsoever about anything you have to say so be there for them love them through it and even though it might feel like an eternity in the moment it really is only a couple of minutes which is great compared to a 25-minute half-hour meltdown once your child is feeling better once it's a more neutral time that's the time that you can teach them about what happened and maybe even offer to help them make amends if it's a situation where they need to make amends you want to help your child kind of learn to think about solutions for themselves and think about what they might do to help make things right the younger they are the more help they're going to need so you could offer them examples of choices they could make for example should we help your brother build his block tower again if they've actually physically hurt another child you might help them get an ice pack from that child and check to see that they're okay and you want to be modeling exactly what you hope they would do if they were in that situation by themselves the most important part of this whole method though and it's honestly probably the hardest part for most parents is to remain calm yourself often when we're faced with our child screaming at us in a public place and at home too we're instantly put into fight or flight mode ourselves we feel like it's an emergency that needs to be dealt with right then and there but if you can remind yourself that honestly really it's not an emergency and that it is something that you can handle the calmer you can keep yourself the better off you're going to be and helping your child to calm down as well some of you might be wondering well aren't you basically just rewarding your child for having a tantrum and although that might be what it looks like on the outside it's really not again you're trying to re-establish that connection with your child you're trying to make sure that you're keeping your relationship intact there's lots of research out there to prove that children who are taught social-emotional skills by their parents tend to be able to handle their emotions at a much younger age than other children so by establishing that connection you're teaching them how to handle motions properly and eventually you won't need to play that role anymore as they get older they'll be able to do it for themselves but when they're younger they need your help as for the epic meltdown in the middle of a grocery store that one definitely requires a little bit more finesse on your part but for the most part it does use the same exact technique the only difference is you might need to leave the grocery store and go to your car to allow the emotional meltdown to happen so that people aren't staring at you unless of course you don't mind that but I feel like most parents probably want a little bit of privacy so you can always leave your cart go out to the car as inconvenient as that might be for you deal with your child's emotional meltdown get them back on track and then you can go back into the store and resume shopping now there are definitely some special circumstances you might have a child who has developed some unsafe behaviors like head banging or biting or scratching or hitting other people and generally even with these behaviors you're going to use the same exact techniques so for example if your child hits their sibling you're going to intervene and set the limit you're going to physically stop their hand if possible and say I'm sorry but I cannot let you hit your brother hitting hurts you're going to check to make sure that the sibling is okay to model that for your child you're going to re-establish the connection with the child that did the hitting and then at another more neutral time and that's when you can do your teaching about why we don't hit now I am NOT a behavior expert by any means I'm just a mom who's learned all about this and I'm doing it at home with my children and I really want to share this with you guys because I think it's so wonderful but if your child is engaging in some seriously dangerous behavior that you're very worried about you definitely want to consult your child's pediatrician and possibly a behavior specialist so if this is your first time visiting my channel you might not realize that I also film family vlogs and I was lucky enough honestly a couple of weeks ago when my husband was out of town to be able to catch one of these instances where I implemented positive discipline with my child on the vlog the issue is that we had to walk our dogs outside in the backyard and she really did not want to go with me at the time that I needed to go so let's take a look at how positive discipline works in action can you help me walk catches and mommy baby I need you to come with me so as you saw that definitely wasn't an epic meltdown of any sort she was just simply upset about not wanting to go outside and she was crying about it but instead of me yelling at her and forcing her to come outside against her will which would have resulted in crying for her and a lot more stress for me because again my husband was out of town I simply took five minutes to sit down with her let her have her little mini meltdown and cry in my lap I held her and reminded her that I loved her so much and after a few minutes she was over it you might have also noticed that I started being a little bit silly with her that is another strategy that you can always use because laughter actually produces the same hormones in your brain that crying and being really upset does so anytime you can take a situation and turn it in to your child laughing you're going to be better able to defuse that situation much quicker one final note that I'd like to leave you with is that none of us is perfect I certainly for one am NOT we are all human and we're all going to have moments where we just feel so triggered that we're not going to react the way we wish we would have reacted but I urge you not to beat yourself up over it again remember that we are human we make mistakes so the best thing that you can do when you've made a transgression like that is to get down on your child's level and apologize not only will it make your child and you feel better but it's also good modeling your child we'll see how you handle mistakes and again they're going to learn from it and then from there you can value just try better next time parenting is a journey you're going to make lots of mistakes along the way just remember that your child doesn't need you to be a perfect parent they just need you to try the best that you can if you want to learn more about positive discipline in much more detail than what I was able to get into for this video there are a couple of books that I highly recommend you check out I have personally purchased and read them from cover to cover and I'm actually in the process of rereading them now that I have a second baby the first one is this book positive discipline the first three years by Jane Nelson she is one of the leading pioneers of this approach to discipline and she has a lot of great information in that book that you can use tomorrow the other book that I absolutely love is called peaceful parent happy kids by dr. Laura Markham she also has a sequel to that book which is called peaceful parent happy siblings and those books provide a ton of practical advice for parents like us for implementing positive discipline with our children definitely great reads I will leave links to all three of them down below if you'd like to check them out if you have any questions about anything you've seen in this video today please be sure to leave me a comment down below and if you like this video then please be sure to give it a big thumbs up in case you are new to my channel I just wanted to let you know that this video is part of a larger series called Montessori at home which is aimed at providing practical tips and advice for busy parents like you and I for implementing Montessori philosophies at home with your children so if that sounds like something that you're interested in watching more of then you might consider subscribing to my channel and hitting that notification bell so that you don't miss a new video because I do upload a new one just like this video every single week thanks again so much for watching and I'll see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Hapa Family

Views: 1,832,570

Keywords: montessori at home, positive discipline, peaceful parenting, toddlers, how to handle toddler tantrums, montessori parenting, dr laura markham, jane nelsen, montessori teaching methods, montessori discipline, montessori discipline techniques, montessori toddler, montessori at home toddler, discipline strategies for preschoolers, toddler discipline strategies, toddler tantrums, positive parenting, positive discipline strategies, positive parenting techniques

Id: nt9ck98l8Uo

Length: 23min 14sec (1394 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2019