Educating is not easy. Raising is a real challenge for any parent, novice or veteran with an older child.
In reality, Being a parent is an achievement that very often parents are not sure how to approach. There is no miraculous formula that serves us to educate in a perfect and infallible way, for human nature is imperfect and some mistakes will always be made unintentionally, but fortunately there are various educational methods and streams that will allow us to uplift the most appropriate .
Among the methodologies that stand out the most when it comes to selection, there is the popular positive discipline, a parenting method that promotes unconditional education.
Positive parenting discipline, unlike traditional education on reward-only punishment, teaches parents tools to understand what needs and motivations are behind their children’s behavior and, once they understand it, they will. will be able to handle it much better. Let’s see what they are the main advantages of positive discipline when raising children.
Positive discipline and democratic education
To understand the relevance of positive parenting discipline, we will first review the main parenting styles that exist. The best known and considered the most common are three in number: authoritarian, permissive and democratic.
1. Authoritarian education
In authoritarian parenthood the adult does not consider the child as a subject of law and resorts to the command, domination, privacy and punishment of the child.
In order not to be punished, the child must be totally subject to parental authority, internalizing the idea that the parents are in charge of the family and no debate is accepted.
2. Permissive parenting or laissez-faire
The permissive parenting style could be seen as radically opposed to the authoritarian model, but not all the better.
Here parents and guardians do not set limits or rules with children and are often completely indifferent to meet or educate your needs. There are even parents who go so far as to say that their children’s bad behavior is the fault of others or who give in to everything to avoid conflict.
3. Democratic education
Finally, we have the democratic parenting model, in which parents and guardians know, understand and respond appropriately to the needs of their children.
Here a relationship is established on the basis of good treatment, becoming role models and guides for children, meeting their needs and setting clear rules and boundaries.. He combines affection and firmness, respect for both parties.
The democratic parenting model is strongly based on positive discipline, a method that has its origins in the theories of Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Austrian physician and psychotherapist.
Main benefits of positive discipline
These are the main benefits of positive parenting, which can be experienced by parents and children at home.
1. Help meet two basic needs
Adler who understood that the first two needs of every human being are:
- Belonging: All human beings are born with the need to be part of a group, to belong to it.
- Importance: We must contribute and make sense of our life.
Starting from these two needs and relating it to the method, the idea of positive discipline is that children learn to live with others (belonging) and that their lives acquire meaning (meaning).
2. It helps to break out of the logic of blind obedience
Experts who advocate positive parenting discipline often describe and criticize the more common parenting method, which is usually based on obedience.
It is not uncommon to observe that the main way of raising parents is through the establishment of vertical relationships., where the adult commands and the child must obey.
Today, many still understand the idea of ”discipline” as severity, rigidity and punishment, although this idea really involves teaching, making the child responsible for his own behavior and reflecting. with him.
That this method continues to be used as the main way of raising children comes up against the fact that at this point in history, we already know that the childish human brain sees obedience as something too abstract. In fact, it’s so abstract that the only way many adults “get” the idea is through fear or compensation.
However, the ideal would be to teach children obedience on the basis of respect, to make them admire the person to whom they should obey.
Adler argued that all human beings deserve the same respect, regardless of our age.. Therefore, if as parents we show the child that he can trust us and that we take his wishes and needs into account, we will get our child to respect us and imitate our behavior by seeing us as A model.
3. It helps to harness the potential of parents as role models
Positive discipline involves parents and children respecting each other, making the former the inspiration of the latter..
Parents should remember that their role is to act as guides and companions in their children’s experiences. This role is so important that parents must assume and fulfill that, from the point of view of this methodology, a lot of work is done on the management of emotions in adults.
Children understand the world from what they observe, taking as role models or people worthy of imitation of adults and important congeners, and parents are the main point of reference, both for good and for evil. Thus, boys and girls will introduce into their behavioral and emotional repertoire the behaviors and emotions that they perceive from their parents in certain situations.
For example, if the father behaves calmly even though he has an unforeseen event, the child will learn to be calm when something is wrong with him. For that, for the management of the child to be the most appropriate and regulated, the adult must first learn to manage his own emotions.
4. It helps to see past the punishments
Experts advocating positive parenting discipline argue that bad behaviors are in fact bad decisions made by the child around the search for belonging.
That is, a child wants to be taken into account, wants to feel part of a group but, because he is too young and inexperienced to know how to do it in a non-disruptive or socially acceptable way. , makes a bad decision. , which adults consider bad behavior or attitude.
Apply positive discipline to parenthood, parents learn to see and respond to their children’s needs appropriately.
This is essential to understand, as it will help change the chip, as the child’s misconduct should not be punished in the form of punishment to see if he manages to extinguish his unwanted behavior, but to explain how ‘should behave. appropriately.
In addition, we have to try to connect with them, understand why the child is behaving in this way and see if he has a solution or somehow his bad behavior lies in some kind of negligence on our part.
- Adler, A. & Brett, C. (Comp.) (2003). Understand life. Barcelona: Paidós Ibérica. ISBN 978-84-493-0790-4.
- Adler, A. (2000). The meaning of life. Madrid: Ahimsa. ISBN 978-84-95515-67-4.
- Eggert, LL; Nicolas, LJ; Owen, LM (1995). Reconnecting Youth: A Peer-to-Peer Approach to Developing Life Skills. Bloomington, IN: National Education Service.
- Guatlla, Karen R .; Ward, Catherine L. (2020). “Nonviolent Discipline Options for Caregivers and Teachers: A Systematic Overview of the Evidence.” Trauma, violence and abuse. doi: 10.1177 / 1524838020967340
- Nelsen, J., Lott, L. and Glenn, HS (2000). Positive discipline in the classroom: Develop mutual respect, cooperation and responsibility in the classroom. Roseville, CA: Prima Pub.