Preventive Parenting
I was thinking about health care and how sad it is that more emphasis is not put on teaching preventive techniques rather than teaching us what drugs will mask symptoms.In many cases, drugs will suppress the symptoms but do not address or solve the underlying cause of them. it is a "bandaid" form of health care rather than a preventive form.
Then it occured to me that a common way of parenting is to "bandaid" the behavior, addressing it after the fact, in the form of yelling, spanking, or time outs. These techniques may suppress the behavior but do not address the underlying lack of self discipline, or lack of respect.
Rather, we can use preventive parenting techniques and help our children build the tool kit they need to develop self discipline, thus addressing the underlying causes of inappropriate behavior.
Reactive parenting - yelling, spanking, etc - causes great stress and discord in the family as well as breaking trust. It also teaches the children that it is ok to yell at people and hit people. It must be ok becasue the grown ups in their lives are doing it. We are always teaching our children by our own behavior. They watch us and mimic our actions, appropriate or not.
So, our job, should we choose to accept it, is to teach our kids the differeence between rude and polite. Teach them what alternative actions they can take when they are in a frustrating situation. Teach them how to use words instead of fists. Teach them to take care of themselves and walk away from people if they are being rude. Teach them to wait and breathe before they verbally lash out in anger.
I believe that if all children were taught to respect themselves and each other that we could be on the road to world peace! Well, most certainly on the road to family harmony.
I have a ton of ideas about how to help you build that tool kit for your children. Please refer to my archived posts.Thanks for caring.
