Positive Discipline for Toddlers- 10 tips to get started_2

Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel and in today's video I'm going to talk to you about the 10 basics of implementing positive discipline with your toddler. And positive discipline is basically the idea that we want to help children learn from their mistakes in a very supportive and respectful environment. And if you're new to my channel then welcome my name is Soraya, I'm a mother of two beautiful children and here on this channel I talk about mindful parenting, social emotional learning and children empowerment. So if these are topics you're interested in I would love for you to subscribe. Please make sure you hit that notification bell so that you never miss one of my videos. All of the principles I'm going to talk about today are highlighted in this book called Positive Discipline. I love this book as you can see I've annotated it everywhere. I will link it in the description box below if you're interested in purchasing it. But without further ado let's get started. So the first principle is called connection before correction and that's the idea that before you tell your child off for throwing a tantrum or for not cooperating when you're asking them to do something, you need to start by putting yourself in their shoes and try and understand what they're going through, what they're feeling right now. Because in a lot of situations if you actually make that exercise of trying to understand what your child is going through you will realize that your child needs support and you will understand why they are reacting the way that they are. Children aren't completely irrational beings after all. Think about it if you're working super hard on something and you're super focused and you're in a momentum and you know you're just really concentrated on what you're doing and all of a sudden somebody bursts into your office and interrupts you without warning and wants you to stop right now to do something else. That will be a little frustrating and upsetting. So when your child is playing and they're emerged into their play and all of a sudden they are being interrupted and you're asking them to stop to come and eat or stop to leave the park it's the exact same feeling. And so if you take the time to connect with how your child is feeling and why they might be feeling that way it helps you to handle the situation in a more gentle and respectful manner taking into consideration how they feel. And to connect with your child you need to get down to their eye level look at them in the eye and tell them I understand how you feel I know it's hard to stop playing I know you really wanted to stay longer in the park but now we really need to go. So it's not about not following through with what you had decided you would do it's not about just giving in and letting your child you know make all the calls and decide everything it's really about connecting with your child and validating how they feel. The second principle is to get your child involved and the reason is that it's really annoying for children to always be told what to do and to always feel like all of the decisions are made for them without having them involved. So when what I do with my 3 years old and even with my 18 month old is that I try to get them involved in the decision making process as much as possible by offering them age appropriate choices. For example when it's time to get out to go to child care I will ask my toddler would you like to walk or would you like to go with your scooter? And so of course in both cases we do what I want to do which is get ourselves to the nursery but she has an option of choosing how she gets there and so this makes her feel empowered this makes her feel like she has a choice. You can give them the choice between two outfits if they don't want to get dressed instead of focusing on the fact that they whether they will or will not get dressed you shift the decision making towards what they will wear. Of course make sure that you offer two choices that you feel comfortable with and that would be acceptable for you so don't give them the choice between an outfit that is weather appropriate and an outfit that isn't weather appropriate because if they pick that other outfit you know then there will be another problem while there so make sure that you are comfortable with both options that you're giving your child. The third tip which I'm sure you've heard a thousand times but I cannot stress it's important enough because it's so helpful and it is so effective is to create routines. Young children thrive on routine for two reasons the first one is that they know what to expect and children like to know what to expect just like you imagine if you were living your life with somebody making decisions for you and you have no idea what's going to happen in the next hour that could be a little bit stressful and unsettling and so when you have set routines when things kind of always happen in the same order around the same time then children are less likely to resist or to disagree because it's just the routine right so they don't question it. The second reason is that when children have a set routine they have a lot of reassurance that they will get to do all of the things that they love doing during that day so for example with homeschooling because I'm teaching my preschooler at home and so we always do our lesson at the same time of the day things happen in the same order and so she knows that right after we have lunch we are going to have our lesson for the day and so she expects it so she's less likely to question it or to fight it but also she knows that after we do our lesson she always gets to play and because she knows that this is coming after she doesn't feel stressed that if we do our lesson now then she doesn't get to play because she knows it's coming later and so having that reassurance that some things that your child is looking forward to is going to happen later because it always happens later helps them get on with the task that is happening now that may not be the most exciting one. The fourth principle which I so strongly believe in is that if you want to teach your children respect you need to show them respect children are very good at learning from our own behavior and from imitating us and doing exactly like we do so if you never say please or thank you to your child if you call them names if you don't respect their personal space if you just aren't very respectful to them don't be surprised if this is exactly how they behave because they're learning this from you and so if you want your child to respect you you've got to show them respect as well talk to them respectfully even at times when you're upset even at times when they're doing something they shouldn't be doing it's really important that you try and talk to them in a respectful manner. Number five use your sense of humor it's amazing how using humor and games works really well to get children to cooperate so when I want my toddler to tidy up her room and she doesn't feel like it and her room is a huge mess if I challenge her and tell her let's see who can pick up the books the fastest she's so excited by the game she thinks it's funny and so she rushes to clean up everything and to tidy up as fast as she can so try and see you know in whatever situation you're in if you can turn it into something fun if you can use humor to get yourself you know to get what you want from your toddler. My next tip is to get into your child's world and what that means is essentially to understand your child's developmental needs and understand your child's limitation as well tantrums are a completely normal part of children's development because children don't know yet how to regulate their emotions they don't know yet how to self-control and you know they're feeling these intense feelings and emotions and they don't know what to do with them and their brain doesn't know how to process all of that information that is coming to them and so that's why tantrums are a normal part of children's life and so getting frustrated with them for throwing tantrums isn't actually helpful because they can't help it it's just normal part of their childhood. The other thing is it's important to understand your child's limitation. A toddler's brain is not developed in the way that an adult brain is and so the prefrontal cortex which is the front part of the brain is actually really underdeveloped for very young children and this is the part of the brain that helps children with self-control with memory and so of course when you know that this part of their brain is underdeveloped it's easier for you to understand why well you have to repeat yourself all the time you have to tell them things 1000 times it's not because your child is deliberately ignoring you or provoking you or you know doing it on purpose to annoy you not at all it's literally that their brain isn't capable of remembering what you said even if you've said it 100 times before. Their brain isn't capable of inhibiting their own actions so self-control is very difficult for them because they don't yet have all of the little brain connections that would help them to stop an impulse. It's gonna come and it's important that you encourage them to learn and that you keep reminding them and that you teach them how to do it because by you doing so it's helping their brain to grow and develop and develop all of these connections but in the meantime don't get overly frustrated with them if they can't do it because this is just their limitations as very young human beings. Tip number seven which is incredibly important but it's probably the hardest one I think in my experience for me it's the hardest one but it's especially important if your child is strong-willed is to be consistent and follow through if you say something you mean it and you follow through with it so if you say that in five minutes we're gonna turn the tv off five minutes from then you need to turn that tv off if you don't follow through you open the door to huge difficulties later on because your child will learn that your words have no value that your words don't mean anything and that they don't need to listen to you and correcting that is a lot more difficult than getting into the right habit straight away and the reason why it's so difficult is that we are humans I mean sometimes I'm exhausted I just I don't want to put up with a fight I don't want to put up with a tantrum and I really really just want to give up and give my toddler what she wants so that she just leaves me alone and so I know it's very difficult but if you know you're not gonna have the courage or the strength to implement something maybe just don't say it you know think about what you say before you talk because if you say it you mean it and if you mean it you have to follow through tip number eight be patient as we've just said you know our children's brain are really underdeveloped and so it takes many repetition practice doing things over and over again for them to learn for them to memorize for them to know that they're not supposed to do that and that this is how we do things so don't expect to just say things once and then your child is going to be able to do that a toddler is not able to learn things in just one time like that they need a lot of repetition and practice tip number nine is provide a lot of supervision distraction and redirection children very young children are super immature they need a lot of supervision they need you to keep an eye on them they need you to watch what they're doing they need you to put things that they shouldn't touch out of their reach it's not their responsibility not to touch something that is dangerous to them it is your responsibility to put that thing out of their reach so close supervision and when you are closely monitoring your child and supervising them then you can see things before they happen and you can either distract your child when they're about to do something they shouldn't do distract them with something else straight away or redirect them so instead of telling them that they can't do something show them what they can do instead so you can't pull the dog's tail but this is how you can stroke the dog gently show them what they can do instead of focusing on what they can't do and finally last but not least is to accept your child's uniqueness sometimes as parents we put so many hopes and dreams onto our children of what we wish they were like or you know the perfect child we hoped we would have but the reality is our child is the way they are and we've got to love them the way they are for exactly who they are so you know if you've got a child who's super active and who's got lots of energy and who's always on the go it's completely pointless to wish that you had a child who was calmer and to expect that of your child you know they just they can't give it to you because it's not them so you know try and focus on loving them just the way they are and accepting them the way they are and this will bring both of you more peace and serenity here on this channel i'm about to start a whole series about mindful parenting and how you can really learn to appreciate your child the way they are without judgment without thinking about how you wish things could be but really being in the moment and being grateful for what you have and who your child is and really fully embracing them for who they are so if that's something you're interested in please make sure you subscribe to my channel hit the notification bell so that you never miss one of my videos thank you so much for watching and i will see you in my next video