What Great Parents Do: 75 Simple Strategies for Raising Kids Who Thrive

Children’s brains are wired for discovery and learning. Their prefrontal cortex (the seat of executive functioning, including the ability to plan and focus) is not yet fully developed. This characteristic enables them to have an exploratory and flexible brain that researchers believe is crucial to our evolution as a species.

Since the goal of discipline is learning, discipline is not the same as punishment, which means “the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense.” There is a huge difference between discipline and punishment.

Parents say it’s not okay but their behavior tells the opposite story.

To learn, children need lots of opportunities to try, try, and try again

“I don’t like that behavior” or “[Name the behavior] is not okay.”

“I noticed that you [give a summary of the rule violation]. We’re both tired and hungry right now, so let’s take care of that first and we’ll discuss what happened after a snack/nap.”

Kids thrive on enthusiastic, specific, and immediate feedback.

When we are aggressive with our kids, or give consequences that are too severe, that focuses kids’ attention on our inappropriate behavior or the unfairness of our response, distracting them from the real lesson we are trying to teach them.

When we hide our feelings, we are also sending the message to kids that some feelings are so bad they have to be hidden. Hiding feelings also inhibits the development of self-awareness (see #18) and emotion regulation skills (see #32), since kids cannot learn to manage feelings they don’t know how to recognize.