Loving regulation

All parents face the question of the best help their child acquire the capacity for self-regulation. Previously, discipline has seemed to be the only alternative to its polar opposite: permissiveness. For many years the consensus in this society has been that parents need to respond to children’s failures at self regulation with an array of measures designed to manage unwanted behavior by attaching unpleasant consequences to it, including punishment, disapproval, isolation (time-outs), forceful language (“…showed first 75 words of 504 total…

…showed last 75 words of 504 total…you withhold his or her allowance, tell her she has to wash the windows, of forbid her from riding her bike entirely- he or she will conclude that you want he to suffer from her error. Because she adores you and wants to be just like you, he or she will learn to adopt a severe attitude towards herself when things go wrong. Also, the child’s ability to remain safe will actually be weakened.