Early Childhood (Up to Age 3)
At the outset of childhood, a little child needs to feel securely attached to you, safely trusting in your love. She must be shown how to behave, because she hasn't mastered language enough to learn through verbal explanation. Fortunately, it is easy to show a very young child how to behave, because, like the young of many mammals, he or she naturally imitates parental actions.
Giving Instruction
By example you instruct. Through your endlessly repetitive modeling, playing, and gaming, your child gradually acquires early disciplinary skills and understanding, like how to pick up and how to eat, that you want learned. Your child wants to learn to act like you.
Patience and positive attention are the order of the day. Rewarding desirable behaviors with expressions of pleasure and praise encourages the child to repeat those behaviors, because pleasing parents is what children at this age most want to do.
Thus, rewarding a desired behavior like toilet training when it happens works far better than trying to force that behavior on a child with insistence, frustration, anger, or expressions of displeasure when it is not done. “I'm going to make him sit there until he does it!”
When you're trying to teach a disciplinary skill and your child goes off task, throwing a spoonful of food instead of placing it in her mouth, redirect her attention to some other interest. Then bring it back to eating instruction and let re-education begin again.
Children are not one-trial learners. Maintaining a sense of play and having patience with practice is necessary for instruction to succeed. Reward both effort and success with positive attention. The formula for disciplinary teaching at this age is:
PLAY + PATIENCE + PRACTICE + POSITIVE ATTENTION = PRODUCTIVE INSTRUCTION
FACT
No single discipline technique works all the time for every parent with every child in every problem situation. Parents need many approaches to discipline from which to choose and must keep choosing until they find one that is effective for that particular child at that particular time.
Giving Correction
Because parental displeasure, particularly anger, can be so frightening at this early age, parents need to rely as much as possible on instruction to instill discipline, keeping correction as a last resort. If, however, redirecting and re-educating is not working with your child's throwing objects or hitting, you can gently but firmly correct with a headshake “No.”
Stooping down so your eyes are level with your child's, with a serious but not angry expression on your face, clasp the child's hands in your own, and look the child in the eye. Then, in a firm, clear voice repeat the word “No” several times, shaking your head each time you do.
Wait a few seconds to see that the child has registered your message by looking at you seriously, then give the child a hug, smile, and resume your normal positive interaction. If further correction is required to stop the offending behavior, just keep repeating the headshake “No.” Do not resort to more severe correction.
