We are moving through this book (and by the way, feel free to leave suggestions for our next book study.  I am thinking along the lines of a book Waldorf families would be interested in!)  This section of Elizabeth Pantley’s “The No-Cry Discipline Solution” is called,  “Discipline and Emotional Control.”

We expect our children to have much more self-control than we as parents model for them.  We act horrified when our children kick, scream, bite or talk back, but yet we often handle things ourselves with annoyance, impatience, irritation, and anger.

This is not to induce guilt. We are human, and we are often operating under more stress than the generations before us with pronounced economic stress and the stress of raising children in isolated, immediate family units as opposed to having extended family and long-standing community that could step in and help in parenting.  However, when we examine ourselves, then we realize not only what we are modeling but also that a child is still developing in the area of emotional control.

Author Elizabeth Pantley reminds us on page 39 that such things as backtalk, biting a playmate, clinging, crying, hitting a parent, impatience and more are likely caused by a child’s undeveloped emotional control.   She advises us to step back in the moment, and remember that our child is  growing and learning.  The child is developing!

In the next section, called “The Four Parts to Discipline”, Elizabeth Pantley outlines the four parts to effective discipline.  These are to correct immediate behavior, to teach a lesson (not in a mean, vengeful way, but to help guide the child), to give tools to help the child build self-discipline and emotional control, to build the parent/child relationship.

If the same discipline and guiding issues come up over and over, the author reminds us that discipline means to teach and that we rarely learn things on one lesson, even as adults.

More to come,  and blessings on your peaceful parenting this week,

Carrie