Discipline Guidance

We can remain confident and connected as we lovingly support our children in building their skills, across all ages and stages of their development.

Discipline is about skill building

Guiding our children to understand expectations, and teaching them skills to manage their behavior in the world is really at the core of discipline—and this is a big part of our role as parents. Our philosophy on discipline can be guided by our family’s values; this can help to provide us with the anchor from which to set limits and boundaries that align with our goals for skill building (for example: impulse control, perspective taking, and problem solving). When approaching discipline from a teaching perspective we can focus on proactively responding to and reflecting on our children’s behaviors, as opposed to reactively allowing behaviors to guide our parenting–and, in this way, we can better support our children as they learn and grow.

We can guide our children to engage with the process

Beginning in toddlerhood and moving all the way up through the teen years, we can work through teachable moments related to discipline with our children. Reflecting with them after a misstep they can help us understand what happened, why, how to repair, and what they might do differently in the future. Engaging our children in this process of critical thinking, reflection, and problem solving not only supports them in finding clarity with tricky situations, but it can also offer guided practice for the very skills that we are intentionally working to build.

Being emotionally responsive does not need to equate to permissive parenting

We can validate our children’s big feelings and difficult experiences in a sensitive and loving way while simultaneously holding firm expectations and boundaries around their behavior. A common refrain in my home is, “All feelings are welcome, all behaviors are not.” We can help our children to feel heard by giving them language and space in their emotions, and they still will not always have just what they want when they desire it. From toddlers to teens, we can let our children know that we see them, that they are allowed their feelings, that we feel the same way sometimes too, and that we still will remain firm in our decisions.