Category Archives: 2. The Infant

From newborn to 17 months.

The Basics of Breastfeeding Advocacy

By Rita Brhel, managing editor and attachment parenting resource leader (API)

Breastfeeding has seen the gamut in terms of public support. For centuries, it was the most natural thing to do, and then in the mid-20th Century, it suddenly became taboo and nearly disappeared from Western civilization. Through La Leche League International and other breastfeeding advocates, it has steadily made a comeback into mainstream family culture. But, in some respects, breastfeeding still has a long way to go — in normalizing public breastfeeding and breastfeeding for working mothers, and improving access to lactation services for all socio-economic classes by enabling lactation consultants to be reimbursed by health insurance and Medicaid.

“It’s very important that people realize they have a voice and that people will listen to that voice — and you don’t have to have a lot of letters after your name,” said Dr. Laura Wilwerding, MD, IBCLC, FAAP, FABM, a pediatrician in Plattsmouth, Nebraska USA, and a pediatrics professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where she lectures on breastfeeding medicine, child advocacy, antibiotic overusage, and obesity prevention.

In addition to being a fellow of the International Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, Wilwerding is involved in the Nebraska chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics as the breastfeeding coordinator, the Nebraska Breastfeeding Coalition on the leadership team, and as a member of the Nebraska Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention Advisory Board. Wilwerding spoke during the La Leche League of Nebraska Annual Breastfeeding and Parenting Conference in May 2011 in Omaha, Nebraska USA.

“Particularly locally, you do have power, and not just with elected officials but also hospital administrators and human services program directors,” she said. It’s all in your approach. Continue reading The Basics of Breastfeeding Advocacy

10 Phrases to Make a Better Parent

By Judy Arnall, author of Discipline without Distress, www.professionalparenting.ca

Many times as parents, we blurt out sayings that we heard as children and later vowed to never say to our own children. However, that is easier said than done. In times of stress, we revert very easily back to actions and phrases we saw and heard when we were parented.

Parenting skills are learned skills, and we can consciously effect change if we become aware of what needs to be changed. Here are 10 common parenting phrases and alternatives to nurture closer, caring, and more respectful relationships with our children.

INSTEAD OF: You are a bad boy.
TRY: What did you learn from this? What can you try next time?

INSTEAD OF: Hurry Up! We are late!
TRY: It’s okay. Take the time you need… (Next time, leave more time to get ready!)

INSTEAD OF: Oh no! Look at what you have done!
TRY: It really won’t matter five years from now! I will show you how to fix this.

INSTEAD OF: You need to…
TRY: I need you to…

INSTEAD OF: Because I said so!
TRY: I’ll explain my reasoning in five minutes when I’m not distracted so much.

INSTEAD OF: Stop that tantrum right now!
TRY: You feel frustrated and angry. Can I give you a hug?

INSTEAD OF: No!
TRY: I can see you really want that but I can’t provide it right now.

INSTEAD OF: You’ve wrecked my…
TRY: I’m really angry right now. I need to take a timeout.

INSTEAD OF: Stop doing that!
TRY: Would you consider this?

INSTEAD OF: Suck it up and stop crying.
TRY: It’s OK to cry and feel your feelings. Want a hug?

INSTEAD OF: Go play and leave me alone.
TRY: I love you!

Try any one of these substitutions today and you will see how much better your parent-child relationship will be. If you are not sure what to say and how to say it, especially in the moment, just offer a hug. You will be surprised how much body language can communicate empathy and affection, and then you can get on with solving the problem with your child.

A Parent’s Look at: BabyBabyOhBaby

By Beth Hendrickson, blogger at http://bellesqueaks.wordpress.com

“They grow up so fast” I hear from everyone. My parents, my friends, other moms at the pool, the sweat-drenched mailman, the harried grocery store clerk, the homeless woman. It’s been a unanimous vote through all of those precious (sleepless?) early months. Mired as I was in the molasses of my days, I felt confident disregarding the dire predictions. Sure, Little Friend would grow up…someday…in the vague and distant future. I forgot about the future’s annoying propensity to turn into today. Yesterday, as I watched Little Friend select her shoes, put on bracelets, and feed her baby (doll) at 19 years, I mean, months old, I had to join the wistful chorus in decrying, “They grow up so fast!” I’m now ever more so grateful for the moments I invested in Little Friend’s infancy to baby massage, thanks to the incomparable BabyBabyOhBaby DVD.

I’m not sure I would have sought out a baby massage DVD if it hadn’t been for having a premature baby and reading all of the accompanying literature singing the healthful, healing benefits of infant massage. I’m not exactly the incense-burning, new age music type of gal, although I do love me a good massage. But I found myself sitting at home in the dead of a snow-engulfed winter, staring at a four-pound baby wondering what in the world I was going to do for the next couple of months until Little Friend was allowed out and about. So began our daily sessions of infant massage. I couldn’t treasure more the memories, both mental and physical, of spending quiet, concentrated moments pressing my love and affection stroke by stroke through the skin, sinews, muscles, and ligaments of my little one’s body. Continue reading A Parent’s Look at: BabyBabyOhBaby

Staying in Control when Things are Out of Control

By Shoshana Hayman, director of the Life Center/Israel Center for Attachment Parenting, http://lifecenter.org.il

“When I’m calm, I have no trouble responding patiently, but the problem is that my child’s tantrums jangle my nerves and I lose control of myself!”

I hear parents say this over and over again. They might be talking about their five-year-old son who is whining because he wants them to buy him the toy he sees on the shelf in the store, their 10-year-old son who is complaining because he claims it was his brother who made the mess that he now has to clean, or their 15-year-old daughter who criticizes the family rules. Parents often feel stretched to the limits of their patience because of these daily minor confrontations.

“I just want to get the job done and get on with things!” But trying to find a quick solution usually prolongs these conflicts, and getting angry spoils the atmosphere as well as the relationship.

Seeing the child in a different way can help parents stay calm when their children are not. When parent and child are together, their brains do a dance! The parent can lead the child to a state of calm, rather than the child leading the parent to agitated confrontation. In each of the scenarios mentioned and in many others like them, the child is feeling frustration, one of our most primitive emotions. He is confronted with something he cannot have, a reality he doesn’t agree with, a situation he wants to change. When children are frustrated, it is normal for them to have temper tantrums, bite, kick, hit,  throw things, slam doors, yell, or talk back. They have not yet developed the ability to adapt quickly to the given circumstances. Their brains have not yet reached a level of development that helps them think of their options and choose their responses maturely. These are processes that take years to come into full fruition.

The most important role and perhaps the greatest challenge of parents is to believe in and support the processes which bring out the finest human qualities: caring, patience, thoughtfulness, courage, flexibility, self-control, adaptability, and responsibility. One of the ways parents can fulfill this role is to remain calm when the child is not. It helps to remember that children cannot yet control their impulses to hold on to their demands or to behave aggressively. When the parent remains calm, patient, compassionate, warm, and loving, the child then feels safe, that someone is in charge, and that his parent can handle his out-of-control behavior.  The child can then come to rest and begin to see a different reality.

Parents can see themselves as a safe haven as they accompany their children through the maze of getting from their feelings of frustration and anger to their feelings of disappointment, sadness, and coming to terms with what they cannot change. Perhaps this perspective will help parents remain calm and in control when their children are not.

Breastfeeding after ‘Almost’ Weaning

By Naomi Aldort, author of Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, www.naomialdort.com

Q: My two-year-old had almost completely weaned himself a few months ago. Then I got laid off from work and he began nursing all over again. Now he demands to nurse every two to four hours and will hold on to my boob saying he “doesn’t want it to fly away.” I put a limit of nursing at nap time and bedtime, but I’m not sure if he will re-wean himself. And, I’d really like to resolve his apparent fear that they are going away, or to somehow find a way for him to console himself with something other than the breasts.

A: This is a sweet misunderstanding between you and your son. He didn’t almost wean himself, and his fear that “they will fly away” is valid; he is sensing your intent to take breastfeeding away from him. Continue reading Breastfeeding after ‘Almost’ Weaning

Tips to Dealing with Acting-Out Behavior

By Rita Brhel, managing editor and attachment parenting resource leader (API)

Earlier this year, I attended a day session put on by the Appelbaum Training Institute in Omaha, Nebraska USA. The purpose of this session was to train childcare providers, but it gave some great tips for parents, too, in dealing with acting-out behavior from their toddlers and preschoolers:

Be Proactive

  • Stay calm — It’s important to QTIP (Quit Taking It Personal). Children act out for a variety of reasons, but it’s not because they dislike you. It’s because they’re frustrated, tired, not feeling well, hungry, or have another unfulfilled need.
  • Create a positive atmosphere — Children feed off of negative vibes. If you’re feeling stressed, they pick up on that and start acting out how you feel, which of course only perpetuates how you act, and the cycle goes round and round. This tip also applies to the physical atmosphere — children love bright colors and light and fun shapes and music. Decorate your house in your child’s artwork and provide plenty of opportunity for them to get involved in activities. I have a dresser filled with activities, from coloring to puzzles to ink stamps to sun-catcher kits.
  • Give compliments throughout the day — Make sure these are genuine and not conditional, so they’re not confused with a reward-based discipline system.
  • Speak in a quiet voice — We don’t need to shout to make our children hear us. They actually listen more when spoken to in a soft, respectful voice. Try whispering when you really want them to listen. Continue reading Tips to Dealing with Acting-Out Behavior

The Link between Breastfeeding and Mental Health

By Kathleen Mitchell-Askar, Pregnancy & Birth and Feeding Editor for The Attached Family

A study published in the April 2010 issue of The Journal of Pediatrics by The Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study suggests that breastfeeding may have a positive effect on children’s and adolescents’ mental health. A paper that appeared in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry listed children’s mental health as one of the six priority areas in need of attention to improve the health and development of children and adolescents across the globe. At a time when 10 to 20% of children worldwide suffer from emotional or behavioral problems, a possible solution as simple as breastfeeding is one that could prove both attainable and powerful.

For more than 50 years, breastfed babies have been shown to hold developmental and cognitive advantages over non-breastfed children. Some studies have even shown that breastfed infants are better able to cope with adverse stimuli with more control, and children who were breastfed as infants exhibited greater resilience against the stress and anxiety associated with parental separation and divorce. These previously published studies are limited, however, by their small, often nonrandom, samples.

The Australian study derives its strength from its large sample size, longitudinal nature, and excellent response fractions. From 1989 to 1992, the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort enrolled 2,900 pregnant women during their second trimesters who went on to deliver at the major obstetric hospital in Perth. Researchers gathered data on both parents’ familial, social, economic, and demographic backgrounds, along with their medical and obstetric histories, and updated the data during the 34th gestational week. The newborns (both singletons and twins) were initially examined by a midwife or pediatrician at two days postpartum, and 2,868 live births were included in the study. These children were followed until age 14.

The study focused on the parent-report Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) as the outcome variable at the five-, eight-, ten-, and 14-year follow-ups. The two-year-old children were evaluated with a similar questionnaire, modified with appropriate sleep questions and other subtle differences relative to the age group. Parents completed the 118-item CBCL, which measures behavioral psychopathology in children according to eight syndrome constructs:

  • Withdrawn
  • Anxious/depressed
  • Somatic complaints
  • Social problems
  • Attention problems
  • Thought problems
  • Delinquent behavior
  • Aggressive behavior.

Withdrawn; anxious/depressed; and somatic complaints were grouped and scored as “internalizing problems.” Delinquent and aggressive behaviors were treated as “externalizing problems.” The results from the CBCL were converted into age/sex-appropriate scores. The higher the score, the more problematic the child’s mental health.

A little over half of all mothers in the study (52%) breastfed for six months or longer, and 11% never breastfed at all. Nineteen percent of the children were breastfed for less than three months, 19% for three to six months, 28% for six to 12 months, and 24% for 12 months or more. The study investigated the effects of exclusive breastfeeding but found it did not change the conclusions drawn from the data with “any” breastfeeding (breastfeeding with the addition of solid food).

The study’s findings point to a boon for breastfed children: The longer a baby fed at the breast, the lower the child’s score on the CBCL, and the trend continued through adolescence. The differences between breastfed and non-breastfed children were most distinct in the total and externalizing scores. Even after researchers controlled for such confounding factors as maternal age at birth, maternal education, maternal smoking, family structure (whether the biological father lived with the family), life stress events, and maternal postnatal depression — all of which have been linked with higher rates of mental health problems — shorter breastfeeding duration was “consistently associated with increased risks for mental health problems of clinical significance through childhood and into adolescence,” the study concludes.

Despite the promising findings on the effects of breastfeeding on mental health, whether the positive correlation was due to breastmilk itself or the maternal-child bond cultivated at the breast was unclear. It is known that the fatty acids and other bioactive components in breastmilk positively contribute to child development and health. The hormone leptin, also found in breastmilk, may reduce stress in infants through its effects on the hippocampus, hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal gland.

Breastfeeding mothers have also been shown to touch their babies and gaze into their eyes more often. Such stimulation has not been linked with better mental health in human studies yet, but the Australian researchers cite a study on rat pups, and those that received a greater amount of maternal contact were better able to cope with stress as adults.

According to the study, “Breastfeeding may also be an indicator of a secure attachment status, which is known to have a positive influence on the child’s psychological development into adulthood.”

Even though breastmilk is the healthiest first food for a child, if a mother cannot or chooses not to breastfeed, it is possible that the attachment between parent and child affects the child’s mental health more profoundly than does the food itself. By practicing Attachment Parenting, holding the baby close while bottle-feeding, and increasing the amount of touch through babywearing, the mother of a non-breastfed baby could give her child mental-health benefits similar to those enjoyed by a breastfed baby. Parents who give proper attention to their children and remain present with them, whether breastfeeding or not, will make their child feel cherished and have a positive effect on his or her self-esteem.

But, as the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study shows, “breastfeeding for a longer duration appears to have significant benefits for the onward mental health of the child into adolescence…Therefore, interventions aimed at increasing breastfeeding duration could be of long-term benefit for child and adolescent mental health.”

Stripping the Layers of Advice

By Carrie Kerr, Safe Sleep Editor for The Attached Family

My grandma was working on writing a book when I was a teenager. The subject was music. She never finished the manuscript, so I can’t be sure of the exact focus of her topic, but I do remember that she interviewed my brother and me on the theory behind Alternative Rock. I didn’t have all that much to offer; I just listened to what sounded good. But my brother, always the academic type, was quick to add his input. He said, “These bands have stripped away the unnecessary layers and gone back to the basics. They threw away the synthesizers, and all the extra bells and whistles, and have focused on the classic instruments of guitar, drums, and voice.” I don’t know if his explanation was accurate or not, but I was reminded of his comments recently as I came across a parenting message board from a fairly prestigious college in California, USA.

I had never visited the site before, and I was very interested to see how such an intellectual group of people addressed the parenting topic of sleep. The advice was fair. It was supportive, friendly, educated, and it was very much Attachment Parenting (AP). But as I read on, I became overwhelmed by the amount of input on the subject. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “All of this advice is over-the-top. What ever happened to intuition?”

Shortly thereafter, I started reading a book by Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate entitled Hold On to Your Kids. Interestingly enough, my thought process was affirmed early on in the “Note to the Reader.” It said, “The modern obsession with parenting as a set of skills to be followed along lines recommended by experts is, really, the result of lost intuitions and a lost relationship with children previous generations could take for granted.” Now, that being said, it is also human nature to discuss day-to-day joys and struggles with our friends, relatives, or experts. But, in considering how to best get our children to sleep, I’d like to bring intuition back into focus.

Intuition refers to the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. We all have intuition, but often our gifts for it are in differing domains. For instance, some people may have great intuition when it comes to safety or emergencies, whereas other people lack common sense or tend to panic. This can be seen in parenting as well. I have heard people say, “I’m not very maternal.” They probably mean that they don’t have a strong intuition for handling children. Strongly knit societies typically have had frameworks for helping develop this intuition in the younger generations. Modern-day societies are struggling with this. As a result, the door for random parenting advice is wide open.

AP is largely based on the idea that we do have instinctual parenting skills and, with the right support, we can reconnect with the behaviors of our ancestors. Our current culture has made that difficult. We don’t have, as Neufeld explains it, “attached cultures” in our society. Our communities are segregated by age groups, with large gaps often existing between the young and the old. Instead of gleaning the wisdom and experience of our elders, we look to our peers for advice. This habit carries the risk of becoming a circular, fruitless, and maybe even harmful experiment.

What if the way you parented your child at night was only between you and your child? What if you never had to tell the opinionated bystander if your baby did or did not sleep through the night; you never had to hear unsolicited advice from your best friend; you only had to do what felt right to you and your child? What if you threw away the message boards, threw away the parenting books, and didn’t have any baby gadgets? Then what would you do when you and your baby were tired?

When it comes down to it, the issue of sleep is largely based on individual child/parent needs. We need to be less concerned with following a superficial protocol and more concerned with thinking critically about our unique situations. Game plan or not, intuition will be the leader for meeting the spontaneous needs of your child. A parent always needs to be sensitive to the miraculous instincts that come with parenting — the unexplained start that wakes you up only to realize your child has a fever, or the let-down of milk just moments before your baby starts crying. To override that with advice that is outlined by current trends, even those we view as positive, can be counterproductive.

Sometimes, like too many synthesizers in a band, all of the nighttime parenting advice gets in the way of our inner voices. For just a moment, I suggest we stop layering ourselves with tips and strategies, stop reading, stop second-guessing. Perhaps all of the overanalyzing is what’s actually exhausting! Regardless of my advice to you, or someone else’s advice to me, it often comes down to personally testing the waters of our unique situations. It’s about listening to your child, his or her needs, and the reasonable, responsive inner voice that comes with the age-old occupation of parenting.

The Use — and Abuse — of Attachment Research in Family Courts

By Peter Ernest Haiman, PhD, reprinted with permission, www.peterhaiman.com

An enormous amount of exceedingly important, valid, and reliable research on child development has been published in the last half century. Unfortunately, very little of this information has been presented in an appropriate and useful manner to the pediatricians, family therapists, parents, judges, and attorneys who could benefit from it. As a result, many children do not receive the protection they deserve.

This article serves three purposes:

  1. To summarize available research-based information about the relationship an infant or toddler develops with that child’s primary caregiver (usually the mother). The kind of maternal attachment relationship formed in early childhood can play a determining role throughout the individual’s life.
  2. To highlight areas of social and academic development affected by this early attachment relationship. Recently, some misleading and deceptive articles have been published in family court journals. These authors make recommendations about custody and visitation that contradict valid and reliable research-based evidence.
  3. To address the abuse of early childhood attachment research published in family court journals. Continue reading The Use — and Abuse — of Attachment Research in Family Courts

Embracing Positive Discipline’s Challenges

By Kelly Bartlett, certified positive discipline educator and leader of API of East Portland, Oregon USA

Positive discipline doesn’t come instinctively for many people. In fact, that’s why most parents endeavor in positive discipline in the first place; they want to change their current instincts about raising children. They want to break the cycle of using traditional discipline methods that compromise the parent-child relationship, and they are forging their way in a new direction. As opposed to parenting with strict control and scare tactics, when children are raised with kindness and respect, parents are instilling a new instinct for discipline. Children learn how to solve problems, manage difficult emotions, and make intrinsic decisions about what’s right and wrong. Positive discipline is a parenting approach that is based on connection and trust, rather than on longing and fear.

However, while the theory has remarkable appeal, many parents are skeptical to begin the journey into positive discipline. It seems doubtful that any deviation from what has, up until now, seemed like the “normal” way to parent children is going to work. Or more likely, that a different approach will work more effectively. This reluctance is natural. After all, it goes back to instincts; parents naturally turn to the same methods with which they were raised. The thought of doing anything differently can bring on resistance:

“It’s too much work.”

Going from a reactive discipline approach to one that’s primarily proactive can feel very intimidating. Positive discipline takes the cultural belief about discipline and turns it on its head. When parents are accustomed to responding to children’s behavior with yelling, threats, and punishments, it is difficult to stop and re-think how to respond using the language of positive discipline. Indeed, much like learning a new language, learning positive discipline skills also takes time and practice.

Parents can take baby steps in the direction they want to go by substituting one positive discipline tool in place of a corresponding traditional one. For example, to raise kids who are problem solvers, focus on solutions instead of issuing punishments. To raise kids who are effective communicators, ask questions and listen instead of lecturing. To raise kids who are internally motivated, say “thank you” instead of “good job.” For every attribute parents aspire to teach their children, there are baby steps they can take to get there. Start with one; step by step, you will soon see great strides.

“It takes too long to see results.”

While it’s true that traditional discipline aims to stop unwanted behavior now, positive discipline works toward a bigger goal than the immediate present. Most of the positive discipline tools are proactive, rather than reactive. This means they won’t elicit the same results as traditional discipline methods. For many parents, this can be frustrating when trying to manage difficult behavior.

Glenda Montgomery, a certified postive discipline educator with the Positive Discipline Association, likens positive discipline to a dance. She tells parents, “Imagine that throughout these years, you’ve been in a dance with your child. You know all of each other’s moves. You know each other’s actions and consequent reactions. Now suddenly, [by using positive discipline] you’re changing the dance routine. You are moving in a new direction while your child is continuing with the same moves as before. Their moves might even be more pronounced than usual as your child tries to lead you back into a familiar dance routine. It’s going to take some time for everyone to get in sync with the new moves.”

Yes, it does take time to see significant results with positive discipline. Consider the adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” If your first attempt at using a positive discipline tool doesn’t succeed in changing behavior, try it again. And again. Perhaps try a different tool. And try that one again. What all of these tries add up to over the course of the growth of the child is a new “dance”; a new relationship between the two of you and a new perspective for seeing disciplinary results.

“Life is not ‘positive’.”

In the “real world,” there are consequences for poor behavior and rewards for good behavior. If you break a law, you are punished with jail time. If you excel at your job, you are given a bonus. If you drive too fast, you get a ticket. If you travel enough, you get status perks. The world is full of conditions. This makes many parents want to adopt a punishment-and-reward system at home with prizes, timeouts, sticker charts, and losses of privileges, so children can grow up experiencing what the “real world” is like.

Jane Nelsen, PhD, author of Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World, argues that there are much more effective ways to teach children about developing sound judgment skills to succeed in the real world, without mimicking the punishments and rewards that are intended for adults in an adult system. She says that moral and ethical development requires not the enforcement of external provisions, but “a mentorship between children and adults.” The best way to help children develop sound judgment is to give them the opportunity to practice.

This means parents must refrain from making all of their children’s decisions for them and must provide them with opportunities to think through their own choices; to make mistakes. When parents do this, and allow their children to fully experience the consequences of their mistakes without being rescued, children learn much more efficiently the effects of their actions. Dr. Nelsen says, “When young people discover that their choices affect their outcomes, they feel potent and significant and become increasingly confident that they hold the reins in their lives. With practice, they become more adept in holding these reins — and better human beings.”

Because children are not on the same developmental level as adults, emotionally or cognitively, they do not need “practice” in experiencing punishments intended on an adult level in an adult world. What they need from parents are discipline strategies that focus instead on problem solving and communication. They need to cultivate problem solving skills and internal motivation for doing what’s right. In short, they need to develop sound judgment now (through experiencing mistakes and solving problems), so they will inherently avoid the legal system later when they’re in the “real world.”

“It rewards poor behavior.”

Because positive discipline involves no punishments and lots of connection, it is often first seen as permissive. It makes more sense to parents to threaten a consequence to stop a tantrum than to scoop a screaming child up for a hug. Isn’t doling out hugs instead of consequences just rewarding bad behavior? It’s easy to see how positive discipline challenges mainstream thought about behavior. It moves from a behaviorist approach — offering superficial solutions to control innate human behavior — to a connected, communicative one. It aims to first understand — to get at the root of human needs — then to guide. Positive discipline is connection before correction.

It is possible to reconsider the idea that human behavior must be manipulated and controlled by a set of external stimuli (punishments and rewards). Parents can remember that, unlike animals, children’s behavior is a direct reaction to their feelings, and those feelings stem from genuine needs. Because difficult behavior in a child is a result of an unmet need, parents can first pause to assess what that child might be feeling, and therefore needing, before being too hasty to chastise the behavior. As human brains are more complex than those of any other animal, positive discipline methods, as opposed to behaviorist strategies, are aimed at changing behavior by specifically addressing those complexities. So although for many parents it may seem like positive discipline methods reward undesirable behavior, they in fact do not. It’s not a “carrot and stick” approach to manipulating behavior; rather it regards behavior at its source on a uniquely emotional level. Positive discipline addresses behavior at its core, without merely treating its symptoms.

“I’m alone in this.”

More often than not, parents meet other parents who are unfamiliar with the concept of positive discipline, than those who use it regularly in their families. Sometimes, it’s even within the same family that parents disagree on how to discipline. Spousal differences or grandparent disparities may convey many of the resistances described above, and make it seem difficult for a family to succeed in their positive discipline efforts.

There is support available for helping parents succeed with positive discipline! No matter where you are on your journey, there are various forms of education, inspiration, and encouragement. In-person positive discipline classes are available in states across the country, and they offer inspiring evenings of learning, activities, and connection with like-minded families. It is immensely helpful for parents to be able to connect with other moms and dads who are also on a positive discipline journey. Online or in person, parents come together to create a network of support for each other. They’re there to encourage, commiserate with, and bounce ideas off of each other. Parents should surround themselves with positive discipline enthusiasts; create networks of support to help themselves succeed.

Find more information on local positive discipline workshops, as well as online support, at www.positivediscipline.com.  Also available is a downloadable iPhone app in which parents can conveniently have the 52 Positive Discipline Tool Cards always at their fingertips.

Learning positive discipline takes a lot of thought, effort, and most importantly, a huge shift in paradigm. Discipline approaches change from reactive to proactive. Discipline tools change from “what can I do to my child” to “what can I do for my child.” And discipline strategies change from quick-fix to long-term. Despite the initial effort involved, the payoff is life-long for family unity, parent-child relationships, children’s well-being, and even children’s future families. It is absolutely possible and undoubtedly worth the investment to work on creating new instincts for raising secure, confident children.