Positive Parenting: How to Discipline Your Child

Can positive parenting teach you how to discipline your child?  Even if you have a child cursing and swearing at home?  Of course it can.  You can learn how to turn your house from a battleground into a real home where everyone feels safe.

The first thing we need to do is understand why your child is cursing.  The answer is simple in that he is just responding to his emotions.  He doesn't have a proper game plan in his head that tells him what to do when he gets upset or frustrated.  So he falls back on an emotional response that usually comes from the weakest part of him.

Let's look at an example where your child gets upset when a friend he has over takes his toy.  There should be something in his head that tells him to talk it out or ask for the toy back.  If he hasn't been taught what is normal, his reaction will probably be an emotional 'I want it' crisis that makes him aggressive or swear at his friend.  Understand that the emotions take over if there is no game plan going on in his thought process.

So once you understand why he curses, it's easy to take the next step.  You've got to create that game plan or strategy in his consciousness so that when the situation repeats itself, he will know what his appropriate actions should be.

And you give him that strategy by defining his limits and then giving him a consequence if he breaks the limit.  So in the example above, you would tell him that when your friend takes your toy, you can ask for it back, negotiate or use another toy.  Tell him what is acceptable.

But the second part of the strategy is to let him know what consequence will occur if he does not follow your rules.  And if the situation happens and he still curses and screams at his friend, make sure you follow through with your consequences.  Maybe his friend must leave immediately or your son must spend 10 minutes in his room thinking about his actions.

Whatever you have decided, make sure you do it.  Otherwise the limit is useless and the consequence a toothless watchdog.

Now when giving consequences, make sure they make sense.  Don't take away your son's bicycle because he swears.  There is no connect in his mind between cursing and his bicycle.  This is just a punishment, something random that you are giving him that is more a "gotcha" than "let's get it right next time".

So getting back to the strategy concept, your son has to connect everything in his mind.  If his friend takes his toy, he can do actions 1, 2 or 3.  Otherwise his friend goes home.  That's a logical progression.

Listen, plenty of parents make mistakes and you shouldn't worry.  If you're reading this now, you want to improve your parenting skills.  I've put together a video for parents just like you.  It's short and it's free and it will show you the most common mistake parents make when giving consequences to their child.  It can be found at  my website.

Your child cursing and swearing will be a thing of the past.  Positive parenting will teach you how to discipline your child and improve his overall behavior.