The 4 benefits of positive discipline in parenting

Educating is not easy. Parenting is a real challenge for any parent, both novice and veteran with an older child.

In fact, Parenting is a feat that very often moms and dads are not quite sure how to tackle. There is no miraculous formula that helps us to educate in a perfect and infallible way, since human nature is imperfect and always They will make some mistakes without wanting to, but fortunately there are various educational methods and currents that will make our way of raising the most adequate.

Among the methodologies that stand out the most when it comes to breeding we have the popular positive discipline, a parenting method that promotes education without conditioning.

Positive parenting discipline, unlike traditional education based only on rewards and punishments, teaches parents tools to understand what needs and motivations are behind their children's behavior and, once they understand it, they will manage it much better. Let's see what they are the main benefits of positive discipline when raising children.

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Positive discipline and democratic parenting

To understand the suitability of positive discipline in parenting, we will first review the main parenting styles out there. The best known and considered to be the most common are three: authoritarian, permissive and democratic.

1. Authoritarian parenting

In authoritative parenting the adult does not consider the child as a subject of rights and resorts to command, dominate, intimate and punish the child.

In order not to be punished, the child must be totally submissive to parental authority, internalizing the idea that the parents are in charge of the family and no debate is accepted.

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2. Permissive or laissez-faire parenting

The permissive parenting style could be seen as radically opposed to the authoritarian model, although not for that much better.

Here parents and caregivers do not establish limits or norms with children, and in many cases they are completely unconcerned. to meet their needs or educate them. There are even parents who come to maintain that their children's bad behavior is the fault of others or they give in to everything to avoid conflicts.

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3. Democratic upbringing

Finally we have the democratic model of parenting, in which parents and caregivers know, understand and respond adequately to the needs of the little ones.

Here a relationship is established based on good treatment, becoming models and guides for children, attending to their needs and establishing clear rules and limits.. Affection and firmness are combined, respect for both parties.

The democratic parenting model is strongly based on positive discipline, a method that has its origins in the theories of Alfred Adler (1870-1937), an Austrian physician and psychotherapist.

Main benefits of positive discipline

These are the main benefits of positive parenting, which can be experienced by both parents and the little ones in the house.

1. Helps meet two basic needs

Adler who understood that the first two needs that every human being has are the following:

• Belonging: all human beings are born with the need to be part of a group, to belong to it.
• Significance: we have the need to contribute and have a meaning in our life.

Starting from these two needs and relating it to his method, the idea of ​​positive discipline is that children learn to live with others (belonging) and that their life acquires meaning (significance).

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2. Helps to get out of the logic of blind obedience

Experts who advocate positive discipline in parenting often describe and criticize the most common parenting method, which is often based on obedience.

It is not unusual to observe that the main form of parenting involves the establishment of vertical relationships, where the adult commands and the child has to obey.

To this day, many still understand the idea of ​​"discipline" as severity, rigidity and punishment, despite the fact that This idea really implies teaching, making the infant someone responsible for her own behavior and reflective of her with she.

That this method continues to be used as the primary way of raising children collides with the fact that, at this point in history, it is already known that the infantile human brain sees obedience as too abstract. In fact, it is so abstract that the only way many adults have to "get" such an idea into their heads is through fear or compensation.

However, the ideal would be to teach children obedience based on respect, to make them admire the person they have to obey.

Adler argued that all human beings deserve the same respect, regardless of our age. Therefore, if as parents we show the child that she can trust us, and we take into account her wishes and needs, we will get our child to respect us and imitate our behavior by considering us a role model.

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3. Helps harness the potential of parents as role models

Positive discipline implies that parents and children respect each other, making the former the inspiration of the latter.

Parents should not forget that their role is to act as guides and companions in their children's experiences. This role that parents must assume and fulfill is so important that, under the perspective of this methodology, the management of emotions in adults is worked hard.

Children understand the world from what they observe, taking as models or people worthy of imitating important adults and peers, parents being the main referents, both in the good and in the bad. Thus, children will introduce into their behavioral and emotional repertoire the behaviors and emotions that they see from their parents in certain situations.

For example, if her father behaves calmly even when he has an unforeseen event, the child will learn to be calm when something does not go well. Because, for the child's management to be the most appropriate and regulated it is necessary for the adult to learn to manage her own emotions first.

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4. Help to see beyond the punishments

Expert advocates of positive parenting discipline argue that bad behaviors are, in reality, bad decisions made by the child regarding the search for belonging.

That is, a child wants to be taken into account, he wants to feel that he is part of a group but, since he is too young and inexperienced to know how it is done in a non-disruptive or socially acceptable way, he makes a bad decision, something that adults see as bad behavior or bad attitude.

Applying positive discipline in parenting, parents learn to see the needs of their children and meet them appropriately.

This is essential to understand, because it will contribute to changing the "chip", since the infant's misbehavior should not be penalized in the form of punishments to see if her unwanted behavior can be extinguished, but to explain how she should behave appropriately.

In addition, you have to try to connect with them, understand why the child behaves that way and see if she has a solution or, in one way or another, her bad behavior lies in some kind of neglect on the part our.