Positive discipline: educating from mutual respect

In recent years there has been a change in education by parents, who work for an increasingly conscious education and that takes into account the overall well-being of young people. This has led to more and more families taking an interest in finding a different way of educating their children, leaving aside the more authoritarian traditional punitive methods.

But on this transitional path we also find ourselves lost parents, disoriented, who have fallen into overprotection when trying to avoid authoritarianism, since they lack tools that allow them to find a middle ground between both educational styles. And these fathers, mothers, and also educators, ask themselves, is education possible without rewards or punishments, without my son ending up being a tyrant?

Fortunately, it is possible, thanks to the methodology of mutual respect, positive discipline.

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What is positive discipline?

Fathers, mothers and educators. We have in our hands the responsibility to improve the world,

promoting an education based on respect for the other, an education based on love, understanding, and the use of error as a learning opportunity... and not in anger, not in blackmail, not in vertical relationships that only generate discomfort and power struggles between parents and children. This humanistic claim is what forms the basis of positive discipline.

This discipline has its origin in the individualistic psychology of Alfred Adler. Adler has already explained that all people, in all situations, have the right to be treated with the same dignity and respect. And for that reason he understood that the person, as a social being that he is, needs to forge the feeling of community through some key aspects, namely: belonging, and significance. That is, the human being has the need to belong and be part of the various systems that he composes (the family, groups, community ...) and to feel that it is important in said system, that with what it does it contributes and is Useful.

Likewise, Adler was able to verify through his work that children who lacked affection and love developed behavior problems; In the same way that children who grew up without limits, they could also have many difficulties in the development of their long-term skills.

When the child feels that these aspects of belonging and meaning are not guaranteed, what we understand as "bad behavior" appears. Dreikurs, a disciple of Adler, went further and said that a child who misbehaves is just a discouraged child, and coined the term we know as "democratic education."

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Understanding democratic education

This democratic education is based on applying the fundamental principle of kindness and firmness at the same time. Kindness as respect towards the child, firmness as respect towards myself as an adult and towards the situation. With both things in balance we can carry out an education that is respectful for all, and teaches the most important thing to children, life skills.

In this way we create a respectful environment in which we can teach, and in which children can learn, freed from negative feelings such as shame, guilt, pain or humiliation, and therefore, feel, through connection, that belonging, significance, and contribution, is possible. In this way we help the child to explore for himself the possible consequences of her actions, empowering him to create capable children.

The Goals of Positive Discipline

Positive discipline puts the focus on the long term, understanding that the child's behavior, what we observe (crying, having a tantrum, ...) is only the tip of the iceberg, but that below her, there are deeper feelings, needs and beliefs that are forged in the child based on the decisions that are taking.

If we abandon the urge to immediately correct misbehavior, we can proceed to validate the child's feelings, and connect before correcting, trying to understand the interpretation that the children they do about themselves and about the world, and what they are feeling, thinking and deciding in each moment to survive and thrive in the world. One more step to get closer and empathize with them!

Positive discipline is thus based on orAn education that does not use rewards, but does motivate and encourage. An education that does not punish, but does focus on solutions. An education in which limits are as necessary to guide children as love and respect. Because, as Jane Nelsen, the leading figure in the dissemination of this methodology, said, whose absurd idea was that in order for a child to behave well, they must first be made to feel bad?

And that's what we make a child feel when we use punishment, which we can summarize in 4 Rs: resentment, desire for revenge, rebellion, and withdrawal (feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem).

In short, an education that models skills, which teaches the courage to be imperfect accompanying through trust, which takes into account the needs of children and respects childlike nature, which encourages the child so that little by little he learns self-regulation skills and becomes a competent, capable, and self motivated.