Discipline as Encouragement

An out-of-control adult cannot do any of these things. Out-of-control adults focus on what they don’t want to happen. (“Stop that this minute!”) They see only from their own point of view. (“You are driving me nuts!”) They punish rather than teach. (“Go to your room!”) When you lose self-control, you lose your ability to discipline yourself and you

Our third parenting principle is to take the positive emotions of your child just as seriously as the negative emotions, and his or her strengths as seriously as the weaknesses.

Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline presents a framework of discipline called loving guidance. This framework is built on the premise that how we perceive a situation dictates the actions we will take. In order to change behavior, we must focus on our perceptions as well as on our actions.

This isolates the crucial process of the upward spiral, and so it leads to our second parenting principle: Augment positive emotions in your children to start an upward spiral of more positive emotion.

They have to have a common discipline; that’s a key word for me. The difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don’t recognize the necessity of fierce discipline and training.”