Don’t you wish our children or students came with an instruction manual? One that could teach us how to encourage a child to achieve their full potential. In October’s parenting book club pick here at Fun With Mama, we will be discussing the tried and trusted methods of Positive Discipline and applying it within our homes and/or classrooms.
Parenting Book Club
Please note that affiliate links may be used in this post. Please see my disclosure policy for more details. I received the online parenting course and workbook for free after I purchased the book and contacted the company.
Book Club Book Choice: The Positive Discipline Book by Jane Nelsen
I highly recommend that you purchase a paperback copy that you can highlight and flag. An e-book is convenient, but it doesn’t allow you to take in the principles as easily. The benefit to reading the Kindle Version of Positive Discipline on a Kindle Paper white is that you can highlight key points and then access your combined notes without having to write them. It just depends on your own comfort and use.
Book Club Accessories that I love and use:
- Book Highlighters
- Journal to write important points and thoughts in – This really helps me digest what I am reading and put it into my own words.
- Post it flags to remember important pages and Post it page markers to remember important pages by writing the main topic.
What are some life skills you want your children to have?
- Self discipline
- Responsibility and accountability
- Self-confidence and courage
- Good communication skills
- Healthy self esteem
- Respect for self and others
I am sure that this is just a few of the many life skills you are hoping to foster within your child.
What about some challenges you are currently facing?
- Back talk
- Won’t listen
- Interrupting
- Fighting
- Temper Tantrums
- Entitled
- Interrupting
Well, you are not alone. These are natural challenges that all parents face with each of their children. It is how we deal with these challenges that makes each of us different.
About the book
The word discipline comes from the Latin root disciplus, which means “to teach”. Somehow through the years the word discipline got distorted into meaning, make your children feel worse when they misbehave so that they wont do it again. But all that leads to is.. more bad behavior.
Positive Discipline has 5 Criteria:
- It is Kind and Firm at the same time. (Respectful and encouraging)
- Helps children feel a sense of Belonging and Significance. (Connection)
- Is Effective Long-Term. (Punishment works short term, but has negative long-term results.)
- Teaches valuable Social and Life Skills for good character. (Respect, concern for others, problem-solving, accountability, contribution, cooperation)
- Invites children to discover how Capable they are and to use their personal power in constructive ways.
Inside the book you will discover how to:
- hold children accountable with their self-respect intact
- bridge communication gaps
- defuse power struggles
- avoid the dangers of praise
- enforce your message of love
- build on strengths, not weaknesses
- teach children not what to think but how to think
- win cooperation at home and at school
Tools and concepts of the book
- Mutual respect
- Identifying the belief behind bad behaviour
- Focuses on solutions instead of punishments
- Encouragements rather than praise
- Focusing on solutions rather than punishments
In the first chapter of the book.. the author asks you to reflect within yourself. If you, as a general person, do something bad… you KNOW it was bad after you saw the consequence of that action.. would someone SCREAMING at you about how ‘stupid’ or ‘horrible’ you are, make you want to not do that again? Or would you initially feel like someone emotionally punched you. Jane Nelsen ed. D states that the worst time to try to teach a child is immediately after a bad event or altercation. She says that we are in a fight or flight mode. I sat down and thought about this for a few minutes. I put myself in my child’s shoes and realized that my child’s emotional needs weren’t being met in that moment and no matter what I tried to teach them, it was literally flying past them. That is the general premise of this book.
A little back story
I first came across The Positive Discipline book school when I noticed that my 3 1/2 year old daughter is on much better behavior during the school year. I asked her teachers why that may be? When she comes back from school I see a little girl who helps me clean, who tells me that she wants to be proactive, not re-active and that takes responsibility and pride in her problem solving skills. There was definitely some magical things happening at her school and I needed some of that fairy dust at home with my other two children. They mentioned that they apply a lot of principles from The Positive Discipline Book as well as The Leader In Me book. They recommended I also read the 7 Habits of Happy Kids to my children.
That is when I quickly purchased The Positive Discipline book and added The Leader In Me to my Amazon wish list.
I contacted Customer Service on the Positive Discipline website and asked them if they could allow me to try out The Positive Discipline Parenting Course so that I could test it out and see if I would recommend it to my readers.
Family Meetings
I just put together our family meeting album and had our first family meeting.
It went really well! My kids loved all aspects of it and are looking forward to the next one.
The Positive Discipline Online Parenting Class
I like that the course includes real life examples and video’s as if you are being personally taught by the author. You also see the feedback from other parents too. The thing I love MOST about the parenting course, is that it comes with a free printable workbook as well as a printable family meeting album to get you started.
Supplements:
Listen to the podcasts from the author. They are very interesting and discuss a wide range of topics such as: the power of a hug, bedtime struggles, family meetings, etc.
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