Teaching Your Child Positive Discipline By Penny Shore

I enjoyed this book. It contains practical and useful information with a sensitivity to how children operate. This book reads extremely quickly if you simply read it straight through. It is designed, however, as a workbook of sorts. I believe the usability and practicality of the workbook portion will vary for each reader, but I do feel the reader is left with some good things to think about.

Positive discipline is not understood by our mainstream society. Often times, children are expected to act like miniature adults. Child development is poorly understood by many. Positive discipline emphasizes the difference between discipline and punishment. Our society relies heavily on punishment, which is a mentality of "you did something bad, so I'll do something bad to you." Often times, the punishments we hand out for various offenses by our children do not teach our children what we desire them to learn.

What actual discipline strives for is to maintain the trusting, loving relationship with your child while providing guidance and helping your child reach their full potential. Natural consequences to actions are emphasized in order for children to learn from their mistakes. Positive discipline recognizes the importance of never hitting your child. The detrimental effects of hitting your child are explained in this book.

The most important thing I took away from this book is the fact that the foundation to discipline is trust. If your child trusts you and knows they are safe with you, they are more likely to listen to you and learn. Trust must be established for discipline to work.

You must also be connected with your child and know your child. I believe many people think they know their child, when in reality they don't. This is not something to be ashamed of, but it is something to realize and correct. How many parents complain that they have a hard time relating to their children? Too many. I believe this stems from not knowing your child.

The best part of this book is the eight strategies for encouraging cooperation. One of these strategies is teaching by example. Most of us punish our children for behaviors they learned from us. Meeting your child's basic needs is another. Children are more irritable and likely to have less self control when they are tired or hungry. It is the parent's job to recognize this. It is also important for the parent to make sure they are setting realistic expectations for their child's behavior. It is also the parent's job to communicate clearly with the child by getting and maintaining the child's attention. This book emphasizes that in many circumstances an ounce of prevention goes a long way.

Ultimately, this is a pretty decent book. It's a good starting point for someone interested in learning about positive discipline. It reads easily and quickly. Due to its short nature, however, I wouldn't recommend making this the only book you read on the subject. More reviews on this topic to come.