We discipline our kids for a reason: we want them to be good.
When a parent yells at their children or sends them to their room, it’s not because they want their kids to suffer. We’re not just hate-filled gargoyles who want to stamp out fun wherever we find it. We’re trying to help our kids understand that their behavior affects other people. We want to make them better people.
But there’s a difference between raising a child who is afraid of getting in trouble and a child who understands the difference between right and wrong. When our kids grow up, we won’t be around every minute of their lives. If we want them to make good decisions when we’re not around, they have to be motivated by more than just fear of getting in trouble.
Don’t rely on fear
For a lot of us, yelling is the only way we know how to do it, after all, it works. When you blow up on a child every time they don’t do what you want, their behavior changes. Those kids will make a mental list of everything that makes you angry, and they’ll make sure you don’t catch them doing it. Something happens, though, in your kids' heads when you try to scare them into being good. They stop noticing the effect they are having on other people and, instead, focus on the consequences to themselves. Being good becomes something they do to avoid getting in trouble, instead of something they decide to do. They might be good when you’re around – but it won’t last. The second you turn your back, all that good behavior is going to stop.Let your kids choose
Children aren’t evil. Even babies are naturally capable of kindness. Studies have found that babies as young as 14 months old will try to help people in need. There’s a natural goodness in every person, right there from birth. We’re social animals. We want to help each other out. One of the best ways to kill that natural goodness, though, is to make kids do it. Children are actually more likely to help someone if they do it of their own free will. Experiments with children suggest that, if you force a child to do something good for someone, they’ll do the bare minimum, but if you let them decide whether they want to do it or not, they’ll go beyond. What’s more is that they’ll keep doing it. Children who are forced to do charity work only do it when they’re forced to, but children who decide to do it themselves will keep it up. It becomes a whole part of their being. In fact, the more parents give their kids rewards, the less likely the kids are to act generously.Teach your children to control their emotions
Remember when I said that kids are naturally good? Remember when you rolled your eyes and said, “That’s not my kid”? You weren’t wrong – just because kids are capable of goodness doesn’t mean they always do it. But there are reasons for that, and one of the big ones is emotion. Kids get mad. They have impulses. They have urges. When people get emotional, no matter how old they are, they start making different decisions. That’s one of the biggest challenges of being human – controlling your emotions. We’re filled with feelings that tell us to do things that are incredibly destructive, and we have to learn how to resist them. That’s a big part of being good.Pardon the interruption
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