Discipline a Toddler: Where to Start
It can be very hard for parents to have to start to discipline their children. Parenting starts with protection and nurturing, and then progresses onto development and encouragement as the child starts to walk, talk and investigate. The next stage is boundaries.This is a very important developmental stage, but it is also one which parents find very hard to handle.
Why do you need to discipline a toddler?
Toddlers are very inquisitive and often fearless, so disciplining them can seem hard as they do not really understand right from wrong and cannot see why some cupboards and doors can be opened and they are congratulated, while others lead to cross faces. This is not an task to be postponed, your toddler needs to understand when they are not allowed to do something as this will help to keep them safe.
How do you discipline a toddler?
The most popular method at the moment has got to be the naughty chair.This method is extremely simple and very effective. When the toddler does something dangerous you remove them from the environment and place them of a chair or step for one minuet for each year of their life, so a two year old would have two minuets and a three year old three minuets. Depending on the age and level of understanding it may take a few attempts before the child realizes that this will happen every time that they are naughty. With my eldest child I was never sure how much he understood, but he soon learnt that if he did certain things they would result in the naughty chair, and since this interrupted his play he would avoid doing these things, so even if his understanding was limited he was still learning to be safe. There are other ways to discipline a toddler, one other popular method is to remove a favorite toy every time they are naughty to a special box. For example, if your child is always playing with ‘in the night garden’ toys, then every time they misbehave you take one of the toys and put them in the box.This box has to be out of reach of the children, then in the morning all the toys are back in the play area. This will only work if you child has favorites, and there is always the issue that on a really bad day you can end up with almost all their toys in the box – especially if they are going through a throwing phrase.
However you decide to proceed you must remember that you know your child better than anyone else and if you are not comfortable with the discipline then it will not work.Take the different methods, review them, try them and go with whatever works for you and your family.
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