It is 11:23 on a Tuesday morning and your two-year-old is on the kitchen floor. The immediate cause — as best as you can reconstruct it — is that you cut the toast into rectangles instead of triangles. Or gave the blue cup instead of the red one. Or said it was time to leave … Read more
There is a version of misbehavior that is exactly what it looks like: a child who knows the rule, is choosing not to follow it, and is watching to see what happens next. This version is real, and it has its own research and its own set of responses. But there is another version — … Read more
Something happens. The behavior arrives — the explosion, the shutdown, the cutting word, the refusal, the aggression that seems to come from nowhere — and from the outside it looks like defiance, willfulness, or a simple choice to push against limits. The situation that triggered it doesn’t seem serious enough to warrant what followed. The … Read more
Most parents who yell don’t want to. That’s the part that makes it so difficult. It isn’t a deliberate strategy — it’s what happens after the patient version of the request has been ignored, after the calm version has been ignored, after the firmer version has been ignored, after the thing that was going to … Read more
The word “discipline” comes from the Latin disciplina — to teach, to instruct, to guide. For most of human parenting history, and in most family homes today, it has come to mean something considerably narrower: the application of consequences to behavior you want to stop. The removal of privileges. The time-out. The withdrawal of something … Read more
There is a kind of correction that makes a child want to do better. And there is a kind of correction that makes a child want to disappear. The difference is not always obvious in the moment. Both can arrive in response to the same behavior. Both can come from parents who are genuinely trying … Read more
Here is what every parent wants: a child who understands that their choices have outcomes. Who knows, from experience rather than from being told, that some actions make things better and some make things worse — for themselves, for others, for the household, for the relationship. A child who doesn’t need to be punished because … Read more
You’ve already said it twice. The third time you say it, you can hear something in your own voice that you don’t love — a tightness, a volume that’s just slightly too high, the specific quality of a person who has arrived at the edge of patience and is aware of it. The fourth time, … Read more
It lands differently than other difficult parenting moments. The slammed door. The rolled eyes that are just visible enough to be intentional. The “whatever” delivered with a particular inflection. The “you’re so unfair” that escalates into something sharper. The comment so cutting, in a tone so dismissive, that for a moment you aren’t sure whether … Read more
Every parent has a discipline story that didn’t go the way it was supposed to. The consequence that made things worse. The threat that hung in the air for three days and quietly dissolved. The punishment that produced tears and apologies in the moment and no visible change the following Tuesday. The strategy you’ve applied … Read more
