Summer School: Parenting 101

It's almost August and maybe the summer hasn't been quite as easy as you had hoped. Less routine, more time at home and big expectations for fun can sometimes be a recipe for difficulties. Here is your first, most important tip – use this time to learn how to encourage cooperation and decrease misbehavior.

The most important principle to remember is this: Children Want Your Attention. Their desire for your attention is behind a lot of what they do. And the problem is that you probably give better, more interesting, expressive, and consistent attention to misbehavior than to positive behavior.

Ask yourself, what percent of the day am I correcting, directing and criticizing? And what percent of the day am I celebrating, praising and encouraging my children’s positive behavior?

Let’s say the kids are outside playing. You breathe a sigh of relief and put in a load of laundry. At best you probably tell yourself you love when they get along and play so enthusiastically. But it is less likely that you will run outside, do a mommy or daddy dance and tell your kids you love when they make up games and play so cooperatively!

On the other hand, if one of the kids hurts the other, you are out there immediately - tap dancing, waving arms, spouting threats and wailing about why can't they just get along! For most kids, misbehavior leads to expressive attention they can count on. We need to reverse it – you will get more of the behavior that you pay attention to. Most parents just take good behavior for granted and it can often disappear that way.

So start by giving attention to the behavior you want and ignoring negative behavior to the best of your ability. More in our next blog on how to use "effective praise" to increase positive behaviors and decrease negative ones. Positive discipline works and improves parent-child relationships. Please send along your discipline questions and successes.