01（英）I will not buy another one anymore

【提示】

本课程是中英双语授课，您可以点击“专辑--节目”选择中文或英文课程进行收听，英文课程由简·尼尔森和女儿玛丽·尼尔森本人讲述，对应中文内容是由中国的正面管教导师甄颖完成。谢谢您的订阅，希望您能有所收获。

【音频英文稿】

你好！This is Dr. Jane Nelsen. And it's such an honor for me to share positive discipline with Ximalaya listeners.  I had no idea that positive discipline tools would someday be helping parents in so many countries around the world. Now, almost every day, I hear someone tell me that positive discipline has changed their life. It is my hope that at the end of these podcasts, you will be able to say the same. You may wonder why positive discipline is helping parents all over the world, since we all live in so many different cultures, even though there are many ways that we are different, there are also many ways that we are the same: For example, we all love our children. We all want the best for them. In all of our classes and workshops, we start by asking everyone to create a list of what are the qualities and life skills they hope their children will develop. In every country, the lists are almost identical. Listen closely to see if you can identify with these examples there were created by other people. We all want our children to be responsible, self motivated, self confident, problem-solvers, resilient, hard workers, to have courage, self discipline, self control,respect for self and others, compassion and social consciousness. My guess is that these are the qualities you hope your children will develop. Please take time to make your own list, because we will ask you to be to refer to it often. As I and Mary share many positive discipline tools with you, we will ask you to refer to your list of characteristics, qualities and life skills to make sure the tools you are using are working to help your children develop what you want for them. And we will often ask if you are modelling what you want for them. In other words, are you being a good example. 

Then we ask parents to make a list of challenges they have with their children. These are also the same in every country. Again, listen closely to see if you share some of these challenges. Don’t do homework, don't listen, lack of motivation, addicted to screens, dealing entitled, strong willed, temper tantrums, whining, won't get dressed in the morning, don't wanna go to bed at night. Back talk. My guess is that you face many of these challenges and have a few more if you would like to add to the list. Create your own list of challenges that you would like to help with.

We will refer back to the list quite often to make sure that we're meeting the needs and helping you solve the challenges you have. The good news is that positive discipline helps deal with all of these challenges. And just about any challenge you can think of, in a way that also helps your child develop the qualities and life skills you want for them. I would like to take just a few minutes to explain how the positive discipline journey began for me. It is been 38 years since I wrote the first positive discipline book. And I wrote it for one reason. I wanted to share with others some principles and parenting tools that has helped me so much, tools that help me enjoy being a mother. I'm the mother of seven children. Before I learned positive discipline, I did not enjoy being a mother, because I didn't know how to be a good mother. Like many parents, I would be either too strict and controlling where I would lecture and punish until I really didn't like myself. Then I would go tot he other extreme and be too permissive until my children would act spoiled and demanding. Then I would go back to being too controlling again. I didn’t know what else to do. Finally, I decided to take a class in child development at a university and was very lucky to have a professor who said, I’m not going to teach you many philosophies, but just one philosophy and how this philosophy helps children learn self discipline, responsibility, cooperation, and problem solving skills. And I have to admit, that sounded really good to me. But I also have to admit that I questioned: I was what I called a yes, but learner. But what if this doesn't work? 

What if my child doesn't mind if I don't scold and punish? But I was so lucky that I kept learning .And I tried these philosophy and tools that I was learning. They really worked, and that's why I wanted to start sharing it with others. The principles this professor was teaching is based on the philosophy of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs who taught some basic principles. It is very important to understand these basic principles, because all of the positive discipline tools are based on them. I would like to mention there of the principles. Everyone wants to feel belonging and to feel significant. Everyone wants to be treated with dignity and respect. Everyone needs encouragement, just like a plant needs water. If you use the tools but don’t understand the basic principles, they will not work because they will sound manipulative instead of respectful. This is very important, so I want to expand on these principles. 

First, let's talk about dignity and respect. Punishment is not respectful and does not maintain dignity for the child. Permissivenessis not respectful, and does not maintain dignity for parent or child. Maintaining dignity and respect requires both kindness and firmness at the same time. It isn't always easy to be kind when we're upset with our child. But since we want our child to learn self control, we need to learn to control our own behavior. 

When we have these discipline tools, it really helps, because we can take a deep breath, take some time out, and then remember to use one of the tools we have been learning. Many do not fully understand what belonging and significance means. Belonging is a sense of unconditional love. Significance is gained through responsibility. This means that children need a strong balance of love and responsibility. When parentsare permissive, children may feel loved, but they don't develop a sense of responsibility. They don't feel capable. When parents are strict and controlling, children may develop a sense of responsibility and feel capable, but they don't feel unconditionally loved, which is very damaging to a sense of self-worth. 

Again, this is why it is so important to be both kind and firm at the same time. And again, this is not easy. How can I be kind when my child is misbehaving. To respond to this challenge, I want to refer back to the qualities of life skills we want for our children. One of those is self-control. How can parents expect their children to control their behavior when parents don't control their own behavior? Remember how important it is to model what we want to teach. Modelling is the best example. As a parent, If you want your child to develop qualities and life skills on the list, it is important that you model what you want them to learn. 

I would like to sum up what I have said so far by sharing the five criteria for positive discipline. Number one: they’re kind and firm at the same time. Number two: they help children feel a sense of belonging and significance. Number three: they are effective long term. Number four: they teach valuable social life skills and good character. And number 5: they invite children to discover how capable they are and how to use their power constructively. Isn’t it exciting to know that disciple and true disciple can actually teach kids all of these wonderful qualities. 

Let me give you an example of what this might look like. Suppose your child has lost an iPad. Before positive discipline. A parent might sound like this. I'm so disappointed in you. “How can you be so irresponsible? How many times do I have to tell you to take care of it? Well, I’m not gonna buy you a new one. You can just go about without, and maybe that will teach you.” Then a little later, you give in and take your child to the store to buy another iPad, but you're still lecturing. “Ok, I’ll buy you a new one this time, but you had better learn to take care of it, because I won't buy you another one.” You have just got to learn to be more responsible. What has this child learned? He has learned that he doesn't have to be responsible. He can ignore the lectures and scolding, because he knows his mother will soon give in soon and take care of him. 

Now I will share what a positive discipline mom would do. Your child comes home and cries because he has lost his iPad. You would give him a hug and say, “I’m so sorry, you must feel really upset.” That’s it. The silence is on purpose. One of the most difficult things for a parent to do is to make a connection by validating the child's feelings, and then to be quiet. Let your child have his feelings. It is not okay to make your child suffer through punishment, but it is okay to allow your child to suffer the consequence of his choices. In other words, if he loses his iPad, he can suffer the consequences. In the process, he will learn resiliency that he can survive the ups and downs of life. 

Later, you could ask if he would like your help to figure out how to earn some money to purchase another one, or help find the lost one. Through this process, you will teach him to focus on solutions. Focusing on solutions is a very important positive discipline tool we will refer to over and over again. In this example, I have mentioned several positive discipline tools. It is common that many tools go together to deal with the challenge. The tools I mentioned are: Connection before Correction, which the mother did by giving him a hug,whichiis another tool ,and validating his feelings. Part of the correction was allowing him to learn from his mistakes by experiencing the consequences of his choices. Those are two other tools. In a supportive atmosphere and then to focus on solutions to solve the problem. So in this very short scene, this mom used six positive discipline tools to help her child feel belonging, loved and significance , capable.

Now you can see why these positive discipline tools helped me enjoy being a mother. And one of the best rewards is that several of my children are now using positive discipline with their children. My youngest daughter, Mary Nelsen, is now a certified positive discipline trainer who often comes toChina to teach positive discipline and will be sharing many of her experiences with on these podcasts.

In our next session, I will talk about some misconceptions about discipline and how positive discipline is different from other parenting programs and will share more of our favorite tools kind and firm at the same time. I hope you enjoy today’s lesson. Thank you for listening and I look forward to share more positive discipline tools in future lessons.