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The DAFT™ method of disciplining kids
If you often find yourself struggling to make your child take any notice of you when it comes to disciplining him/her, or you find it hard to maintain your status as authoritative parent, without continually caving in for the sake of a quiet life, then read on.
In this PC age where we have actually started to treat children as mini adults and often find ourselves negotiating with three year olds (who are generally much better at it than we are), many of us have really lost all grip on how to successfully issue effective discipline and struggle to even be noticed by our children when we are admonishing them.
Journalist, News Corp columnist, author and TV commentator Angela Mollard has these pearls of wisdom on how to lose the inconsistencies and step up to the plate as a convincing parent and successful disciplinarian.
The Only Discipline Technique You'll Ever Need
by Angela Mollard
WHEN our first child was born a friend gave us a pearler of advice: "Don't forget, being a parent is a benign dictatorship".
Now, because my husband hadn't just had his stomach cut in half via a C-section, and wasn't hot-air ballooning on hormones he listened and has largely been a firm and consistent parent ever since. Me? I missed our mate's Gandhi moment and spent the next decade seesawing between being Mrs Crankypants and 'Oh-darling-I-do-love-you-and-it-was-only-for-your-own-good-but-maybe-it-was-a-bit-harsh-and-so-let's-go-to-the-park-and-make-it-all- better-and-here's-a-Freddo.'
Yes, my discipline would be what you would kindly call 'inconsistent'. More accurately, it was spineless.
So I talked to my mum, chewed my nails, ate a family-size block of Dairy Milk, read a chapter or two of the only parenting expert I can bear, and devised what I have referred to since as the 'Daft' method. Actually, let's call it the DAFT™ method since I reckon it's got the commercial potential of I Quit Sugar or the 5:2 Diet. Ha, watch yourself, Steve Biddulph!
OK, the DAFT method involves four steps:
1. Diagnose
Ask yourself: 'What is the problem here?' It might be your child is being rude, argumentative, stubborn or is just tired because you kept him up two hours past his bedtime after friends popped over for drinks. Whatever. Diagnose dispassionately. This is not an emotional thing. Unless they've run across the road into oncoming traffic or bitten their sibling so hard the teeth marks are halfway to the bone don't lose it. Focus on what they've done wrong at that moment, not earlier, or yesterday or four weeks ago when they told their grandparents they'd had enough of them and could they please go home.
2. Admonish
OK, this is the tricky bit. This is when you're likely to come over all shouty and verbose (my PB for ranting is twenty- four minutes at 1400 decibels louder than normal). But your child does not need a thesis on his misbehaviour, a diatribe on how it's made you feel or supporting arguments as to why he's a little delinquent Remember to label the behaviour not the child. Stick to statements and make them short:
I didn't like that you punched Billy so I want you to stay in your room for five minutes.
We don't use the word 'bugger' in our house unless mummy is really annoyed with daddy so you have lost your television privileges for today.
See how I did that? Each a single sentence and none more than thirty words.
3. Full stop
Credit for this element must go to parenting expert Nigel Latta, and seriously, it's the smartest, most effective and under-publicised weapon in the parenting arsenal. Latta reckons the humble comma lies behind the conflict between kids and parents. Mums, he says, are the worst offenders, using one comma after another to explain to kids why they shouldn't stab their friends with sticks or why they're not allowed on Facebook.
A series of commas sounds like this: "I'd like you to get off the slide now, Ben darling, because we need to get to the supermarket before we go for a play with Luca, and if we leave it too late, Isabel will miss her sleep and she'll be grumpy all afternoon, which means we won't be able to play with the new Lego you got for your birthday."
Of course Ben hears only this: 'I'd like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Ben, blah, blah, blah, blah, Lego, blah, blah, blah, blah.'
According to Latta, anything after that first comma is nagging - even a semicolon of which I'm a smug and frequent user. I first tried it on our daughter: 'Empty your school bag or there'll be no afternoon tea.' Normally, I'd have wittered on about furry lunchboxes and lost school notes and how that would mean missing out on the zoo excursion - yeah, I'm a real killjoy. Well, stone me if it didn't work.
A footnote: full stops can also be non-verbal. Under the DAFT method my frown and a silent point towards a homework book is far less combative than a command.
4. Turn
None of it and I mean NONE OF IT will work if you don't turn. You have to issue your admonishment, bring it to a close with a firm full stop and then turn away from your child. Not half turn, not peek over your shoulder, but turn. One hundred and eighty degrees. No kid likes being punished, but they're far more likely to follow your instruction or abide by the consequence if you're not watching to check they do it. You have to give them a chance to do the right thing away from the red rag that is your glare. A turn suggests you fully expect them to do whatever you've asked and that you're confident in your admonishment. A turn is also a physical smack-down to your own guilt, second-guessing and any misplaced notions of watering down the punishment.
The DAFT method is not fool proof, but I've found it pretty effective. I still fall off the wagon most weeks by misdiagnosing the issue or failing to turn and I'll always have volume issues, but theoretically, at least, I know SHOUTING DOESN'T WORK.
For more information or articles by Angela go to www.angelamollard.com.
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