
This week’s post is the 6th installment in a 10-part series focusing on core skills to strengthen your parenting and partnership practices. The last post in the series focused on perspective-taking as a key capacity for developing strong family bonds. This time we are exploring a core teaching in Positive Discipline: the ability to be both kind and firm in your parenting style. About this, I have a story to tell.
When our child was in kindergarten, both my husband and I got in the habit of barking out orders. We also started to use the 1, 2, 3 Magic parenting approach, which was essentially counting to three in order to get your child to do something. At some point, I reflected, what would happen if I got to 3 and my child didn’t complete the task I wanted them to do? This approach, I was beginning to realize, was essentially a veiled threat: complete this task before I reach the number 3, or… what?… well that part was unspoken, and frankly very scary for our child. At the time, I did not realize the impact of this parenting approach. All I knew is that it worked in the moment.
Unfortunately, it took a very heavy toll on our kid.
Once I saw the negative impact of this approach, I realized we needed to change tactics and quickly. That’s when I signed my husband and I up for a class at our local family support center. This class provided us with our initial exposure to Positive Discipline. I remember well the first time I saw the phrase (on the handouts at the workshop that night): be kind and firm with your children. It struck hard, and I was flooded with sadness and grief.
Why? Because I had been erring on the side of firm, bordering on harsh. It wasn’t pretty, and I knew it. What I didn’t know was what to do instead.
In addition to working through my own shame and grief about impacting our child in this way, our early brush with Positive Discipline paved the way for improved parenting practices and for acquiring the skills and techniques that my husband and I needed to help our child thrive.
Learning how to be both kind and firm with your child is a foundational teaching in Positive Discipline because it helps parents understand the importance of holding both realities for their children. As most parents know and experience, it can be really hard to find that balance. Sometimes we are too lax with our kids because it’s too much work trying to be otherwise. Other times we are too harsh because we are living on the vapors of our last speck of patience.
In parenting, it is really important to find this balance because your children need it. They need kindness so that they feel connected to you, feel safe with you, and trust that you have their best interest at heart. They also need firmness to understand that there are, in fact, limits in life to help keep them safe, to keep them healthy, and to promote their well-being.
Learning how to be both kind and firm helps parents avoid swinging from permissive parenting on one side to authoritarian parenting on the other. Psychologists tell us that permissive parenting does not work, nor does authoritarian parenting. Being too firm with your kids, absent connection and warmth, can lead to power struggles, feelings of alienation and even estrangement. Being too kind, absent limit-setting, can give kids a sense that you are not really there for them, that anything goes, and that the world is there to serve them.
Instead, being both kind and firm encapsulates the authoritative parenting style that research shows is the best approach to take with our children. Authoritative parenting builds safe and secure attachment with our kids, but also helps them to understand that limits are there for their own well-being.
So how do parents strike the balance between being both kind and firm? Developing these skills takes lots of time, practice, and patience. Parent education provides caregivers with support and encouragement along the way. We don’t get it right every time, and we definitely will make mistakes. This is where another valuable Positive Discipline teaching comes into play: the understanding that mistakes are opportunities to grow. This belief was promulgated by Rudolph Dreikurs in the 1960s; Dreikurs laid the foundation for Positive Discipline teachings in the United States with his book Children: The Challenge. In this book, Dreikurs addresses parents’ fears of their children’s mistakes, however, we also can apply these understandings to ourselves.
In fact, recent research affirms Dreikurs’ long held belief: we do, in fact, do our deepest growing from our mistakes. Dr. Robert A. Kennedy, of York University, delves into how being wrong is actually a positive development in our life.
As parents, learning to humble ourselves and grow from our parenting mistakes greatly benefits our children. In light of the inevitability of making these kinds of mistakes, there is another very important set of Positive Discipline skills to learn: the practice of Repair & Recovery ~ read about Tom Brady's Parenting Pivot to explore what those skills entail.
Remember, in order to garner the love of our family and children for the long term, it’s imperative that we parents be open to learning and growing. It’s work, but it’s the most valuable work we’ll do in our lifetimes.
Explore More
Tuesdays@Noon, Ongoing On-line Drop-In Parenting Chat Group - Start gaining Positive Discipline parenting tools and support in this informal 25 minute chat group ~ $10
Thursdays@Noon, Ongoing On-line Drop-In Couples Chat Group - Learn skills to start strengthening your partnership in this informal 25 minute chat group ~ $10
Positive Discipline Parent Workshop ~ How to Be Both Kind and Firm: Start Learning Positive Discipline Parenting Practices Today
Wednesday, October 16th, 7:00 p.m. (ET) - online, 1 hour ~ $10
Keeping the Joy In Relationship ~ For Couples ~ Start Incorporating New Patterns Into Your Relationship to Keep You Strong as You Parent Together
Thursday, October 18th, 7:00 p.m. (ET) - online, 1 hour ~ $10
Further Learning
Children: The Challenge, (1964), Dreikurs, Rudolf & Soltz, Vicki
Why Being Wrong Is Good For You, Kennedy, Robert, Ph.D. -