The 4 Benefits of Positive Discipline in Parenting

These are the main benefits of positive discipline when raising a son or daughter.

Parenting is far from easy. Parenting is a real challenge for any parent, whether a novice or a veteran with an older child.

In fact, Parenting is a feat that too often moms and dads aren't quite sure how to approach.. There is no miracle formula that will help us to educate in a perfect and infallible way, since human nature is imperfect and some mistakes will always be made unintentionally, but fortunately there are several methods and educational trends that will make our way of raising the most appropriate.

Among the methodologies that stand out the most when it comes to parenting, we have the popular positive disciplinea method of upbringing that promotes education without conditioning.

Positive discipline in parenting, unlike traditional education based only on rewards and punishments, teaches parents tools to understand what needs and motivations are behind their children's behavior and, once they understand it, they will be able to manage it much better. Let's see what are the main benefits of positive discipline in parenting.

Positive discipline and democratic parenting

To understand the appropriateness of positive discipline in parenting, we will first review the main parenting styles that exist. The best known and considered to be the most common are three: authoritarian, permissive and democratic.

1. Authoritarian parenting

In authoritarian parenting the adult does not consider the child as a subject of rights and resorts to commanding, dominating, intimidating and punishing the child..

In order not to be punished, the child must be totally submissive to parental authority, internalizing the idea that the parents are the ones in charge in the family and that no debate is accepted.

2. Permissive or laissez-faire parenting

The permissive parenting style could be seen as the radical opposite of the authoritarian model, although not much better.

Here parents and caregivers do not set limits or rules with children, and in many occasions they are completely unconcerned with meeting their needs or educating them. their needs or educate them. There are even parents who go so far as to argue that their children's bad behavior is the fault of others or give in on everything to avoid conflict.

3. Democratic parenting

Finally, we have the democratic parenting model, in which parents and caregivers know, understand and respond appropriately to the needs of the children.

Here a relationship based on good treatment is established, becoming models and guides for the children, attending to their needs and establishing clear rules and limits.. It combines affection and firmness, respect on both sides.

The democratic parenting model is strongly based on positive discipline, a method that has its origins in the theories of Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Austrian physician and psychotherapist.

Main benefits of positive discipline

These are the main benefits of positive parenting, which can be experienced by both parents and children.

1. It helps to satisfy two basic needs

Adler, who understood that the first two needs that every human being has are the following:

• Belonging: all human beings are born with the need to be part of a group, to belong to it.
• Significance: we have the need to contribute and have meaning in our lives.

Starting from these two needs and relating it to its method, the idea of positive discipline is that children learn to live together. that the children learn to coexist with the others (belonging) and that their life acquires a meaning (significance)..

2. It helps to go out of the logic of the blind obedience

Experts who advocate positive discipline in parenting often describe and criticize the most common parenting method, which is usually based on obedience.

It is not uncommon to observe that the main form of parenting of fathers and mothers involves the establishment of vertical relationships, where the adult commands and the child has to obey.where the adult commands and the child has to obey.

Today, many still understand the idea of "discipline" as severity, rigidity and punishments, even though this idea really implies teaching, making the child responsible for his own behavior and reflective of it.

That this method continues to be used as the main way to raise children clashes with the fact that, at this point in history, it is already known that the human infant brain sees obedience as the main way to raise children. the infantile human brain sees obedience as something too abstract.. In fact, it is so abstract that the only way for many adults to "get" such an idea into their heads is through fear or compensation.

Nevertheless, the ideal would be to teach obedience to children on the basis of respect, to make them admire the person they have to obey.

Adler argued that all human beings deserve the same respect, regardless of their age.. Therefore, if as parents we show the child that he or she can trust us, and we take into account his or her wishes and needs, we will make our child respect us and imitate our behavior by considering us as a role model.

3. It helps to tap the potential of parents as role models.

Positive discipline involves parents and children respecting each other, making the former an inspiration to the latter..

Parents should not forget that their role is to act as guides and companions in their children's experiences. This role that parents must assume and fulfill is so important that, from the point of view of this methodology, a lot of work is done on the management of emotions in adults.

Children understand the world from what they observe, taking as models or people worthy of imitating adults and important peers, being parents the main referents, both in the good and the bad. Thus, children will introduce into their behavioral and emotional repertoire the behaviors and emotions they see from their parents in certain situations.

For example, if his father behaves calmly even when he has an unexpected event, the child will learn to be calm when something goes wrong. That is why, so that the management of the child is the most suitable and regulated it is necessary that the adult learns to manage his own emotions first..

4. Helps you see beyond punishment

Experts who advocate positive discipline in parenting maintain that bad behaviors are, in reality, bad decisions made by the child in the search for belonging..

That is, a child wants to be counted, wants to feel that he or she is part of a group but, because he or she is too young and inexperienced to know how to do so in a non-disruptive or socially acceptable way, makes a bad decision, something that adults see as bad behavior or a bad attitude.

Applying positive discipline in parenting, parents learn to see their children's needs and meet them appropriately..

This is essential to understand, because it will help to change the "chip", since the child's misbehavior should not be penalized in the form of punishments to see if we can extinguish their unwanted behavior, but explain to them how to behave appropriately.

In addition, we must try to connect with them, understand why the child behaves in that way and see if there is a solution or, in one way or another, their misbehavior is due to some kind of laziness on our part.