From the category archives:

Practice Positive Discipline

Part1: Rewards, Incentives, Consequences, and Punishments (Oh, My!)

August 31, 2010

At a recent API meeting, a few moms asked questions about the differences between rewards and punishments which I thought was very useful.  We hadn’t specifically discussed them before, and it was helpful to define our understanding of the words we often hear regarding discipline.  Based on attachment parenting, positive discipline, and unconditional parenting, here [...]

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Motherhood’s Magic Mirror

August 17, 2010

My daughters had a hard time using the word “please.” I noticed this several years ago, when I was constantly correcting their demands, making them insert the word before I would honor their request. They always said, “Thank you,” just not the “p” word. I remember the moment when I discovered why this phenomenon was [...]

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If Spanking Does Not Work in the Long-Term, Why Start Spanking at All?

June 25, 2010

Hypothetically speaking, let’s pretend there is a parenting practice with the following attributes: while it usually results in immediate compliance, it is generally ineffective in modifying longer-term behavior (it is even ineffective from hour to hour or day to day); it causes strain on the parent/child relationship; and it can only be used for a [...]

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Attraction Rather than Promotion

June 14, 2010

There is a famous group that takes the attraction rather than promotion approach “in all its affairs.” Now don’t get me wrong I think that getting info out to the masses is very important. If people aren’t able to see it then they are not able to make the choice because they do not know [...]

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An Episode in Positive Discipline

June 11, 2010

The other night, my husband and I were talking in the kitchen, and Elia (5) & JJ (3) were in the living room when we heard Elia shriek, scream & start crying.  It is instantly followed by “SOR-RY!” from JJ.  We look over and Elia is getting up from the floor, holding her neck & [...]

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It’s Not Personal

June 7, 2010

Recently, I was reading a piece in a magazine by a woman whose husband had left her for another woman. She was coping with the betrayal, in part, by repeating the phrase, “There is nothing personal going on here.” It sounds crazy, but realizing that the problem wasn’t her, it was her husband’s own drama, [...]

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Riders on the Tantrum Storm (Part 2)

May 27, 2010

In Part 1 of this two part series on tantrums, I talked about the reasons you might want to sometimes “ride out” your child’s tantrums. While it is sometimes therapeutic for kids to simply vent their feelings, more often parents need to work to find the source of the frustration and put a label on [...]

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Sticking Up for Your Child

May 21, 2010

I am going to take a little Babywise vs AP blogging break and talk a bit about something that touched very close to home this past weekend though the incident(s) were not a one time thing  but something that seems to happen fairly often in my new parenting life. People seem to think that children [...]

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