With the New Year upon us, many people are making resolutions to improve their relationships this year. Why not extend that to include improving relationships with youth? Whether you’re a parent or a teacher, you can take steps to make parenting a joy and teaching less stressful.
The usual approach to discipline is to teach toward obedience using rewarding, telling, and punishing. These are all various forms of manipulation, pressure, or coercion—and often induce stress and resistance. By contrast, if a discipline approach is used where students are motivated to be responsible, then obedience becomes a natural by-product.
Young people—pre-school through 12th grade—want to be responsible, but we are using ineffective approaches to help them. If you’re yearning for a simpler approach to discipline—one that promotes self-responsibility—then the information on this site will surely help.
If you want to make this the year you change your discipline approach, be sure to check out my books Discipline Without Stress (perfect for teachers) and Parenting Without Stress (ideal for parents). Both show how to have young people influence themselves to become more responsible by implementing three practices and by using the Raise Responsibility System.
Here’s to a New Year filled with more joy for teachers, parents, and youth.
