Welcome to this group.  I recommend becoming familiar with some of my articles here on my website, which will equip you with more understanding of Peaceful Parenting and help you learn more of the necessary skills which make punishments and yelling redundant.

Yet it’s a slow, gradual process for most with many steps forward and many steps backwards and so the more like-minded compassionate support along the way, the better!

Feel free to post your questions and join discussions relating to your journey of better understanding and implementing peaceful parenting in your family.

You are welcome to share your comments, videos (that are not highly emotive and are constructive and on topic), photos and questions as long as you feel aligned with the overall vision and intentions of this page.

Peaceful Parenting is a non-punitive approach, where increased focus on maintaining a strong clear and trusting bond with the child and using respectful communication skills replaces all forms of punishment, threats, reward systems, including avoiding using time out or enforced consequences (different from natural consequences).

This page is not offered as a place to debate whether or not children should be smacked/ slapped/ spanked or punished in any way.  You may still be using punishments of one kind or another in your home, you may yell or put your children in time out, yet please refrain from recommending such approaches to other parents and instead support others to learn and implement the more respectful communication skills, which bring greater harmony and cooperation in the long run.

I believe that the debates relating to punishments are very important and valuable, and part of society’s journey of rethinking and negotiating that which, until recently, wasn’t even questioned.  Yet providing a forum for these arguments on the forum or in the groups is not what I consider to be the most constructive and supportive service to offer to the parents who have made, or are wishing to make, a commitment to learning and practicing peaceful parenting.

Please share your comments with a level, non-aggressive and non-judgmental tone. Please share and disagree respectfully. Any comments that include aggressive or offensive language, or comments that aim to mock, degrade, shame or belittle another or children in general will be deleted to help maintain the emotional safety of the page.

And here are some links to some articles for you to learn more about what peaceful parenting can look like;

You can also search the website.

Peaceful Parenting Basic Principles

Fostering Attachment by responding to needs:
Mostly consistent warm responsiveness fosters secure attachment. Qualities of secure attachment are bonding, closeness, warmth, empathy, affection, meeting child’s needs (different from wants).  Centering – developing emotional self-regulation skills for self as a parent, while modelling and teaching your child self-regulation skills.

Why we explode and how to prevent it:   How quickly conflicts spark and escalate.  On any particularly busy day, parents can feel stressed and stretched by the demands of endless jobs and tight time constraints, stress rises as the pressures mount.  Your child’s refusal to cooperate seems completely unreasonable!  Despite trying to control your tone, you snap, your child snaps back.  Boom!  Conflict escalates!  This article focuses on how to break the cycles of ‘stress-passing’ in the family.

My Stress Relief for Parents cd is a hugely helpful resource for many parents, listening to it will likely bring you back in to the peaceful parenting mindset and help you feel more empowered again.

The more time and energy we put in to maintaining a strong connection in day to day interactions, the less time we’ll need to spend dealing with the out of balance behaviours:

Active Listening helps children learn to listen well, helps them feel heard, understood and respected, supporting them to think things through and problem solve:

Quality one on one time with your child restores the connection and the bond and brings more harmony back to the parent child relationship:

The power of empathy when listening to a child’s strong feelings. Understanding that extreme behaviours generally relate to painful feelings that need to be resolved through talking, crying, raging, laughing or through play. If they don’t get it out, they’ll act it out!: https://www.peacefulparent.com/267/

Express limits, boundaries and requests lovingly
Click this link to get a list of relevant articles related to setting limits and boundaries while maintaining the connection with your child.

We teach our children primarily through our modelling, when we control their behaviour through punishments, threats, rewards or enforced consequences, we are teaching them that this is the way to deal with differences and conflicts with others, without giving them the skills they need. Instead you can mediate conflicts amongst siblings non-judgmentally, you can problem solve, you can express your needs “I need reassurance that … “, you can have mini meetings to create a plan of action that everyone agrees on, you can hold loving limits and maintain respectful communication while expressing requests and limits or giving feedback. However you respond to your child, ask yourself if you would feel good seeing your child communicating in a similar way to you, a sibling or a friend. They do what we do and need a healthy congruence between the values we express and our actions.

Sibling or friends squabbles:

Behaviour, feelings and needs chart is a good one to print out and put up to give you suggestions and prompts in those moments when you’re reverting back to the old authoritarian ways: https://www.peacefulparent.com/childs-feelings-and-needs-chart/

When children are aggressive: https://www.peacefulparent.com/680/ and https://www.peacefulparent.com/aggression/

Why peaceful parenting doesn’t support imposing consequences and why we believe they are counterproductive to fostering integrity, empathy and a healthy conscience in our children. We need to move away from thinking that children want to get away with acting aggressively or disrespectfully towards others. This assumes negative intent rather than understanding that they are truly doing their best but when treated harshly they have an urge to re-enact it and when overwhelmed they don’t have the impulse control to contain their frustrations.

Children truly want and need to be in harmony in their primary relationships and need to learn about how to maintain that harmony through challenges with parents and siblings. Peaceful parenting models this:https://www.peacefulparent.com/?p=1677

 

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