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author, and it appears with included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required. Mail to: eagibbs@ureach.comWe want our children to do right thing, especially when they are out with their friends. We want to believe in them, but somehow, we don't feel certain that they would.
Have you ever asked yourself why you feel and act that way? Maybe answer lies in fact that, although you intend to, you rarely teach them how to develop their self-discipline. Or maybe it is because your parents never taught you how to develop yours.
Well, it's never too late to learn. Here are fourteen principles to set you on right track:
1. Natural and logical consequences require children to be responsible for their own behavior.
2. Reward and punishment deny children opportunity to make their own decisions and to be responsible for their own behavior.
3. Distinguish differences between punishment approach and logical consequences approach to developing their self-discipline:
· Punishment expresses power of authority; logical consequences express impersonal reality of social order.
· Punishment is rarely related to misbehavior; logical consequences are logically related to misbehavior.
· Punishment focuses on what is past; logical consequences are concerned with present and future behavior.
· Punishment tells children that they are bad; logical consequences imply no element of moral judgment.
· Punishment is associated with a threat, either open or concealed; logical consequences are based on good will, not on retaliation.
· Punishment demands obedience; logical consequences permit choices.
4. Natural consequences are those that permit children to learn from natural order of physical world.
5. Logical consequences are those that permit children to learn from reality of social order.
