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Author: Kelly Nault Article source: http://www.ladypens.com/. Used with author's permission.
Parents need not search any further for the secret to changing their children's
behavior and maintaining positive changes in their home. I have taught hundreds
of parents how to motivate children to want to be well-behaved. Readers of my
book When You're About To Go Off The Deep End, Don't Take Your Kids With You
and thousands of my audience members are amazed to find the secret to
changing behavior is much easier than they thought.
Fundamental Strategies for Changing Behavior
Many parents taking control of young children's behavior find it particularly
challenging to change the patterns they have established in terms of acting and
reacting. Review these three strategies and then give yourself just a few extra
seconds to think before reacting to your child's next outburst.
1. Find your Child's "Buy In" - Your child, like you, is motivated when
they have an invested interest in changing. Find your child's motivation and
you've got it made. For instance, a child's "buy in" to helping make dinner may
be that they get to eat. If suddenly you "go on strike" and no one helps out,
dinner is not made. You are guaranteed to have found your child (and maybe even
your spouse's) "buy in".
2. Discipline with Joy - Instead of yelling and throwing a tantrum
yourself, follow through and discipline with joy. Children do badly when they
feel bad. Making a child feel worse about their action rarely inspires them to
improve their behavior.
3. Follow-through - When you say you're going to do something, do it.
Empty threats only teach your child to not listen to you.
Once you have mastered these three commonsense secrets to changing behavior, you
can focus on maintaining the changes.
Maintaining the Change
There is only one skill I know of that works for maintaining any change—and that
is consistency!
Consistency is the glue that maintains any change. If you are not
consistent, long-term change is impossible. So do what you say, and keep doing
it consistently until the change is permanent.
This may be difficult, especially when your children test you. You have been
acting and reacting to their behavior in a certain way for a long time. When you
suddenly change your behavior, your kids will tend to act up even more than at
first.
The good news? Changing children's behaviors for the better is possible when you
are consistent. Since you want your kids to change their misbehavior
permanently, you need to prove to them that you mean business and are committed
to a new way of doing things. The great news is that generally after a week or
two of being consistent, children will trust your follow-through enough to
change themselves. At this point, you have lift off. You have mastered the
secret of changing behavior and maintaining the change with your children!
Kelly Nault, MA author of When You're About To Go Off The Deep End,
Don't Take Your Kids With You inspires moms to put themselves first—for the
sake of their children. She shares time-tested tools that motivate children to
want to be well behaved, responsible and happy! Sign up for her
free online parenting course here.
You are free to print or publish this article provided the article and bio
remain as written and include a link to
http://www.mommymoments.com as above.
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