Children and Discipline Program

Raising kids is no joke by any means. They put our patience and parenting skills to acid test.

Kids don't come with an instruction manual. Every parent has to learn parenting by doing it himself by hit and trial method. If you have a well behaved child you are lucky ... and an exception to the general rule. The general rule being 'Children and discipline have nothing to do with each other'.

Reading books, talking to friends and relatives, counselling with Psychiatrists and Psychologists may also help you to solve some problems. But if your kids are drive you crazy and you feel that things are going out of your control, you need to examin the situation throughly, and pick up some special tools to get hold of the situation.

Doing all this is an extensive exercise, which shouldn't be taken up without an expert's analysis and guidance. Just reading a book on parenting won't solve such a situation.

James Lehman, one of America's most successful behavioral therapists brings help and hope to the millions of parents whose kids are disrespectful, defiant, obnoxious or out of control.

Based on his 30 years experience, James had created a comprehensive parent's program for managing challenging behaviors in children, without raising parents' voice and blood pressure. He has rightly named it The Total Transformation® Program.

James offers a step-by-step system to help parents get back in control of their family and get their children and discipline together so taht the kids respect and listen to them again. Real Help For Real-Life Parenting Problem.

The program throughly teaches how to:

• Stop any argument with your kid right in its tracks.
• Defuse temper tantrums and show your child you mean business.
• Say 10 words when he gets mouthy - Slam the brakes on ugly talk and disrespectful behavior once and for all.
• Stop outbursts before they even start.
• Get your child to take responsibility for his actions and behave appropriately.
• Get him to go to bed at night and wake up on time in the morning.
• Make a child with a behavior disorder (ADD, ADHD, bipolar and more) behave.

James Lehman

James was born in 1946. His parents were alcoholic and unable to take care of him. When he was just 2 years old, they abandoned him in a basement.

He was found by Mr. Teddy Lehman, who, with his wife Marguerite, went on to adopt him. James began to exhibit oppositional and defiant behavior at home and in the classroom. There was no such thing as special education then, and as he grew older these behaviors became more severe.

By age 14, he quit school, left home, lived on the streets in New York City, and drifted into a life of substance abuse and crime, which led to numerous prison sentences.

James had spent nearly six years in various prisons, when a judge sentenced him to an accountability based treatment program that turned his life around.

Today's Top Therapist

He graduated from that treatment program and participated in a period of training to become a staff coordinator and his career as a counselor, therapist and teacher began. James attended Fordham University for 2 years, moved to New England, and obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work, graduating Summa Cum Laude. As he continued working with children, families and professionals, James was able to attend Boston University and, in 1989, graduated with a Master's Degree in Social Work.

While working at a comprehensive residential treatment center, James began private practice, providing treatment, consultation and training to families, public schools and state agencies. The focus of that work was to provide parents, teachers and case managers with the tools they needed to successfully challenge difficult children to develop the problem solving and self management skills they needed to be successful.

For three decades James Lehman has worked with troubled teens, younger children and discipline problems, families and professionals who live with, educate, treat and assist in managing them.

In public schools, residential treatment centers, private schools, and numerous outpatient and inpatient settings, James has developed an approach to manage children and discipline them by helping them to learn to solve social problems without hiding behind a facade of disrespectful, obnoxious, or abusive behavior.

James Lehman brings a wealth of personal experience to the arena of child and adolescent therapy, and has good reason to focus on behavioral management, having experienced severe behavioral problems himself as a child and adolescent.

Today, James Lehman is America's most successful behavioral therapists and provides training and consultation to schools, treatment centers and state agencies. He lives with his wife, Janet, who is also a social worker and has an adult son, Jeremy.

He is the creator of The Total transformation Programme, the most comprehensive programme for improving children behavior.

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Child Abuse vs. Discipline

More than half of the reported cases of child abuse all over the globe occur within the four walls of children’s own homes, that too under the garb of disciplining them. Isn’t this scary?

Most child abuse instances start with attempt to discipline. Parents want to give mild physical punishment but their heightened arousal level of frustration and anger makes them hit more severely than they want. It also makes them shout, scold, insult, ridicule, humiliate the child and scare him by making scary faces at him. And they believe themselves justified doing all this.

Every parent has different style of disciplining his or her children. Some go to the extent to physically assaulting their children to the extent that the injuries remain permanently on the child’s body like a tattoo. Others don’t even bother when their children commit blunders of their lives.

The question is when do our activities to discipline a child amount to child abuse?

What is child abuse: Definition of child abuse

Different sources define child abuse in different ways. Every country has its own definition of child abuse. There are thousands of libraries filled with discussion on this topic.

Well, I think we abuse a child if we hurt his:

•     Physical health; or
•     Psychological heath; or
•     Emotional health; or
•     General welfare

Severe beating by all means is child abuse. I think everyone would agree on that. Most people believe some physical harm like spanking is okay but hurting too much is child abuse.

Now the question is how much is too much? And does force of spanking make a difference? Is mild spanking acceptable mode of discipline? Where to draw the line between child discipline and child abuse?

To find the answer, let’s look at what happens when we spank a child for his misbehavior:

We

•     Get angry beyond our control
•     Scold and shout at the child
•     Ridicule the child
•     Make scary face, open our eyes wide apart and look like a demon
•     Physically hurt the child

Now look at it from the child’s point of view. The child feels:

•     Scared by our rage of anger and demon like face
•     Humiliated by our spanking and ridiculing him
•     Physical pain by our spanking

Now look at the definition and decide:

Have we hurt his physical health?

Yes, at least mildly, if it was a light spank. The child does feel the pain, howsoever less it might be.

Have we hurt his psychological health?

Yes, we have scared him and shown him our demon face which gets imprinted on his mind and remains there much after the pain of physical hurt is gone. More over every act of spanking is a violent act. Violence is violence. It teaches the child that it is okay to hit someone you love.

Have we hurt his emotional health?

Yes, we have ridiculed and humiliated him.


Every kind of spanking is violence. It causes physical pain in the body of the child and also causes fear in his mind. Every act of spanking also involves humiliation for the child. The adult does not only assault physically but also shouts at the child simultaneously, scolds him, humiliate him and makes ugly and scary face expressions at the child. The child might forget the injury caused by spanking, but he will never forget the humiliation caused to him and the horrifying eyes of the parent at that point of time and the scary facial expression which look the demon to the child. All this is nothing short of child abuse.

Spanking doesn’t come alone. It comes with humiliation and terror for the child.

So we can say for sure that our action of spanking was certainly a child abuse. We can try lots of other alternative ways to discipline children which are far more effective … and painless too.

Every Parent raises a hand as last resort available at his command. He doesn't explore what else he can do to get the child behave. Parents become more punitive when they feel powerless.

If we can control ourselves, we can control our kids too. But we have to start with ourselves first, then only we can teach this to our children.

We, as a society, approve light spanking by saying that we just want to discipline the child. We approve this only because some time or the other most of us do that and we want a mass approval for that.

Spanking cannot be approved as a tool to discipline children merely because of the reason that most of us do that; or because it is the easiest way for us to discipline the children.

Child Abuse vs. Discipline by letting go

Absolute neglect of children, where parents do not bother to provide even the basic living conditions to their children, certainly falls in the definition of child abuse.

But abuse does not have to be so severe to be abuse.

If you're making a child feel being not loved or being unwanted or being useless, you are abusing him.

But what about the cases where parents not only provide all facilities to their children but also give them all the liberty to do whatever they want to do. They don’t object to their children’s misbehaving, stealing, abusing, bullying, beating their peers. The child is obviously happy about it.

Does this amount to child abuse? Let’s see:

• Do they hurt their children’s physical health?  No.
• Do they hurt their children’s psychological health? Yes, because they let the child feel that whatever he does is acceptable and it is okay to misbehave and hit someone.
• Do they hurt their children’s emotional health? Yes, because they let the child being insensitive toward others.
• Do they hurt their children’s general Welfare? Certainly yes, because the child does not understand that he is spoiling his future by doing all that, but the parents know that and still allow the child to spoil his future welfare.

So letting the children do things their own way without any control is also a child abuse.


Have you seen child abuse around you?

•     Have you been a victim of child abuse?
•     Have you ever abused your children knowingly or unknowingly?
•     Have you seen any incident of child abuse around you?
•     Do you have a story about child abuse?
•     Have you ever found yourself confused whether an action is child abuse or not?
•     Do you want to make any comment about this topic?

If yes, then share your story with us. We'll publish it on our blog.

And don't forget to upload any photo, image or picture related to the topic, if you have. Remember, a picture is worth thousand words.

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Patterns of Kids' Behavior Problems

Many children are model kids for most of the day, and only misbehave at certain times or under certain circumstances.

If you are facing kids' behavior problems and trying to figure out how to discipline this type of child, here are some tips from successful parents.

Using these techniques may help you analyze your child’s behavior and determine why they are perfect children at one moment and why they may act out at other times.

Try to target the worst or most disruptive behavior. Think about what your kid does and when he does it and see if there is a pattern in your kids' behavior problems.

Using just that ONE behavior as a starting point, start a journal or log and try to track the following questions and anything else you think you need to know about schedules and patterns of poor behavior:

Is there a particular ...

•     time of day the behavior occurs?
•     day of the week on which the behavior occurs?
•     situation that triggers the behavior?

Does your kid's behavior problems tend to occur when you are ...

•     alone with the child?
•     in public with the child?

Does your kid's behavior problems occur when the child is ...

•     tired?
•     hungry?
•     confused?
•     playing with other children?
•     asked to sit still or stay quiet for a long period of time?
•     around something that he dislikes, something that makes him nervous or upset?

Does your kid's behavior problems occur when the child ...

•     feels insecure?
•     anticipates a certain event or occurrence (like company or a party?)

Does your kid's behavior problems occur...

•     in a certain location all the time?
•     when there is chaos in the room or environment?
•     immediately after happening something?

As you track these behaviors over a period of time, you will probably start to see a pattern.

With toddlers, especially, the child is more likely to act out when they are tired, hungry or off schedule.
For older children, often the trigger for the behavior is more complex.

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Consequence Wheel

Most effective and interesting way to make consequences effective

Why are consequences ineffective most of the times?

Well, there could be many reasons.

But the most common reason is parents lose their temper while giving consequences and there is power struggle between the child and parent.

We can make consequences most effective only when we are able to keep our emotions out of giving consequences.

And the solution is simple …. Plan the consequences in advance.

Here are the ways how you can do that:

•     List of Consequences
•     Cardboard Consequence Wheel
•     Consequence Wheel Software

List of consequences

The simplest way to do that is to make a list of your child’s common misbehaviors and write suitable consequences in front of them as shown below:

Misbehavior	Consequence
Coming home late	Time out
No home work	No Tv

Paste the list at a prominent place in home so that you and the child can look at it easily and frequently. When the child misbehaves, take him to the list and find out what consequence is applicable. That way you can give consequence without emotions getting into the way.


Cardboard Consequence Wheel

To make it more interesting, you can make a consequence wheel.

•     Take a round shaped cardboard.
•     Paste a colored paper on it.
•     Make a hole in the center of it.
•     Write your consequences along it inner border.
•     Fix it on the wall with a nail at its center.
•     Put a red mark on the wall a little outside the consequence wheel.

The consequence wheel is ready.

Ask your child to rotate it …

Wait until it stops …

Hold your breath and find out which consequence stops near the red mark.
Yes... it has stopped ... and this is the consequence.

So the suspense continues until the wheel completely stops …. It's like a casino game.

Cool ... isn't it?


Consequence wheel software

Card board is fun, but it is too basic. I mean you can’t add or delete consequence without making a new wheel.

Recently I came across a pretty Consequence Wheel software which does this job in a much more interesting and advanced way. It is so flexible, you can add or delete consequences any time and it works as well. This is more fun. Just load it on your computer and it’s ready to work.

So when your child misbehaves next time, let him press a button on this software. A virtual wheel start moving on the screen with an interesting sound effect and when the wheel stops, it pops out a consequence.

When I installed it on my computer and showed it to my son, he was so excited about it. He played it many times and then we were busy making a list of his common misbehavior and consequences.

I always invite my son to participate whenever I am working or updating the list of consequences for him. He feels like being a part of the Government making a law. I give him many choices and he picks up some of them.

When our list was ready, I typed it on the software. It was customized for our family now. In fact we went a step further. We decided that the consequences were not applicable on my son alone; they were applicable on the whole family. So anyone leaves the lights switched on for no reason, he has to press the button and discover his/her consequences.

Believe me, it's fun.

My son enjoys it a lot.

Every time it looks like a casino game…full of excitement and suspense.

And everybody on the family is waiting for someone else to make a mistake so that they can watch the casino game.

And it makes the consequences more effective while having fun with them.

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Behavior Consequences

Behavior Consequences for children are important part of disciplining them.

More than 300 years ago, Isaac Newton laid down his third law of motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Since time immemorial, our forefathers have been teaching us: “As you sow, so shall you reap”.

These are universal truths and apply to every person and situation.

We suffer the consequences of actions that we do, which may be positive or negative. Negative actions produce negative consequences and positive actions produce positive consequences. Positive consequences are also called rewards.

For our discussion here, when I say consequences, I mean negative consequences. And when I say rewards, I mean positive consequences.

Experience teaches us what leads to what. Failures and sufferings teach us what not to do again. Success and rewards teach us what to do more and more.

We learn so many lessons from the experience of great hardships. And therefore, we want our kids to learn about negative actions and their consequences without suffering those hardships.

So, what do we do?

We start with teaching our children about small-small consequences about their small-small mistakes, so that they learn to relate their actions with consequences and learn to do more positive actions and avoid mistakes.

Behavior consequences teach kids what to do and what not to do and help them improve their behavior.

When Behavior Consequences don’t work

The most common complaint from parents is,"Nothing works with my kid."

There could be many reasons for such a situation. However, the most common is that parents do not implement the consequences in an effective manner.

The following are the important things while giving effective consequences to kids. If any one of the following is missing, consequences will not work, and don’t blame your kids for that.

•     Keep emotions out of it
•     Plan Behavior Consequences in advance
•     Be clear
•     Be Brief
•     Be consistent
•     Behavior Consequences must follow immediately after misbehavior
•     Behavior Consequences must affect the child in some adverse way
•     Quantum of Behavior consequences
•     Complement Behavior Consequences with rewards and praise
•     Experiment with Behavior Consequences
•     Warnings don’t work
•     After thought
•     Don’t expect magic

1. Keep emotions out of it

The most common reason of consequences being ineffective is that when the act of misbehavior occurs, parents loose their temper. They become mad at the kids and forget everything they know about ‘how to give consequences’.

We need to announce and implement consequences in a cool and calm manner. This makes us reasonable and judicious. When we bring our anger in it, kids can sense our anger only and nothing else. They and don’t listen to what we say. They follow the behavior consequences just to cool down our anger, not to learn a lesson from their mistake.

Kids learn better from a calm, composed and reasonable parent, than from an angry and unreasonable parent. So be calm and reasonable.

How to do that … keep reading.


2. Plan Behavior Consequences in advance

An effective way for parents to keep emotions out of implementing behavior consequences is to plan the consequences in advance.

Make a list of common misbehaviors and write their corresponding consequences in front of the misbehavior. Encourage the child to participate in this list making process. Believe me, kids will have fun doing it. Paste the list on a prominent place. It really helps, believe me.

How does it help?

When the child misbehaves, both the parent and the child know what to do … run to the list … and read the applicable consequence.

What does it do?

Both the parent and the child are eager to find out what consequence is applicable. This makes it a fun. The parents need not apply their mind to formulate a consequence then and there. This helps parents to take their emotions out of it.

Consequence wheel
The best way to keep parents’ emotions out of implementing consequences is consequence wheel. Instead of making the process an occasion for emotional out burst for parents and kids, consequence wheel actually makes it a fun for both of them. Click here to learn more about what is consequence wheel and how you can make and use it.

3. Be clear

Tell the child what mistake he has done, and what consequence have you chosen for it. Be clear in your words and voice. The child must understand clearly about his mistake and the corresponding consequence. You can be much clearer if you keep emotions out of it.


4. Be Brief

Be very brief while telling the child about his mistake and the consequence. You’ll be tempted to speak a lot and preach. But don’t do it. Hold yourself. Few words will convey the message. The more you speak, more will you lose control on your words, and your emotions will come out in words. Soon you’ll be out of control. So be brief, Speak as few words as possible, in a calm tone.


5. Be consistent

Be consistent in your reaction. When ever there is misbehavior, an appropriate and proportionate behavior consequence must follow.

If you give a consequence for misbehavior at one time and ignore it completely the next time, you are being seriously inconsistent. It doesn’t teach discipline to the child.

Children test their boundaries. Your ignoring misbehavior teaches the child that he can get away with it sometimes. So he keeps repeating the misbehavior because he knows that he can get away with it at least a few times. So the misbehaving pattern remains there, even if you give heavy consequences the other times. So Maintain balance and consistency.


6. Behavior Consequences must follow immediately after the misbehavior

Delayed consequences are no consequences, because the they confuse the child. He can’t connect them with the misbehavior, and therefore considers it unfair, and resents against it. So they don’t teach any lesson to the child. The time interval between an act of misbehavior and the consequences should be shortest possible.


7. Behavior Consequences must be capable of affecting the child in some adverse way

Every child is different. What affects a child may not affect others, and consequence are meaningless if they can’t affect the child. Consequences must be capable of affecting adversely the child to the extent that the child learns a lesson not to repeat the mistake. Withdrawing a privilege which does not interest a child is a meaningless consequence. It will be effective only when you withdraw some privileges which the child enjoys, like watching TV, playing games on computer etc. Evaluate child’s age and interest and choose consequences accordingly.


8. Quantum of Behavior Consequences

The ideal quantum of consequences is proportionate to the act of misbehavior. But it is not always easy to draw the proportion. Well, in that case, smallest quantity which causes affects the child adversely is okay.

Remember, too large quantity will certainly cause side effects, may be some serious ones. The child will apply his own judgment and evaluation on the consequences and their quantum. If the child finds it too unfair, he feels punished for no good reason and resent against it.


9. Complement Behavior Consequences with rewards and praise

Too much emphasis on behavior consequences for negative behavior and completely ignoring rewards for good behavior will lower down child’s self esteem. His acts of good behavior go unrewarded. It demoralizes the child. He finds no good reason to behave better. Under these circumstances, consequences further loose their effectiveness. The parents become enemies in the eyes of the child, and he misbehaves even more to tease the parents.

Consequences alone don’t work unless the child is rewarded for good behavior as well. Consequences must be complemented with rewards for good behavior. We need to maintain a balance between consequences and rewards.


10. Experiment with Behavior consequences
Generally parents choose only a few consequences and keep repeating them for every kind of misbehavior. With the passage of time, kids get immune to these consequences. Now they need new and more effective consequences. So we need to keep experimenting with consequences.

Expand the list of consequences. Be innovative and creative about them. Talk to the kids as well and let them come up with their own ideas. They’ll be happy to participate in this.


11. Warnings don’t work
‘Barking dogs seldom bite’.
Kids know this intuitively. If you keep warning the child of consequences, he senses your non-seriousness about it and ignores your threat. There is no point in warning. Do it actually instead, and the child will learn a lesson that the misbehavior is not acceptable. The child will understand that you mean business and there is no point in testing boundaries any longer. If you have already warned three times and not done it, you convey a message to the child that he can still has the chance to get away with it.


12. After thought
Give a thought after the event of consequence is over. Were you too harsh? Was your decision just and fair? If you think you were unreasonable, unfair, or too harsh, talk to the child about it and apologize. It will be a great soothing factor for the child, and strengthen your bond with the child.


13. Don’t expect magic
Behavior modification takes time. Behavior is a bundle of habits, and habits die hard. It takes at least 21 days to make or break a habit, that too when consistent efforts are made and thee is no obstructing factor. So be patient. Let the behavior consequences work over a period of time. Give them some time. Look for small changes and be consistent about them.

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Finding the Source of a learned child behavior

Learned child behavior can be corrected only when you know the source from where the child has learned it.

When ever I find my six years old son say some bad words, I am shocked. Then I regain my senses and tell myself, “ I am his role model. I need to behave in the best possible manner.” Telling this to myself helps me recover the shock and control myself.

Then I give him a warm hug, look into his eyes and lovingly whisper, “My son is the best boy in the whole world. He always utters good and pleasing words. But just now my son has said some bad words. I am sure you must have heard it somewhere. Would you like to tell me where did you here it from?”

99% of the time he tells me the whole story about it… who said this … what had happened ... when did it happen … why did it happen … how it happened … how he felt … and so on….. and he tells me all this loaded with all shades of emotions he experienced.

So now I know the source of his learned behavior that I didn't like. Now I can do some thing about it. Just imagine what would have happened if I had shouted at him and made him uncomfortable. He would never have let me known about the source. And I could never have done anything about it.

Well this example may not fit in every situation. But the information about the source of learned child behavior is hidden in his heart ... and the only way to open any child heart is to pour lots of warm love over it ... and it will open itself …. fully … effortlessly. The harder you try more tightly it will close and lock itself.

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Child Behavior

All of us are different from each other in many ways. Same is the case with kids. Each child behavior is different and special in some ways. Every child has some peculiar strengths and weaknesses.

The gender also has a significant effect on child behavior. Don't girls behave different than boys. I'm sure you must have noticed this since your childhood. People have written volumes of best selling books on that. Though beyond the scope of this site, it is another interesting area to explore.

Corinne Fourcade, an experienced mom of two boys, has poured all her experience and research on parenting boys into her wonderful theme based rich content website called Parenting-Boys.com, with the catchy slogan 'Because boys will be boys'. She also writes easy to follow information on parenting styles, boys development stages, single parenting and much more. A visit to her site is worth it.

I have yet to come across a site like that on parenting girls.

So keep in mind the gender characteristics of your child while exploring his or her behavior.

Looking Beyond the gender factor, child behavior is a mixture of her inherent behavior and learned behavior.


Inherent Child Behavior:

Each child is born with a particular set of genes. This set of genes comes from her father and mother.

So every child borrows a part of her behavior from the families of her father and mother. This set of genes sets a particular behavior in every child. This part of behavior is almost of permanent nature and it is hard to change it.

Child’s body and mind constitution speak a lot about his basic inherent behavior. If we can know and identify a particular body mind constitution of a child, not only we can know and predict her behavior but we can also find ways to manage, control, avoid or encourage a particular behavior.


Learned Child behavior:

This is the behavior that child learns from her environment. This behavior is learned in a manner any other habit is learned. Habits can certainly be changed. If habits can be changed, this part of behavior can be also changed.

However, even if a habit is changed it is likely to come back if the environment responsible for unwanted habit is not changed. Therefore in order for a good habit to stay permanently, environment has to be changed for good. What is environment for a child?

Certainly, for a child, her environment is made up of everything that surrounds her, like:

•     Behavior and attitude of family members
•     Friend circle
•     School mates
•     Teachers
•     Daily personal experiences
•     Television shows
•     Movies
•     Advertisements
•     Video games
•     Social habits and styles
•     Surrounding circumstances

      ... And the list goes on.

Every family or society behaves in a particular manner. What is considered good in a society may not be considered acceptable in some other society. If we want to change a behavior that the child has learned, we first need to do identify the source from where she has learned it, then we need to do something to eliminate the source, and replace it with another source which teaches a good habit and settles the good habit permanently.

How to find out the source for a learned child behavior.

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