Techniques for Disciplining Your Young Child

Here's the scoop on disciplining techniques that tend to work particularly well with young kids:

Prevent problems from occurring in the first place. You'll find that you can greatly reduce the number of opportunities for conflict if you take steps to anticipate and avoid problems; for example, keeping objects that she's not allowed to touch out of reach and running errands only at those times of the day when she's likely to be at her best (when she's well rested and well fed).

Find creative alternatives to saying no. For example, if your child starts throwing food, instead of saying "No throwing food," gently remind her that "Food is for eating." Use high-impact words like "stop," "hot," or "dirty," instead of no. They'll get your message across more clearly and will eliminate the need to say no. (In the case of the word "stop," you'll actually be giving her something to do.)

Offer a substitute. Defuse a situation by giving her permission to do something other than what she's asking to do. For example, if your child wants to scribble on the front of the fridge, give her permission to do something similar instead, like draw on a piece of paper that's stuck to the fridge.

Offer a distraction. If your child is about to shove her hand in the fishbowl because she wants to pet the family goldfish, immediately come up with something even more exciting to distract her. Sing a song, hand her a stuffed animal to pat, pick her up and tickle her—do whatever it takes to get her mind off the goldfish.

Give your child the opportunity to make choices. Why not tap into her powerful need to be in charge by allowing her to make some decisions? If, for example, she's refusing to brush her teeth at night, you can give her a choice: she can brush her teeth either before or after her bedtime story. Offer only those choices you can live with, limit the number of choices (more than two tends to be paralyzing, not empowering) and give your child a limited amount of time to make her choice.

Allow your child to experience the natural consequences of her actions. Natural consequences are those that logically flow from the child's own actions (if you throw your cookie on the floor, it has to go in the garbage). They can be a powerful way to give your child the opportunity to learn from her mistakes. Obviously, natural consequences can't be applied to every situation: Getting a concussion is too big a price to pay for learning that it's not such a great idea to swan dive off the couch.

Master the art of selective ignoring. This technique becomes more and more effective as the years go on and is the ideal method of handling such annoying but non-life-threatening behaviors as making rude noises, acting silly or having a temper tantrum. Basically, you pretend not to notice the annoying behavior in the hope that your child will get bored and move on to something else.

Be generous with your praise. Positive reinforcement is the twin sister of selective ignoring, but, in this case, you're making a point of reinforcing praiseworthy behaviors. Your child is hungry for your approval and will be more likely to repeat good behavior if she thinks she'll be praised for it. To be effective, praise should be as specific and descriptive as possible: "I like the way you put your books back on the shelf!" rather than a rather bland and meaningless "Good girl!"

Discipline your child verbally. Verbal discipline will play an increasingly important role as your child grows older. Although it's sometimes easier to physically redirect a young child who's refusing to cooperate by picking her up and carrying her out of the room, physical direction doesn't work nearly as well with a 6-foot-tall teenager, so you may as well start honing your verbal discipline skills now.

Give your child a time-out. Time-outs tend to work best with older children, but they can also be used with older toddlers. They're not your best bet with a very young toddler, however, because a child under 18 months of age will have a difficult time figuring out what a time-out is all about. A time-out forces a child to remove herself from a situation so that she has a chance to reconsider her behavior. If your child is throwing blocks at another child at playgroup, for example, you might remove her from the situation for a minute or two or until she seems ready to start playing again.