My Beautiful Boy

By Colleen Henderson

By using restorative practices with your child, you will find yourself MANAGING the behavior, rather than DEALING with it.

Most children do not respond well to yelling or shouting. In fact, it can often escalate the situation, making the child (and yourself!) even more angry and frustrated. Restorative practices is a method used around the world with children of all ages and all different levels of behavior problems.

It is not difficult. It is as easy as sitting down with your child…… and talking!
Talking about what happened, finding out what the child was feeling/thinking at the time, and coming to a solution on how to fix the problem.

When you see your child display a behavior that you feel is inappropriate, don’t yell, don’t threaten a punishment, don’t let yourself get frustrated! Take a deep breath, calmly sit your child down, and go through the following questions:

• Can you tell me what happened?
• What were you thinking about at the time?
• What have you thought about since then?
• Who do you think has been affected by your behavior?
• How do you think they have been affected?
• What would have been a better thing to do?
• What could you have said to yourself to stop the behavior?

Let your child know that their behavior will always have a consequence. Steer clear of the word punishment as children associate this with having something bad happen to them. Consequence is more about taking responsibility for their own choices, behavior and actions.

At the end of the discussion, ask your child what they think a fair consequence should be. 9 times out of 10, the child suggests a harder consequence than you would have. In some cases you may have to compromise to get the child to come to the consequence you think is appropriate.
This makes things a lot easier for you because they have chosen their own consequence and you won’t look like the bad guy!

REMEMBER: staying calm is always the key. YOU set the tone for the discussion. If you go into it angry, so does the child.

Colleen Henderson is the owner of http://Answers-You-Seek.com/ a website devoted to answering your questions on Child Behaviour issues. Colleen is a School Teacher with many years of experience dealing with difficult, stressful situations and years of experience assisting the children grow into mature responsible adults. Colleen also has a degree in Behaviour disturbances & emotional disorders. Colleen highly reccomends reading The Good Child Guide which can be found here ==> http://Answers-You-Seek.com/GoodChild.html

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