Positive Discipline for Preschoolers

This is a great book for all parents, but in my opinion more specifically parents who are going through the preschool years for the first time with their young one.  How many parents out there have ever felt frustrated with your young one? They won’t listen to anything that you say, have their own opinion about everything and they are always right in their mind.  This is the perfect book for you, because there are always those times when you think that you have lost your limit and cannot take anymore. This is a book that can help you avoid those times all together, this book takes you through the step by step process of disciplining your child without having to use actions and words that you would not like. This is an easy read, not too over whelming in size, the chapter sizes are easy, each of them with their own theme and idea.  This book has six sections with their own theme and within each section there are little chapters that help break down those broad topics and get into great detail.  This is a great book to help you and your child bond and have and understanding that discipline is needed and it is not anything personal to the child it is just a way of life, like my mom always told me ‘you’ll thank me later.’ And that is the truth, through her way of disciplining me, I do thank her for not letting me get too out of hand as a youngster, my teachers have said the same.  The reason that I really enjoyed this book is because it emphasizes that parenting is not easy and there are going to be hard times that go along with all the good, it tells you that being a parent isn’t going to allow you to be perfect, you are going to make mistakes and the beauty behind that is that you can learn from those mistakes and better yourself next time. Although the title of this book suggests that it is simply about disciplining, but that is not the case, it talks about all aspects of being a parent, starting from birth and all the emotions that go along with it.  This books talk about getting in-tune with yourself not only your child, because being in-tune with yourself makes it easier to connect with your child and that is when your child is more likely to listen to you and do as you ask. 

The quality of this writing is very good, the author writes in a way that is understandable and not too overwhelming with science and large words that can often times lower the level of understanding.  This is a great book for all parents who want a little input and a little push in the right direction as far as discipline is concerned.  Although I do not have any children of my own, I work at a school and work with children from the ages of five all the way up through thirteen year olds, this book has helped me identify other ways to go about how I discipline the children that I work with, one that really stuck with me is to put an emphasis on the fact that is it not punishment it I discipline. It has also helped to recognize children who have had positive types of discipline, poor types, along with no discipline at all, the actions that these children have make it easy to identify. I would recommend this book to a teacher, parent, or just someone who is interested in children and discipline.

References:  Nelsen, J., Erwin, C., & Duffy, R. (1998). Positive discipline for preschoolers, for their early years--raising children who are responsible, respectful, and resourceful. (2nd ed.). Prima Pub. 

Getting Basic Concepts Down

My preschooler has a wonderful capability for remembering things months or even years in the past. Additionally, her logic in figuring out everyday problems often astounds me. I think my daughter is pretty amazing, but like many other preschoolers she struggles in certain areas. One of our biggest struggles has been helping her learn the alphabet and count to 20. I’ve been working with her on counting and the alphabet for more than two years. She has also been enrolled in preschool for five months and although she has slowly made some improvement, she is far from where we would like to see her achievement. In fact when my son was just one year old we were getting better results with him from watching us work with her than she was from working one-on one with us.

As a working mom and full time student, I do not have all the time I would like to teach my children so share this responsibility with my husband. When we decided to teach my daughter colors she did remarkable. We made it a combined effort and designed a strategic plan which included a weekly theme, internet appropriate games that allowed her to utilize what she was learning, incorporating the colors into her everyday routine, and repetition of the colors she had already learned so she did not forget.

One of our goals is to read to our children at least 20 minutes every day because reading to your child is one way parents can help their children comprehend sounds of letters (Piasta and Wagner, 2010). Like we did when we taught her colors, we can make this more of a tag-team effort.

Music has resulted in some of the highest advances I’ve seen for her. We made up a song that spells out her name and the more often we sing it the better she does. Music makes repetition easy because you can sing songs over and over. Recently we have started to sing the ABCs while she washes her hands and a few times while she brushes her teeth. There is a two-fold benefit because her hygiene practices are improving and she can now sing 90% of the ABCs without any errors. Music has also been shown to improve children’s cognitive ability including increasing their vocabulary (Moreno et al., 2011).

One reason all of this is so important is because a child who has does not have good understanding of the alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten could be at a disadvantage academically (Piasta and Wagner, 2010). Parents typically want their children to succeed, but sometimes the question is what else can be done. We will continue to do what we have been doing,and do it more frequently. We are going to make a weekly letter and number and make it part of her daily life like we did with the colors. I also found a website that has some additional suggestions for teaching the ABCs that I am excited to use. http://www.justmommies.com/articles/teach-alphabet.shtml.

Moreno, S., Bilystok, E., Barac, R., Schellenberg, E. G., Cepeda, N. J., Chau, T., (2011). Short-Term Music Training Enhances Verbal Intelligence and Executive Function. Psychologica Science, 22, 1425-1433. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41320049.

Piasta, S. B., Wagner, R.K., (2010). Developing Early Literacy Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Alphabet Learning and Instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 8-38. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25614628.

Bedtime Routines

Parenting can be very challenging and overwhelming at points, there are times when you can feel like you have done all that you can and your child is still crying, still won’t obey or the worst, is still not satisfied with your efforts.  One of the most challenging times include eating, traveling and the most frustrating of them all, bed time.  This is a time that most parents do not realize has the potential to have a lasting effect on their children, not only in the sense of the amount and quality of their sleep, but can be a great time for parents and children to bond and connect.  It is important for parents to develop a bedtime routine, one that is the same all the time so that the child begins to look at that time as comforting and relaxing, both critical to a successful bed-time routine. This routine should never include electronics, it is harder to fall asleep with TV on and obviously nearly impossible to fall asleep while playing video games. Now this can be difficult, kids will cry and insist and promise that they will fall asleep if you allow them to indulge in these activities before bed, but it is important to say no, here is why. There is research that has proven that the best type of routine should include language-based routines.  ‘This research suggests regular use of language-based bedtime routines including singing, reading, and/or storytelling at bedtime may have a lasting positive benefit for children’s sleep durations and cognitive development.’ (Hale, 2011) The research also reflects a positive correlation with language-based bedtime routines and children having less anxiety, less aggressive behaviors and children are less likely to be withdrawn both at home and in school settings.  So parents, take this time to connect with your children and also have them benefit at the same time, plus what is better that having your little one fall asleep in your arms, sure beats having to listen to them cry themselves to sleep.

Some examples of language-based bedtime routines:

-       -Sing to your child, they can even join in if they want

-       -Read a book with them, most children have a favorite that they can’t hear enough

-       -Tell them a story, make one up on the spot, they can give you a category, princesses, princes, animals, just take it and run with it, they will love it no matter what

-       -Simply talk with your little one, ask them about their day, allow them to ask you questions and make sure you answer them

Those are just a few examples, but there are tons of them out there. The most important part is to engage with your child and connect with them, love them and make it obvious to them that that time is just as important to you as it is to them.

Hale, L. (2011). A longitudinal study of preschoolers' language-based bedtime routines, sleep duration, and well-being. 25(3), 423-433. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=799e488e-9836-4a64-b073-af2ba8a0ade6@sessionmgr110&vid=2&hid=121