Holiday Child Discipline For Parents

Setting Limits On Giving
For Happier, Well Behaved Kids

 Child discipline around the holidays can be tough.

Holidays plus child behavior often equals chaos.

At all times, but particularly during the holiday, gift-giving season, we need to be mindful of two crucial influences on child behavior.

First, we need be careful about how we give to our children. 

Holiday child behavior can produce poor child behavior habits.

It sometimes takes parental self-discipline to avoid pleasing or serving our children in a way that promotes their false sense of entitlement.  

We don't want to teach them to expect to be catered to, to lack appreciation for those who give to them and serve them, to be overly concerned with their own wants without real concern for the needs and feelings of others, to expect to be given what they want without fulfilling the requirements of their own responsible self-conduct.

Holiday child behavior can bring out the worst
in already over-stressed parents

Giving and serving properly fosters the child's respect for self and others, his appreciation for the care he receives and for the efforts others make on his behalf, and his motivation to fulfill his personal responsibilities.  Accomplishing this involves placing some limits on how much we give and serve, our clear intention to foster the development of the child's character, and our clear awareness of how the child is receiving what we are giving.  

Secondly, we need to understand how positive excitement impacts child behavior.  When children feel very happy and excited, as they typically do around holiday season, their behavior is bound to stray out of bounds.  When the intensity of a child's emotional state rises past the point of balance, either positive or negative, the child loses the power of self-control.

Child Discipline around holidays can feel wrong.

By understanding this, parents can be more patient, tolerant and compassionate when the child gets a bit wild under the influence of a happy feeling. However, lacking understanding of this, the parent is apt to react with a strong negative emotional reaction, which has negative effects.  For one thing, it hurts the child's feelings when his heart is most open, which may teach the child to fear happiness and adopt a sulking attitude in general.  Additionally, parents automatically transfer their emotional state to their children, meaning that a parent's strong negative emotional reaction turns into the child's strong negative emotional reaction.  Thus, the parent simply exchanges the child's unbalanced positive emotional state for a negative one, reinforcing the child's behavioral problem.

To help your child behave well during the holidays and any time, practice maintaining your own emotionally balanced state of peace and poise that your child needs for her optimum self-control.    When your child's behavior drifts out of bounds under the influence of a very happy feeling, avoid using harshness to gain control.  Try matching his emotional state, and connecting with him in a positive way. Then gradually demonstrate increasing calm, tranquility, contentment as you continue interacting with him. In this way, you honor the sacred heart of the child while leading the child on an emotional level into improved self-control.

Child discipline around holidays is NOT wrong
when done with love and wisdom.

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