The debate over spanking or not spanking a child has been the cause of much conflict between parents everywhere. Whether you’re on the team for spanking or not, we felt it important to feature some alternative discipline strategies to spanking.
These strategies will help provide long-lasting benefits to curb the bad decisions made by children during all stages of childhood. Finding new ways to discipline your children so that they retain a life lesson or perhaps think harder before making the same mistake twice is an important part of parental duties.
Time Out
This is the number one alternative discipline option for parents of younger children. Enforcing a time out whenever your toddler is throwing a tantrum or has made a poor choice helps cool the situation down. To implement this strategy you’ll want a specific area in the home that’s designated as the time out corner.
Your child will have to sit in this area, free of any distractions, for a few minutes to think about what they’ve done. Once the time has finished, you can kneel and discuss the situation with your toddler to help them better understand how they can make a good choice next time.
Lose Privileges
As your child gets older, they will start to have interests. Perhaps your child loves playing video games or enjoys watching a favorite television show each day. This discipline strategy of losing privileges can work for younger children but seems most beneficial to pre-teens and teenagers. To implement this strategy you’ll want to lay out the ground rules and consequences with your kids.
Explain what privileges will be lost and for how long. You’ll want to create some rules and expectations of behavior so that your kids will know ahead of time which privileges may be lost if they don’t listen and behave based on the ground rules and expectations you’ve set forth.
Selective Ignoring
For some behavior problems, you can simply choose to ignore the behavior. For example, if your child is throwing a tantrum or exhibiting some unruly behavior that’s not going to put them in harm’s way, you can choose to ignore their behavior.
To implement selective ignoring you’ll want to first make sure your child is safe from harm, and then you’ll simply not respond in any way to their behavior. Eventually, your child should calm down and they’ll move on with their day since they’re not getting any attention from you.
These are the top three alternative discipline strategies to spanking that many parents have opted to use. Each option provides a different result but all can work towards improving your child’s decision making process and overall behavior.