{"id":14555,"date":"2011-08-11T07:23:04","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T23:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=14555"},"modified":"2011-08-11T10:23:28","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T02:23:28","slug":"gleamings-from-%e2%80%98positive-discipline-for-preschoolers%e2%80%99-book-initiative-vs-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2011\/08\/11\/gleamings-from-%e2%80%98positive-discipline-for-preschoolers%e2%80%99-book-initiative-vs-manipulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Gleamings from \u2018Positive Discipline for Preschoolers\u2019 book: Initiative vs Manipulation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Enjoying sticking a fresh flower into the miniature bottle and then taking it out...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Okay, I confess that\u00a0it’s too much for me to do chapter-by-chapter reflection for this book. Ha ha. I shall do my reflection based on topics which speak to me.<\/p>\n

From chapter 5’s ‘The Joys (and Challenges) of Initiative’, it talks about how a budding toddler’s initiative in doing new things could turn into manipulation when their efforts were discouraged by adults. Hmm, it rings true for us. After being familiar with her day-in, day-out routines at home and out-of-the house, Hannah has started to wander out of her ‘boundaries’.<\/p>\n

Example 1<\/strong>: Mommy fetched nana home from her nanny’s place. The standard route was to walk through\u00a0a carpark. One day, nana decided to ‘go upstairs’ rather than cutting through the carpark. Well, that means it would be a longer journey home. Instead of saying ‘no, etc etc reasoning’, mommy\u00a0allowed nana to take the stairs as she showed initiative of wanting to gain a new skill of\u00a0mastering\u00a0stairs-climbing and\u00a0enjoyed the experience\u00a0as well. There were days when the stairs underwent some renovation and she agreed with me that it was not safe to use it. “Only uncle can go upstairs” – when she saw a security guard went up despite of the warning sign. Simple reasoning seemed to work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Example 2<\/strong>: Hannah walked into a lift and her fingers\u00a0couldn’t help gravitating towards\u00a0the lift buttons. Instead of stopping her from possibly punching every button within reach and enduring a\u00a0subsequent outburst of angry wailing, we told her which button she could press and ‘press once only’. We showed her that we recognised her desire and also taught her\u00a0some civil behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Example 3<\/strong>: Hannah is not fond of drinking water. One night, we had a power struggle where I insisted that she drink some water by man-handling method and she threw a huge tantrum. Both of us were upset and neither\u00a0would give way. But I had to give in eventually as she needed to go to bed. The next few nights, I felt manipulated as she knew she would ‘win’ in the end. She would say “don’t want drink water ah!”. SIGH. Much later on, she did give in to take 1-2 sips or sometimes she would help herself to\u00a0her water bottle\u00a0when I gave her the option of drinking it later.\u00a0She knew mommy expected her to drink water (& I\u00a0reminded her about it, gently, every now and then). The book advocates the use of kind and firm <\/strong>approach when dealing with our perceived notion of misbehaviour. I was expecting total obedience but in situations such as this, there can only be one winner (and one loser) and it would not bode well for the parent-child relationship if this battle continue to wage on. Being kind and firm is not the same as being permissive. Permissiveness spoils a child. Showing kindness with firmness means that we try to understand the child’s perception of her world\u00a0(more on that in the next post), age-appropriate behaviour\u00a0and give limited options (to engage her meaningfully and also with safety precaution in mind).<\/span><\/p>\n

Directing her\u00a0budding initiative to develop in the positive\u00a0way\u00a0is often\u00a0challenging, inconvenient and time-consuming. But I totally agree with the book that\u00a0our investment of\u00a0time, patience\u00a0and energies (both physical and mental) would reap\u00a0long-term benefits as compared to having to deal with consequent\u00a0 misbehaviour of a discouraged\u00a0kid\u00a0because her\u00a0initiative was thumbed down repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Who said parenting was easy and shouldn’t take much time?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Poor flower....got water, no water, got water, no water.... :P<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I confess that\u00a0it’s too much for me to do chapter-by-chapter reflection for this book. Ha ha. I shall do my reflection based on topics which speak to me. From chapter 5’s ‘The Joys (and Challenges) of Initiative’, it talks<\/p>\n

Read More Gleamings from \u2018Positive Discipline for Preschoolers\u2019 book: Initiative vs Manipulation<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-children-blues","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-7-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}