Maybe you want to be more patient. Maybe you want to stop yelling, threatening and/or punishing. You wonder how to get cooperation without those old standby methods. Our experts have the answers you need.
Mountains of research has shown that children are built to seek connection with their caregivers. They want your attention and actually need it to thrive. So you’ll get more of whatever behaviors you give attention to. However most parents give a lot more attention to challenging behaviors than to the behavior that they want. So they are actually rewarding the behavior they don’t want even with negative attention. It’s how kids’ brains work.
Most importantly, building strong positive connections with your children is the foundation of not only cooperation but their overall wellbeing today and in the future. So threatening and punishing may scare your kids into following directions but that can harm your relationship and their self-worth. You’ve also probably noticed that those approaches don’t lead to long-term behavior change. So let’s do this together.
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