Remember These Points While Trying To Discipline Your Children
You, as a parent, may wonder how you should discipline your children. The best approach can be to give them just enough freedom to commit mistakes and learn and at the same time, educate them as to how to make wise choices. You should set a few rules and they should know the consequences of breaking them.
But at the time of setting the rules and determining the consequences for breaking them, you should take into account what life lessons you want to impart in your children. Your ultimate goal is to make the kids learn the required skills that can groom them into responsible adults who can face life situations boldly.
But at the same time, you should be flexible also because if you have cut-and-dried rules, the children may become rebellious. Another problem may be they may neither be be able to tackle independence when they step into the outside world nor will be learning the skills required to be responsible adults. This means you should adopt a balanced approach and guide your children.
Though you should allow your children to learn from the mistakes they themselves may commit, they should have a secure feeling that you are always there for helping them when there is a need. You should continue with such a guidance and support till your children become older teens. Once they start understanding the world, you can give them more freedom but even at that stage, you should closely monitor their activities. Of course, there should be suitable changes in the rules also.
But knowing when to give more freedom to children is a difficult question to answer because this may be unique for every child. In fact, there is no one way to know when your children can be given more freedom. You may have to adopt a trial-and-error approach only. One of the best ways may be to allow them to face life situations and make decisions on their own. They must also take action based on their decisions. If most of their decisions turn out to be right, you can construe that they deserve to have more freedom.
In a nutshell, there is no one-size-fit-all formula for disciplining children. You must take into account a number of factors and decide on your approach.