How You’re Unknowingly Imprinting The Wrong Lesson Onto Your Child

by Jane Nelsen and Mary Tamborski

It’s 7:52 am on a Tuesday, and the bus is going to be here in 3 minutes. Your kid is still looking for his homework, or taking her time eating her breakfast.

What do you do?

Do you yell at them to hurry up, getting angrier and angrier until you just can’t take it anymore and ground them for the week… even if they don’t miss the bus?

(If you said yes - are you okay teaching them that they need to be afraid of you - and afraid to make a mistake?)

Do you find his homework or pack her breakfast to go, rushing around like a crazy person to try and make it all work even though no reasonable person really could?

(Do you want your child to rely on you for everything for the rest of your life - and never build the skills to manage themselves?)

Do you let them miss the bus - again - and resign yourself to being their taxi driver and call in late to work for the nth time this year?

(Are you willing to show them that someone else will always come in to fix the problem and that they never have to take responsibility for their actions?)

Each of those reactions is teaching your child something… and while it may not be an issue today…

Those lessons will carry on long-term and fundamentally affect the way your child grows up.

That’s the terrifying thing about parenting. What you teach your children NOW will stay with them their whole lives.

That’s a LOT of pressure!

The good news is that there ARE tools you can use to give the lessons to your child you want them to have…

Lessons about problem solving and boundaries and communication and healthy relationships and capability.

I know because my mother gave those lessons to me. And together, she and I are showing you how to give them to your child.

The good news? These lessons also make YOUR life easier, better, and happier as a result…

Lesson #1: How to Get Along With Other People

When you’re faced with arguments or contention among your child and his siblings or her friends… what do you do?

Do you force them to play anyway? Swoop in and take the offending toy away from both of them? Tell them just to ignore each other (until they can’t, at which point you play referee)?

You’re not helping them learn how to get along with people that they, frankly, just don’t like.

You’re showing them, instead, that there will always be someone that can (and will) solve their communication problems FOR them.

Let me tell you a story about a better way…

When I was a teenager, my mother sat our whole family down for a family meeting. I wasn’t a fan. I thought they were silly, a waste of time, and certainly below my teenage-cool-factor.

But what my younger self didn’t realize was that Family Meetings were essential to learning how to problem solve as a team… AND how to communicate with other people. How to consider them in different situations.

And yes, how to get along with them.

Fast forward to college and I’m living on my own for the first time, with roommates.

My roommates and I couldn’t agree on much, except that we drove each other nuts! We had different ideas of what chores needed to be done, we had different standards of behavior, and we were all stubborn enough to stop communicating with each other about it all.

So I called a Roommate Meeting. Not even thinking about it, I used the same exact tool my mother used in our family… on my adult, living-on-our-own roommates to solve very real problems and obstacles we’d run into.

And it worked.

That one tool from Positive Discipline turned what would have been a terrible situation into one that left me with nothing but positive memories… but more importantly, the skill of working with others that weren’t in my family.

Not only did this tool help my mother manage behaviors, solve problems, and involve us in creating a better life during my childhood… it has helped me at home, at work, with my friendships… and everywhere in between as an adult.

Lesson #2: How to Act Like a Team without The Blame Game

On those busy mornings I talked about earlier - how do you handle it when your child takes longer than you want to get ready?

Maybe you find yourself saying something like “You lost your homework and now we’re going to be late because we have to find it.”

That’s the Blame Game - something Positive Discipline has tools to prevent - because in your family, the responsibility doesn’t just fall on one person to find the real solution.

When you play the Blame Game, you encourage your child to spend their time trying to avoid taking ownership and responsibility for their actions… which you know is NOT the way to have healthy, successful relationships, careers, or lives in general.

Instead, focus on teamwork.

What this does is help your entire family come together and cooperate to solve a problem - instead of spending effort, attention, and energy on passing the buck or bickering about who’s fault it is.

But growing up, my mother encouraged us to use the Problem Solving tool instead.

I’m sure you can guess how well this went over. We wanted to push responsibility onto someone else so we didn’t have to be accountable… but by not letting us play the Blame Game, she instead encouraged true teamwork, which has stayed with me and my siblings our entire lives.

We didn’t fight as often, because we weren’t enemies anymore. And the solutions we came up with were often more elegant when we did it together. They lasted longer, made everyone happy, and left us feeling victorious rather than like we’d had to make concessions and compromises.

Now, this is a technique I use with my husband almost every single day. Instead of arguing about who didn’t do the dishes or who was supposed to remember to pack lunches - we team up against the problem and work together to find the solution.

But it goes even further than that. I use this at work, too - my coworkers and I work together to tackle problems instead of trying to point the finger at one another and shirk responsibility. I team up with my friends when there’s a miscommunication or misunderstanding that causes a rift.

And of course, I’m teaching this to my children. Because I know how valuable this tool has been for me in every area of my life - and it’s made every relationship I have better, stronger, and more stable as a result.

Lesson #3: I Am Capable Of Solving Problems

If your children are having a hard time finding their shirt or putting away their toys… do you do it for them or do you let them figure it out?

Because here’s the thing: letting your kids figure things out not only makes YOUR life easier (because you now don’t need to have “problem solver” on your resume) but it gives your children an incredibly critical life skill… all in the safety of your home.

Just like when you don’t allow them to work out interpersonal or communication problems… when you don’t let them solve other problems, they never develop the skill they need… instead always waiting for someone else to come in and fix the issue.

My mother never solved my problems FOR me. I can’t remember a time that she swooped in to “save the day,” letting me completely off the hook or devaluing my input.

As a child, this added a lot to my own personal self-esteem - because I never felt like I was unnecessary in our family. I always knew that I had something to contribute.

But looking back as an adult, I realize just what this did for me long-term.

I’m not afraid to tackle challenges. I’m not worried about whether I can figure out a solution. I don’t need someone else to handle things for me (although yes, it’s nice to sit back and relax while someone else handles things!)

I am completely confident in my ability to manage myself. I know that if my feet are to the fire, I can make things happen.

Whether I’ve done it before or it’s a brand-new situation or skill… I know I have what it takes to get things done.

And what’s more - I’ve ALWAYS known that I have what it takes.

The tools from Positive Discipline helped my mother to instill this confidence in me. To empower me to face everything and anything head on. Tools like:

• Take time for training
• Decide what you will do
• Small steps
• Follow through
• Sense of humor

All of these stacked together have created the understanding that I’m in control of my situation - even if I’m not in charge of my circumstances.

It’s entirely possible to give your child this self-confidence, too…

Because here’s the thing - as your children grow into adults, they’ll use these skills over and over. Just like I have my entire life.

The responsibilities change. The way it looks from the outside changes.

But with every single one of these life lessons, the foundation remains the same. The same tools that I learned in my childhood are the tools that make me a successful adult today.

Building Positive Behavior in Childhood Leads to Successful Adults

The reason all of these tools are so important is NOT that my mother focused only on having children who were well behaved and did exactly as she said.

It’s because she understood one fundamental truth: that our job as parents is to make our role obsolete.

It’s our JOB as parents to make sure our children don’t need us by the time they become adults and begin managing their own lives.

Our job as parents is to help our children become self-sufficient so they’re capable of thriving without us.

And you might be thinking that it’s so many years away and your child isn’t old enough now to manage him or herself and you want them to need you because you want to feel needed.

All of those feelings are valid… but they’re also wrong. (Which is an example of yet another Positive Discipline tool and lesson - Kind but Firm.)

Your children don’t need you to be their hero. They need you to be their cheerleader. Their mentor. Their teacher. The wise, experienced, and trusted person in their life that they can feel safe to make mistakes with (another Positive Discipline tool). The one that they can come to with problems and LEARN how to find solutions… not have solutions handed to them or done for them.

That all starts as early as possible. It all starts right now. Whether your child is 3, 12, or 17 - you CAN begin showing them how to be a successful, thriving adult AND shift unwanted behavior and interactions out.

You can prepare them for the future while creating harmony in your home today.

And the best news is that my mother and I are here to help.

We’re here to give you the ENTIRE story - from the parent perspective, the child perspective, AND the expert perspective.

To give you real-world examples of what it looks like from all three sides of the situation, so you can best understand what’s happening in your child’s world as well as your own.

Positive Discipline Made Easy: The first program of its kind to walk you step-by-step through understanding and implementing positive parenting tools into the lives of you and your children.

Because here’s the thing: my mother had a history as an educator, which meant that she spent additional time studying child behavior and classroom management. She then did the research necessary to understand - at a brain-deep level - what children need from their parents to be successful (now and as adults.)

She spent years on this. Researching, learning, understanding, implementing, testing and perfecting.

But you don’t have to figure it all out on your own like my mother did. You don’t have to find the solutions on your own and then work to make them happen in your family.

We’ll walk you through it step by step. With stories that illustrate each point, detailed walkthroughs on how to implement them… even a guidebook that you can fill out and use as your own personal parenting manual.

And with over 30 Positive Discipline tools at your disposal, you’ll be able to guide your children through any - and every - situation that comes up now…

As well as prepare them for adulthood the way they desperately need you to.

A Parenting Tool For Every Situation in Every Family

The foundation of the Positive Discipline method - used by millions of parents, teachers, childcare workers, social workers and more - is the suite of tools that will help you navigate any and every challenge or situation your family faces.

Your kid won’t do their chores? … There’s a tool for that.

Your first born keeps hitting his little sister? … There’s a tool for that.

You can’t get out the door on time and are always late for everything? … There’s a tool for that.

Bedtime takes hours?… There’s a tool for that.

Endless sibling bickering? Yup, you guessed it. There’s a tool for that, too

With over 30 parent-tested tools at your disposal, you’ll be armed for any curveball that comes your way.

And these tools don’t just work in the long term and build skills for tomorrow.

They work in the short term to restore harmony and allow you to actually enjoy your children RIGHT NOW.

They teach your children to build valuable skills and beliefs that will help them:

• Know how to solve problems and handle conflict effectively and without drama, martyrdom, or escalation
• Instill a strong moral and ethical compass that isn’t vulnerable to peer pressure, risky decision making, or social vampires
• Develop the ever-critical problem solving skills needed to respond to the unexpected twists and turns of life
• Learn resiliency and to trust themselves, their judgment and their abilities

And these skills will show up in the way your home operates today, tomorrow, next week, next year, and beyond.

In other words, these tools become the foundation of a happy home today, and a thriving life tomorrow.

And my mother and I will be there guiding you every step of the way to help you create the harmony in your home that you’ve been seeking.

These tools will reshape your relationship with your child, make your household the smoothest it’s ever been, and remind you just how much you love being a parent.

And while these tools will empower both you and your child… They’ll also make your daily life better, easier, happier and less stressful than ever before… RIGHT NOW.

All the while helping your children continue to develop those critical life skills AND build a closer relationship with you.

Happy, empowered kids along with a harmonious, loving family.

What more could you ask for?

I can’t wait to help you empower your children to be thriving, successful adults… while creating harmony in your home right now.

Love,