Kinder chat - creative discipline

On Monday night Chris and I went to a 'kinder chat' at Liam's school, given by a kindergarten teacher, Riita, who was one of the founders of the school and has been teaching kindy there for twenty-five years.

There wasn't anything especially new, but there were a few good reminders for me. Some of them were around basic stuff like needing to have good routines, a beautiful/not chaotic environment (we fall down on that one), good food, proper amounts of sleep and so on. Others were perhaps slightly less obvious:

• This is the age of imitation. Therefore how I want Liam (and Mikaela) to be, is how I have to be. That includes how I want them to talk, how I want them to deal with anger and frustration, and whether I want them to yell (at me, at each other).
  
  • Riita said at school they talk about inside and outside voices, and when the kids yell in the classroom they say to them "That's your outside voice Johnny, it's time for your inside voice now." I've done that with Liam, but somehow I don't think we (he or I) have ever made the connection which Riita made, which is to me also having an inside voice. So I told Liam on Tuesday that I am going to try to keep to my inside voice in the house too. We'll see how I go!
• She talked about concentrating on the positive behaviours and accomplishments. As an example she said at school the children pour their own water from the jug. The only time a teacher will help is if the jug is so full it's too heavy for a child. And when they first do this, they tend to over fill and spill. Then they learn to go and get a cloth and wipe up the water. Next time they pour the water, they will often pour too little, and need more. So when the jug comes back around again the teacher will say "A half a cup is a good amount." And then, when the time comes that the child can pour half a cup successfully, they will say "Look, Johnny can pour a half a cup of water now." (Or something, I don't remember exactly, maybe she says it directly to the child, rather than in the third person.) But they don't ever comment on the times when the child pours too much or too little.
  
  • I know this is really pretty obvious stuff, but I am belabouring it a little because I realised that I am forgetting to do it. And I also notice that once I am a little cranky or impatient, if, for instance, it has taken me 20 minutes of nagging to get Liam to clean his teeth after dinner, then I am even less patient with what are merely a child's normal accidents, like squeezing out too much toothpaste from the new tube, or accidentally wiping it on a towel. Or even things that aren't accidents, like walking around the house with the toothbrush in mouth instead of standing at the sink, as per our rule. It's not an accident, but it's only a minor infringement. Yet I can become quite, quite cross about it, mostly because I am already cross from the twenty minutes of nagging. Anyway...

• Creative discipline. Riita talked also about when a child is having a tantrum (this is a kinder aged child - around 4-6 - not a one-year-old, for instance, though no doubt this approach could be modified), and how you can distract them. She suggested: You might cup your hands together around something special - maybe a gold ring, or even your watch - and you look into a small opening in your hands to see what is there. You might put your hands up to your ear and pretend your special gold ring is talking to you "Oh," you say to your ring, "I can have three wishes?" By this time the child just has to come and look to see what is inside your hands, and you might engage them in the conversation too. "well," you tell your ring, "I wish that we might go to the playground later today," or "I wish that we might go to Grandpa's house this weekend," or whatever. But mind, you then have to follow through on the wish, so that it is "true" and not just a trick.

Basically it gave us a few new ideas, but mostly some good reminders about our own modeling of the behaviour and values we would like to see in our children, and about using distraction rather than chastisement, and acknowledgement of good behaviour and successes rather than failures, as ways of discipline.

Now if only I can get better at putting it all into practice!