Pay attention to these!
1) Be firm with your rules: Attitude change takes time and requires that you stick to your rules. Establishing your rules and acting determinedly toward children is key to changing attitudes.
2) Establish clear lines: Adjust them from person to person, rather than situation-based rules. Establish clear lines within your rules.
Learn that ''don't come home late'' is a line that has a different meaning to everyone, thus it is open to interpretation. Instead set a clear time to be home, thus making it more effective.
3) Back your words with your actions: If you tell your child that they cannot play before they clean their room and you end up cleaning it for them when they take off, your actions do not back your words. If you do this then you are sending your child mixed messages and they begin to believe that your rules don't mean anything. Be certain that your words are followed through with your actions.
4) Do not reinforce your bad actions: For example, imagine a child that gets what it wants by crying. If a parent stops responding to a child crying, the child won't just stop.
Instead of crying for 10 minutes like in the past, the child might begin to cry for hours and some who cannot bare to deal with this will end up giving the child what they want. In the end the child begins to reason that if they cry enough they will get what they asked for. Parents must be steadfast when it comes to their rules.
5) Be a role model with your actions: Without you noticing your child will learn by mimicking your actions.
Thus all both parents' actions must be fitting of them. This is especially the case when they enter their problem solving stage of development. For example if you separate the fight between them and their siblings by yelling, they learn that yelling is the way to end fights.
6) Properly evaluate outcomes: Properly evaluate the outcomes for your child's good and bad behavior and explain it to them. For example make and establish rules with outcomes in such a way that if they do not do their homework one night, they will lose that night's computer privileges.
7) Keep in mind their needs according to their age: A family is a changing structure and as years go by children grow and want increased freedoms.
According to this, rules often must be revised. For example a five-year-old child cannot have the same bedtime as one that is 15.
8) Explain the reason behind your rules: In order to raise questioning and thinking, tell children why you have established the rules you did. Instead of telling them not to do something tell them why they should not do it.
9) Incentivize them: Discipline is a long process of give and take and thus incentivizing keeps motivation running high. For example if they maturely handle an issue they have with a friend at school, positively enforce their action. This will help solidify the behavior into habit.
10) Be realistic: Make certain that the rules you established are realistic.
For example if your child overruns their television time, grounding them from the TV for a week while other members of the family continue to watch it is not realistic.
Grounding them for one day would be much more realistic and easily enforceable.
