Busy mums will know when it comes to attachment issues with young kids, when you have to send them back to school or creche, knowing the right way to handle it can be a minefileld.

And then there is know what is right when it comes to discipline, should you introduce a naughty step, will it damage them later on if we raise our voice?

Psychoanalyst Joanna Fortune outlines the best ways to tackle early infant attachment and challenging behaviour in children

The Importance of Discipline:

The aim of discipline should be to teach the behaviour you want to see rather than punish the behaviour you don’t want to see. I believe in giving children a second chance to self correct the behaviour (as in “I think you forgot how you are supposed to do/say that, would you like to try again”) and I believe that parents will need to be gentle yet firm, creative yet consistent and above all else calm and predictable in their approach to discipline.

Children actually thrive and do better when they grow up with clear, consistent and predictable boundaries and limits set by parents.

The Right Age To Introduce Discipline:

Under the age of four is really a waste of your time and will only serve to frustrate you, as it takes children until they are four years old to properly understand cause and effect and to link their behaviour with your consequence. You are best off using distraction... that said it is OK to come down to their eye level and say a gentle yet firm “no” and then redirect them quickly. After four years old they know enough to process your consequence, which should always be developmentally appropriate, quick and once done move on – i.e. do not keep going on about what happened and tell the other parent when they get home from work, -dredging it all up again for the child who has moved on and believed it was done with.


Teach Them It’s OK to Make Mistakes:

Children need to know that there is a parent in charge, someone who is bigger, stronger, wiser and kind who will ensure that they are safe and that things don’t get out of control. They may not thank you for this but they do benefit from it. Growing up with a clear sense of boundaries and limits helps children to develop important life skills such as empathy, solution-focused thinking, an understanding of a range of emotions and to be able to reflect on what has happened and how they feel about it, and imagine how the other person may feel about it.

Successful discipline is delivered calmly with kindness and teaches a child about what they should do, which enables them to know that it’s OK to make mistakes and that we can always engage in repair and recovery when we have fallen out with someone. They can learn from mistakes and tend to be more confident, more resilient and do better in school with stronger pro-social skills.

The importance of both parents singing off the same hymn sheet :

This is essential as otherwise children will quickly learn to split between you and play you off against each other. Children do best when they experience their caregivers as a united front who support each other and are consistent and predictable in responses to their behaviour. It is worth spending time sitting and agreeing upon a discipline strategy ahead of time and sharing this with your childcare providers/other family members.


Don’t let your phone be a barrier:

Sometimes time poor parents feel they should over compensate for lack of time by saying yes to everything, but that just ends up creating more stress for the family in the long run. Time poor parents can maximise quality time even if they do not have quantity time by planning ahead and batch cooking to save time each evening. Put devices and phones away when they get home and be present with their children to play (this is how children communicate and connect and process their days) and enjoy the bedtime routine. If all you can do is read a bedtime story, then remember that is good enough.

www.solamh.com | TEDx Talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORhwrL71dYc