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| Join the positive parents around the world. Begin using positive Parenting Prescriptions® by Dr. Glenn Latham. |
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Applying Behavioral Principles in the home and family Clearly communicate your expectations to your children. Ignore inconsequential behavior. Selectively reinforce appropriate behaviors. Stop, then redirect inappropriate behavior. Stay close to your children.
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 Read detailed explanations, examples, and role-playing experiences in the parent's manual to raising children in a positive way, The Power of Positive Parenting. |
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Five Positive Parenting Strategies |
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Our job as parents is to create the environment that will positively control our children's behavior. |
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Knowing the principles of human behavior is one thing; applying them well is quite another thing. The two together constitute what I have referred to as a working knowledge of the principles of behavior. Following are five strategies which, when used appropriately, will help parents create and maintain a happy, supportive home environment. I talk about managing-even controlling-behavior. Such a discussion sometimes offends people. Some people take the position that we have no right to control the behavior of others. This is true if our intent is to control the behavior of others simply to satisfy ourselves, if our intent is basically selfish. (That's manipulation.) On the other hand, particularly as parents, we have a responsibility to manage, and sometimes control, behavior, and it is foolish and irresponsible to think otherwise. |
| Everyone's behavior is continually under the reinforcement control of something in its immediate environment. Our job as parents is to create the kind of environment that will exercise positive control over the behavior of our children. That's management. Dr. B.F. Skinner, world renowned psychologist, said it well when he said, "I've created a world where everything I do is positively reinforced. I've redesigned a world in which I can behave well." That is our responsibility in behalf of ourselves and our children, to create a world where we and our children receive immense amounts of positive reinforcement; to design a world in which we can all behave well. My wife, Louise, observed, "You're not controlling kids. You are making it easier for them to behave well." That is such a wonderful way to put it. |
| As parents we must realize that children are in the process of becoming civilized. Our job is to civilize them, that is, teach them how to behave appropriately within the society of human beings. To judge children's behavior using adult standards is both inappropriate and unfair. Parents who get angry at a baby for crying are the ones who are behaving inappropriately, not the baby. Parents who strike a child for accidentally spilling his milk at the dinner table are behaving far less appropriately than did the child. For an adult to scream and yell at a screaming and yelling child is an example of an adult abandoning civility: hence, the adult is behaving far less appropriately than is the yet-to-be-civilized child. As parents, therefore, we must be very careful that we understand the behavior the child is exhibiting before we respond to it. Then respond to it in a mature, scientifically sound way. |
| 1. Clearly communicate your expectations to your children. |
| 2. Ignore inconsequential behaviors. |
| 3. Selectively reinforce appropriate behaviors. |
| 4. Stop then redirect inappropriate behavior. |
| 5. Stay close to your children. |
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