Raise Your Kids Without Raising Your Voice by Sarah Chana Radcliffe

Author:Sarah Chana Radcliffe [Sarah Chana Radcliffe ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443403139
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

Introducing the CLeaR Method

The process of a child’s education starts on the first day of birth. The way the baby is handled, the environment around him and the emotional tone of the home all teach the infant about the world he’s just entered. Some active educational interventions are used by parents even in the first months of a baby’s life—if we consider “praise” to be an active intervention (“that was a good burp!”). Moreover, even in the first months and years, babies are exposed to the world of limitations. Sucking at the breast is great for a nursing toddler; biting is not acceptable. Playing with the pots and pans is a fine project; playing with the knives is not. Crawling around the family room is okay, but exploring the bathroom is not allowed.

Certainly, as soon as babies can get around on their own, specific educational interventions become a necessity in every home. The baby now has to learn that he or she cannot touch everything, go everywhere, or do everything—destructive or dangerous activities must be curtailed. At first, parents can solve the problem by simply lifting the baby and moving her elsewhere. However, this is a very short-term solution! The active baby must somehow be persuaded to avoid problematic activities and encouraged to engage in safe and positive ones.

Persuading children to engage in appropriate behaviors and refrain from inappropriate ones is called “discipline”—meaning guidance, education and socialization. Even 1-year-olds are responsive to some forms of guidance. Although a child’s language skills may be insufficient for processing instructions and reasons, his or her emotional skills have been powerful instruments for learning from the first days of life. Parents can employ these emotions for constructive education. A careful use of the “pleasure principle” provides much of the education that this young group requires. The CLeaR Method is a form of guidance that uses the pleasure principle to shape a child’s behavior. It is the first actual discipline skill that parents will practice. All desirable behaviors can be reinforced by attending to them with the first two steps of the CLeaR Method: commenting and labeling. The parent must use observing to identify when a desirable behavior is occurring. Then the parent can give an appropriate comment and label—and perhaps even a reward. For babies who do not yet understand the words, the accompanying emotional information conveyed through tone of voice, pitch, facial expression and other forms of body language serves to convey pleasure. Moreover, even small babies can be “rewarded” with a hug and kiss or an excited clapping of hands. All of this positive attention causes the child to engage in the desirable behavior more often.

Very little attention should be given to the undesirable behaviors. Lack of attention tends to extinguish behavior in people of any age, including even infants. Purposeful failure to attend can therefore be employed as a gentle intervention that discourages harmless undesirable behaviors. (It is in no way to be confused with unhealthy or abusive forms of “ignoring” in which a parent actually punishes a child with lack of attention.

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