How to Discipline Kids Without Losing Their Love and Respect

"If all you have is a hammer, everything in life is a nail."

I love the idea of positive discipline, I really do. You set limits, but you don't focus on the limits or on the consequences of breaching those limits. You focus on building up a relationship with your child that makes your child actually want to listen.

At the same time, traditional disciplinarians call people who follow this path "permissive parents." And as much as positive parents raise a hue and cry about the fact that they do set limits for their children, it's sometimes hard to see how that can be done. When you tell your child "Don't do that," and they do it anyway, and you're not allowed to punish them for it...What on earth do you do?

Luckily, there are experts out there like Dr. Laura Markham who can give a list of wonderful alternatives to punishments and lectures. Take a look at her punishment alternatives and think about how you can incorporate them into your own parenting journey.

The truth? I do punish my kids. I do send them to their rooms when they can't stop slinging blocks at each other's heads. I do tell them that it's time to clean up, and if they don't, they're "choosing" to miss playing with those toys the next time. But with these punishment alternatives in our arsenal, at least punishment isn't our only tool. We can go for the more positive discipline techniques first, and only turn to punishment if all else fails. That's the best way to discipline kids without losing their love and respect, while still helping them learn right from wrong when necessary.

I've seen people punish their kids with a timeout for not eating their vegetables, or with a toy taken away because they didn't want to share it with a friend. But kids who don't want to eat their vegetables aren't doing it to rebel. And kids who are having a hard time sharing a toy aren't doing it to be mean. They're doing it because they're expressing preferences or showing a lack of skills.

Don't treat punishments as the only hammer in your toolkit. Get a screwdriver, a wrench, and maybe even a bit of sandpaper. Otherwise, you'll be smashing your child when you could be gently perfecting her.

Research-Based Baby Hygiene: Why Your Floors Shouldn't Be As Clean As You Think

Mom, stop worrying that your grandkids are crawling on my dirty floor. I'm doing it for their own good.

That's right. A new study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology has found what parents like me have always hoped to be true about baby hygiene: Babies who come across mouse droppings, cat dander, and cockroach droppings before age 1 had decreased rates of allergies at age 3. In fact, this allergy protection actually increased if the child was also exposed to plenty of unhealthy bacteria.

Nobody would ever say that my floors are clean enough to eat off of. But in light of this new research, maybe that's a good thing. Throw baby hygiene out the window. Hey, Mom -- I'm helping your grandkids' immune systems!

Parents of Late Talkers Can Relax: New Research Says Your Child Will Be Fine

My first child was an early talker. At 18 months, we had full conversations with each other. In complete sentences.

And honestly, I thought I deserved a pat on the back. After all, it was my good parenting that taught him to talk. We talked all day -- about the flowers on the trees we were driving by, about the bird hiding behind the cloud in his picture book, about the tails on his stuffed animals. I was just a great parent, and those parents out there with kids who were spitting out one-word sentences, well they were...not.

Along came my second son. At 18 months he had exactly three words: "Ta-ta" (his name for my husband), "Da-da" (his name for my older son), and..."golf cart."

Yes, "golf cart."

I waited anxiously for the day that he would say my name instead of the name of a sports vehicle. And I realized that being a "late talker" has nothing to do with parenting style. Like many other aspects of a child's personality, you can nudge it along, but not control it.

But parents of late talkers wonder whether their children are destined for failure in life. After all, social circles thrive on verbal communication, and kids who can't communicate their needs tend to have plenty of tantrums as toddlers, out of frustration. Combine the two, and it's easy to imagine that your child is doomed to an anti-social, miserable existence.

Luckily, a recent study published in Pediatrics suggests that that's not the case. They looked at children who scored at or below the 15th percentile for language development at age 2, and followed them at ages 5, 8, 10, 14, and 17. They had no higher risk of behavioral or emotional problems than children who communicated well as toddlers.

Their conclusion? "Expressive vocabulary delay at the age of 2 years is not in itself a risk factor for later behavioral and emotional disturbances."

Parents of late talkers, take a deep breath. Your child will be fine.

Source: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/06/29/peds.2010-2782.abstract

Why That Lollypop Can Endanger Your Child's Life

When your baby starts to crawl, you quickly race around, babyproofing the whole house. "Don't drop that penny!" you scream, scrambling over to save your baby.

But as that baby grows older and starts to eat solid foods, it's easy to let up on your paranoia. After all, once your child is three years old, you can tell that she can chew well, right? So what could be the harm in feeding her absolutely anything at all, from popcorn to peanuts to lollypops?

Turns out chewing ability isn't the issue. I recently interviewed Dr. Tony Kille, an otolaryngologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin, about choking hazards. He explained that even when a child’s second set of molars begin to come in, after age two, they are still developmentally unable to manage certain foods well. In time, a child will need to learn how to manipulate the food safety with her lips, tongue, and the rest of her mouth. So the whole "but I can see that she knows how to chew well" excuse just doesn't hold water.

And choking is a real hazard, one that can have severe aftereffects, including brain damage and death. One study in the August 2013 issue of Pediatrics analyzed data collected from emergency rooms around the country between the years 2001 and 2009. It found that about 12,400 children below age 15 are treated in emergency rooms each year for non-fatal choking. Sixty-two percent of these cases involved children under age six.

The most common cause of choking was hard candy (yes, that includes lollypops that were accidentally/intentionally sucked off the stick), which was the culprit in 16 percent of the incidents. Other types of candy caused another 13 percent, meat (other than hot dogs) caused 12 percent, bones caused 12 percent, and fruits and vegetables caused 10 percent.

Think that choking isn't such a big deal? Ten percent of the cases analyzed required hospitalization, and many of these also required a bronchoscopy, a hardcore surgical procedure.

So before you hand your child a hard candy, think twice. Do you really want to deal with the consequences?

Source: The New York Times. "Choking Still Sends Too Many Children to the ER." 7/31/13

Fear of Recession Causes Harsher Parenting (Study Released 8/5/13)

When a recession hits, people start feeling nervous about the future. For many parents, it seems that this nervousness can strongly affect how they parent their kids.

Published in the August 5 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a recent study found that many mothers began using harsher methods of discipline with their kids when the economy began its slide into a recession in 2007. These mothers described yelling, threatening, spanking, or slapping their child more often once the recession started.

A few interesting points about this study:

• This held true only for mothers in the study who had a specific gene variant of DRD2, a gene that helps produce the neurochemical dopamine. Mothers without this variant did not parent more harshly at the start of the recession.
• These same mothers did not have the same levels of harshness just a little while later, even while the recession was in full swing. Some experts think that this may be because the uncertainty at the beginning of the recession was even more powerful than the reality that hit later on.
• Once the economy stabilized and started to improve, parents with this gene variant of DRD2 actually parented less harshly than those without this gene variant. In other words, these mothers react to their environment -- whether good or bad -- and parent accordingly.

Source: US News. "Economic Recession Tied to 'Harsh' Parenting From Mothers." Aug 5 2013.

Welcome to Research-Based Parenting

You've read parenting book after parenting book, and somehow you still never feel quite sure of yourself. After all, who actually writes these books, anyway?

In some cases, the answer might surprise you. Some popular parenting books are written by people who carry no credentials at all, who know next to nothing about basic parenting research, and who ignore any studies that may not support their parenting techniques. "BUT IT WORKS!" they say. Sure, it works for some kids. But do you trust that it works with most kids? Or that it's the best choice for your kid, even if it does work?

We live in an era where people demand proof. In order for us to believe in something, it takes more than a quack promising us that he's found the elixir of life. We demand double-blind studies, peer reviewed in academic journals and found to be watertight.

So we don't believe in hocus pocus when it comes to medicine, psychology, or even business. But somehow, when it comes to parenting, we entrust our precious children's upbringing to a bunch of people who have found something that they think works...but that hasn't been proven to do so, or to do so without any other adverse consequences.

Over the past several years, I've worked as a freelancer for parenting magazines and websites, and I've found so many parenting news articles that somehow never make it to the newsstands. As informed parents, we should be on top of the latest research when it comes to parenting, just as we are when it comes to almost every other aspect of our lives. This blog will describe current studies on parenting and give you the hardcore research about what works...and what doesn't.

I hope you gain as much from this information as I have.