Name: 6 Positive Discipline Techniques to Improve Child Behavior | Dad University
Uploaded: 2025-05-07T14:15:18.000Z
Duration: 13 min 52 s
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Whether you are parenting, teaching, or coaching, understanding the techniques of positive discipline can be extremely helpful in dealing with children's behavior.

Adverbs of degree

There are no bad kids, just bad behavior.

In this video, we're going over six positive discipline techniques to improve child behavior.

Hey guys, I'm Jason Kreidman, creator of the Dad University Parenting Program.

I help dads gain more confidence in their parenting, improve their mindset, and learn effective discipline strategies.

Before we get to the tips, I wanted to let you know about my free online parenting class, six proven strategies to be a better father.

You're going to want to take advantage of this.

So I'll put a link in the description below, and you can choose a time that works best for you.

Positive discipline was originally a book published in the early 1980s by Dr. Jane Nelson.

Dr. Nelson's philosophies and teachings were based on the work of psychiatrists Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikers.

Dr. Nelson, along with Lynn Lott, expanded positive discipline into additional books, programs, and seminars to teach young people how to be more responsible, respectful, and resourceful members of their communities.

I was introduced to positive discipline when I first started taking parenting classes, and it definitely has had an impact and influence in the teachings for Dad University.

Dr. Nelson has done tremendous work and has helped so many people learn valuable information over the years.

Dr. Nelson created five criteria for positive discipline.

Number one, positive discipline is firm and kind.

This means being respectful to the child, but also being respectful to the needs of the situation.

If you are only kind, you're too permissive.

And if you're only firm, you're going to be too strict or authoritarian.

So being kind and firm is essential to positive discipline.

Number two, positive discipline helps children feel a sense of belonging and significance.

We all want to feel like we are part of something.

But if it's not, it might be our community, a cause, or even the greater world.

But we all want to feel significant and be a part of something.

For children especially, when they don't feel a sense of belonging, they will act out.

And typically they will act out in a way that isn't good.

And so that's either showing bad behavior or acting out in a negative way.

Number three, positive discipline is effective long-term versus a short-term fix.

While punishment might curb behavior in the short-term or for that specific moment, we have found that positive discipline works over the long-term and is a more beneficial way of handling these kinds of situations.

Number four, positive discipline teaches valuable social and life skills.

We want our children to learn, cooperate, solve problems, and be respectful towards others.

And positive discipline is a great way to help that happen.

Number five, positive discipline helps children discover that they are more capable.

We often underestimate the capabilities of our children.

But when you use positive discipline, you allow their capabilities to shine.

And this is positive for both you and the child.

So let's go over some positive discipline techniques that you can implement.

We are really good at pointing out when our children do something wrong, but what about when they do something good or something that we asked of them?

Positive reinforcement is verbalizing your gratitude towards the child for the positive behavior that they are displaying.

For example, thank you so much for putting your trash in the trash can.

I really appreciate you coming home on time.

You were playing so nice with your sister.

If you wanna see the behavior repeated, there is no better way than to provide positive reinforcement.

If you're not sure that it works, think about it for yourself.

When your partner or anyone else says something positive about something you did, doesn't that make you wanna repeat the behavior?

Let's say you clean the kitchen and maybe you don't normally clean the kitchen and your partner comes home and says, wow, thank you so much for cleaning the kitchen.

You don't think that you'll consider cleaning the kitchen again?

We all like to feel appreciated and that gratitude reinforces our behavior.

Another technique for positive discipline, number two, listen to them.

If they are having emotions and they are feeling sad, angry, or frustrated, allow them to express their emotions and hear them.

Really listen to what they are expressing.

We often discount children's feelings and their voice because we are looking at the situation from our own perspective, from our adult brain and the adult perspective.

And we simply don't agree with what they're saying or how they're doing it, or we just don't wanna hear it.

Positive discipline uses empathy to look at a situation and feel it from the child's perspective.

So again, we're not looking at it from our adult perspective and brain and our own emotions.

We're looking at it from the perspective of the child.

Have you ever said, what were you thinking?

But then truthfully, the answer that they give, you don't give much credit to or value it very much.

You're just simply asking those questions with no real right answer available.

And part of that is, is that we are looking at the situation again from our own perspective.

And oftentimes the children won't know how to articulate what they're going through or how they're feeling.

So instead they might just say, I don't know.

A good way to combat I don't know is to say, well, what if you did know?

And sometimes they may still not have an answer.

But if they do say something, you say, okay, I understand, I hear where you're coming from.

So how could we have done this differently?

What could we have done differently to have a different outcome?

And this is where the coaching and learning process happens.

Again, we want to listen to them and show them that we are listening.

Even if we're going to guide them in a different direction or onto a different path.

Number three, ask questions versus telling.

One of the criteria that Dr. Nelson mentioned about positive discipline and its importance is that children are capable.

And one of the best ways to help children become capable is to ask them questions versus telling them what to do.

For example, instead of saying, hey, go put on your pajamas, you might say, hey, what do we do after we take a bath?

Or instead of saying, please pick up your toys, you might ask the question, hey, what do we do after we're done playing with our toys?

Asking questions forces the child to think and come up with a solution.

When we tell the child what to do, they simply can kind of go through the process a little bit mindless and not have to think about it.

So that doesn't develop their brain or their problem-solving skills.

Doing this over and over again will help develop their brain and make them more capable.

They begin to do things on their own, needing less prompting from us.

Kids want to feel like they are in control.

And when we offer them choices, they get to choose, which allows them to feel like they are in control.

Of course, you're going to give them two choices in which you're happy with either choice, but nonetheless, they get to feel like they're in control because they get to make the choice.

So you may pick out two shirts and say, hey, would you like to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt?

But either way, they're going to get dressed.

Or another, would you like to go upstairs fast like a cheetah or slow like a turtle?

Do you want your pasta with sauce or without sauce?