There is a growing concern among teachers and many professionals working with children that there are too many children around who are surly, rude, unmotivated, and disrespectful of authority, especially to their parents and who are growing up self-centred and with a feeling of entitlement. 

Many parents are at a loss in knowing how to deal with these children, while many others seem to be ignoring the problem.

I’ve recently heard that an absurd reason for many of our children’s behaviour is that they’re using Jacob Zuma as a role model!

Throughout the Western World, there is increasing concern regarding the behaviour and attitude of children. This includes countries such as the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and many others.

The purpose of parenting is to be a guiding hand, assisting the child on the road to adulthood. 

Every child is born with passion and a natural tendency to want to explore their world. 

As they become more and more aware of the world around them, their inborn sense of curiosity clicks in and they want to touch, poke, feel and play with anything that they can get their hands onto.

The conundrum is, that while nurturing is a natural instinct in most mothers, managing a child is not instinctive and this is where the problem begins. 

If we over nurture we tend to over-protect, over-control, and/or over-indulge. This means that the child becomes more and more dependent on the parent.

Over-dependency on the parent means that the child will only focus on what they want to focus on, only persevere with things that they enjoy doing, and unfortunately, this does not usually include schoolwork! 

As a result, they begin opting out of a challenge, develop a fear of failure and are afraid to risk. The consequence of all of this is that the child learns to become helpless. 

The problem is exacerbated when parents aren’t given any tools or constructive advice regarding the parenting skills needed to effectively parent these children.

Dysfunctional discipline styles

In this modern world, many parents are at a loss as to how to maintain their control and authority with their children. 

This uncertainty leads to a great deal of anxiety as they seek to find a way of parenting that will keep them calm and in control. 

This has led to parenting styles that inhibit the child in developing and becoming more independent. 

Parenting plays a very important role in the socialisation of children. 

It has been found that the manner in which parents discipline their children plays a major role in their behaviour. 

Parents should be the main authority figure in a child’s life, authoritative and NOT authoritarian

Studies have found an association between inconsistent, harsh and excessively lax discipline and problematic outcomes in children, most notably delinquency and aggression. 

Mothers who are either very harsh or permissive in their use of discipline tended to have children who were poorly behaved or aggressive.

Further, it has also been found that parents of aggressive, anti-social and non-compliant children are submissive, ambiguous, and inconsistent in their responses to problematic behaviour. 

Also, these parents are likely to reinforce oppositional behaviour by constantly nagging, shouting, coaxing or lecturing their children. 

Disciplining the Smartchoiceparenting way

Do we really have to punish our child?

The word punish implies that you are angry with them.

The key to the SmartChoiceParenting programme (SCPP) enables parents to stay calm, and negotiate rules and pre-empted consequences so that when the child makes a bad choice he’s taking the consequences that he agreed to and not being punished.

If a child leaves their toy lying around the house and the pre-empted rule was that any toy left lying around the house meant that the child did not want that toy. 

  • You give them one reminder where you can act surprised by saying ‘I don’t believe you don’t want this toy’. 
  • If the child responds by saying they want the toy let them know that they’ve got five minutes to put it back where it belongs. 
  • If there’s no action within the five minutes simply confiscate that toy and you put it away.
  • Make the child aware that they made the choice and that they were asking you to please confiscate their toy. 
  • You are able to stay calm and your child owns the problem!

This is because in the pre-empted rules and consequences you would have made it clear to him that by not putting his toy away, he was, in fact, asking you to confiscate his toy for 3 weeks. 

The Key To SCP is to equip parents with the tools that will enable them to stay calm and in control by teaching them how to speak to their child with respect and ensuring that the consequences of a bad choice made by the child, are owned by the child.