Discipline for Life: Getting It Right with Children - Hardcover

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Madelyn Swift, M.Ed., is a nationally acclaimed author, speaker, and authority on discipline, family dynamics, and personal communication. Madelyn is President of Childright, an educational consulting firm which provides training to educators, administrators, parents, and corporations. Her experiences as a parent, teacher, school psychologist, and businesswoman have contributed to her realistic approach. She speaks throughout the U.S. and Canada on discipline, problem-solving, human relations, communication skills, dealing with angry people, and building self-esteem. Her captivating and insightful keynotes and seminars shine with warmth, humor, and humanness and achieve a unique balance among real life situations, sound guiding principles, and easy-to-understand strategies. Madelyn completed her Master of Education degree at Bowling Green State University and her certification as a school psychologist from the State of Ohio. Madelyn is the author of Discipline for Life: Getting it Right with Children ( 1999) and Getting it Right with Teens ( 2000). She is in the process of writing her third book.

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Anyone who cares about children will appreciate this warm, humorous book presented in easy-to-use sections. Madelyn Swift provides a down to earth, yet uplifting approach to discipline, including practical tips, to help you:

Gain cooperation without losing your mind

Build self-esteem and develop character

Handle mistakes positively

Be effective without being mean or ugly

Select discipline techniques with certainty

Create confidence and courage

Discipline with integrity...at last

Avoid power struggles

Develop respect as a second language

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When my oldest son first started drawing, he drew a picture of me as the perfect mom with blonde hair, red cheeks, a smile, a sun shining brightly, and a warm red heart - Mommy the Good. On the other side of that very same paper, he drew a second picture, a different version of me. This one had blue and white scraggly hair, a zigzag line for a mouth, no sun, and a very cold green heart. Perhaps most telling is the missing circle which would have delineated my head, which I feel represented so effectively my loss of integrity - Mommy the Bad. Never think for a moment that your children do not notice. In truth, I was both of these mommies; he, in his naivete, had captured my essence. Clearly, something needed to be done. Mommy the Bad needed to go, to be exorcized.

Early on, I recognized two factors in my poor parenting. First, and most importantly, what I practiced and what I believed were two different things. My integrity - that elusive ability to match believed principles with practiced principles - was not intact. I constantly found myself dealing with my son much more nastily and harshly than I wished (that was Mommy the Bad). Further, I found myself using practices I knew were neither right nor helpful. I did not wish to teach my children practices or ideas in which I did not truly believe, yet that is exactly what I found myself doing. I had been teaching him that I had the right to hurt him if I did not like his behavior. But, I also felt that no one was allowed to hurt me if they did not like my behavior. I had tried to buy him off and thus, I taught him that it was all right to be bought. I had also used and therefore taught him disrespect. I scared myself with the person I had become so quickly and completely. I did not like Mommy the Bad. Nothing had so baffled and beaten me as trying to rear my son, nothing (not school, not career, not even marriage) had brought forth and shown me the worst of who I was.

Secondly, I simply did not have enough skills, strategies, nor techniques to be a helpful, healthy parent. Neither did I know how to evaluate and select techniques. I needed to learn more, much more. Most jobs or positions require training; generally, the more complicated the job, the longer the training needs to be. Well, it does not get more complex than parenting. Many of us went to college for years to qualify for our occupations, and if we are honest, we admit to having needed on-the-job practice in our fields before we really became skilled. Too often, parents tackle the job of parenting with little or no training and expect themselves to be skilled from the start. This is not only unfair, but also unrealistic.