BE AN ASKING NOT A TELLING PARENT

Instead of Telling, try Asking.

An example might be knocking something over by accident - ask your child calmly - What were you trying to do? how do you feel about what happened? what did you learn from it? what ideas to you have to solve the problem of prevent it from happening again?

Help you child make better choices by asking instead of telling - what’s your plan for doing your homework? how can you and your sister work to sort this out? what do we do with all these toys at the end of the day?

Just telling, or repeating can lead to tuning out or defensiveness, asking allows the child to feel capable, part of the solution, not the problem.

Make sure when you ask a question you are really interested - curious - about your child’s view. Make sure your tone of voice is friendly.

Some situations are too serious, or even dangerous to ask instead of tell - that is OK - there are lots of different parenting tools in Positive Discipline.