A Better Way to Discipline Your Child - Episode 41

Ever wish you can just live one day in peace with your child/children? Ever want to just hide inside your pantry or bedroom for some peace and quiet. In this podcast, we talk about how to redirect your child after connecting. Join us as we dive deep in sharing how to minimize your children’s tantrums.

Please subscribe. We look forward to reading your comments. ❤️ 💫

TIMESTAMP:
►00:00 - Intro
►00:08 - What does Yuntaku mean? 
►00:35- TOPIC:  How to Discipline your Child With Heart
►00:47 - Recent Happenings: Our daughter is maturing 
►03:37  - What does discipline mean? 
►04: 22 - 3 Main Questions to ask yourself when disciplining your child
►05:32-   2 Main Principles: Patience and Consistency 
►07:20-  Insight + Empathy = Mindsight.
►10:58 - How to R-E-D-I-R-E-C-T your child. 

QUESTION: Have you tried using the redirect method? How has it changed your child? 

MUSIC:
► Copyright Chillhop Music - https://chillhop.com

#tantrumtotraquility #nodramadiscipline #riseinlove #realizeyourtruenature

Podcast Transcription

The transcription below is provided for your convenience, please excuse any errors made by the automated service.

Tamo: This is episode 41. 

Akko: And the topic of the day is how to discipline your child without drama . And before we get started, please take a quick moment to subscribe to our show. Now let's get back to our recent happening. So recently. Our daughter has been. 

Really showing some maturity. 

Tamo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's two and a half and it's been quite difficult. I don't want to say it's a terrible twos, just because. Just same terrible two is, it's not really a positive thing right? But the twos are where they're really trying to find their independence. Exactly I just started to walk around their body movements are getting better and just, you want to do stuff. And it's been quite a difficult journey for us, but little by little. We've been practicing what we preach.

and really explaining to her why things are and. why not to do certain things that could hurt her? And also giving her a lot of freedom in the, areas that are safe and offers a lot or learning. So it's been really great to see. She's been starting to listen to us. Although of course, nothing is perfect, but she has made so much progress. I'm very much impressed and it's been great. 

Akko: Yeah. it has we still have our tantrums here and there, but. 

Tamo: Yeah.

Akko: Oh, I would say what it's like probably shortened or much less. we can actually catch it before. It goes into afull blown and tantrums with just the stuff. Yeah. Like Tamo said we've been preaching. Especially the one that, we talked about connecting and redirecting, and we're going to talk about me direction today, but yeah. Stuff like the connection part. I think it really helps her because whenever she gets into.like a crying spree or. It gets into those moods. She just really wants a hug and. 

Tamo: Yeah. Yeah. I have to say. That is exactly the words that I needed to use. It's the connection. Connecting and then really giving her the space to express how she's feeling and then be okay with that.

Akko: exactly 

that makes sense big difference. Not the behavior. but validating the feelings. Yeah. 

Tamo: Yeah. And then redirecting her to. go into a more positive. Action, right? 

Akko: Yeah. Yeah. It's really helped to just even giving her like, okay, we can't do this, but you can do this or that.

Tamo: And giving her choices. 

That has been awesome too, 

Akko: Yeah. 

Tamo: So awesome. And yeah,Thanks Akko for it bringing all those things up and studying that and for both of us for putting that into action. 

Akko: absolutely 

Tamo: Really great. Okay. So going into the topic of the day today's topic is how did discipline your child

 with heart. And Akko has been continuing to read the book, no drama discipline, and it's been a really fantastic book and she's been teaching me. A lot of what she's been reading. So in this episode, we want to continue that. 

Akko teach me what you've learned and, let's share it with everyone else.

Akko: Yeah. Yeah. So this book, I cannot recommend enough. Like it's been a game changer, actually. It's a must read. And I think it will help a lot of families out there. That's

struggling with. Their child . Misbehaving and just not listening to them. I think it will help a lot.

by reading this book. Or just listening to this podcast because here is a cliff note version of what I've read. And we want to share with you guys? 

Tamo: Cool. Yeah, that sounds great. And I'm listening to you. Saying, the word discipline, right? 

Can you explain discipline and I want to just make sure, because when I think of discipline, I think about punishment in my case, yeah. Discipline can actually be in my upbringing. discipline meant Punishment. Yeah. If you can share what your thoughts are or what your definition of discipline is 

Akko: Yeah, yeah. So with our upbringing, And We thought discipline equals punishment or consequences, but in reality, the definition of discipline means to teach. And so it comes from a Latin word, which means to teach learning.

So what we want to do by disciplining our child is to teach our child. 

Tamo: Yeah, that's a really big difference.

compared to a punishment versus being taught. 

Akko: Yeah, exactly. 

Tamo: Yeah 

Akko: Exactly. So there's three. Main question that you probably want to ask yourself when you're disciplining your child. So that is why did my child act this way? What was happening internally and externally? 

Again, I think we've explained in the previous podcast, like things can happen. You have to know the context of what's happening in that situation. Maybe the child going to get enough to sleep. Maybe the child is hangry. There's a lot of reasons why they're acting the way they're acting. Number two, what lesson do I want to teach? So what is it that you want to teach. And then third one is how can I best teach it? If your child is not really receptive to. Like a conversation and they're more receptive to Maybe playing, you can maybe reenact it by playing with their stuffed animal or whatnot. That makes sense.

Tamo: Show the child. This is what happens in putting that, stuffed animal and we'll getting hurt or didn't like it showing it sad, things like that. She can he can understand 

Akko: And you can actually involve the child to. So you can involve the child and saying what do you think is happening? What should we do when the person hit so right they can get involved in the whole discipline in portion. 

Tamo: Okay. 

Akko: Yeah, those are some of the things that you want to ask yourself before. Teaching. 

And in the book, they have two principles that you want to follow. So one is to wait until your child is ready and two is to be consistent, but not rigid. We need to be flexible, but, You need to follow through. What this means is you shouldn't rush into anything. 

And demand your child to really understand. So you just want to wait until your child is ready. So if they're still crying, they're not ready. 

The downstairs brain and the more primitive brain, the reptilian brain is still engaged. So what you want to do is you want to wait until they're ready. Wait until they're more calm.

Wait till the upstairs brain, the more conceptual, the more human brain is involved. And that's when you can talk to your child eye to eye and say let's do a do over. When you want my attention, you can say, mommy, can you please? Give me a hug. Can you please? Whatever it may be. 

Tamo: So you're saying, instead of saying just no don't do that or don't talk to me that way instead of that, just saying, okay. That's not how you talk to your mom or Dada or anyone else. 

Let's try it again. Let's see it this way Yeah, 

Akko: telling Okay more respectful way. 

And then yeah, that's how you can see it.

And so you're already teaching them, Hey, I know you can do it. By saying, okay, let's do a do over. And you can teach them how to talk in a more respectful way. 

And yeah, so again, don't rush and then be consistent, but not rigid. 

Tamo: Yeah. that's great. I can also see how that would apply to my situation. My situation that I've talked about in past episodes which was getting our daughter ready to go out and she wasn't ready. She wanted to play a little bit. And so I waited until she settled down, we played a little bit. And then after she was good to go and it was much easier. And so not every experience or not every situation will allow for that, but I can see how those principles fit exactly in it made for a much better experience for both of us. 

Akko: Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So moving on Dan Siegel writes about a formula in this book and that is insight. plus empathy equals mindsight. So insight plus empathy equal. Mindsight.

So mindsight is an ability to see our own mind. as well as the mind of another. So it allows us or the child to develop meaningful relationships while also maintaining a healthy and independent sense of self. So let's go over these words. So insight means you're helping your child understand their own feelings and their responses to difficult situations. So it's like introspecting.

Tamo: Yeah, And maybe we can say like a separate, the two words. So in, and then site like a site for the inside 

Akko: which is pretty 

cool Oh Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And then empathy, which means. Understanding and feeling what others are feeling. So you give your child practice and reflecting on how their action impacts others. Or how the others are feeling. 

Tamo: Yeah, that's a great point. And more and more going out on into the future. Empathy is going to be even more important as humans, yeah What people are going through. Exactly 

Akko: Yeah, emotional intelligence is getting really big, putting importance on the EQ along with the iQ. Right yeah. 

Yeah and so understanding mindsight repairs Your child. So you ask her child. 

What they can do to make things right. You're actually showing the kid how to problem-solve.

by Themselves and that's a really big life skills that you are trying to teach your child at a young age. 

Tamo: that's awesome because the insight that I had from that. Is that. If you punish your child, 

It's pretty much just stop what you're doing. You're punished yeah Out or whatever it is.

And you just get in trouble. And the parent in most cases, I would think I expresses anger at the child for doing a certain action. And that's the end of it and with this method, you're actually teaching that, Hey this action. Isn't very much undesirable. but. What can you do . To. Make it better. What can you do to repair what can you do to fix the situation? And yeah, critical thinking. It's empathy. It's insight. It's really fantastic. Yeah definitely the next level of understanding 

parenting.

Akko: I wish i knew these skills at a young age. Some adults need to develop these skills because maybe as a child, they weren't able to pick up those skills. 

Tamo: Oh, no, not at all because looking at back out my childhood it's not any our parents' fault or anything like that, but those tools, they didn't understand those tools They didn't know. those tools existed. Yeah this. It was written way after we were born, so there wasn't any information like this, but I can see if we did have this. Wow. Like we would have had a really great start 

to it right Yeah.

Yeah. 

Akko: just had to, we had to just learn on the way, 

yeah, you've been. 

Tamo: our parents, but it's a personal work. 

Yeah. 

Akko: exactly The experience through reading books. Yeah working on ourselves. If we can. Instill this into our kids wow, what a game changer? And the world will become a better place. Yeah.

Tamo: I guess if we look at it from a bigger perspective this is what we can do as parents to help improve the world because how we raise our children if they have a headstart and when I say see headstart, I don't mean, it's competition between your child and other 

yeah Not at all. What I'm seeing is a headstart in health, in emotional health, physical so health and spiritual health and so if we can give our children a headstart. It's so much better. They don't have to go through what we went through.

Exactly 

Akko: You can 

Tamo: express it become themselves even sooner. And then that will benefit the world in turn.

Right So yeah 

Akko: So, an easy way to understand this type of discipline is by remembering the acronym. R-E-D-I-R-E-C-T. So 

R is reduced words. 

E is embrace emotions. 

D is describe don't preach. 

I is involve your child in the discipline. 

 R is reframe. No. Into a conditional. Yes.

E is emphasized the positive.

C is creatively approach the situation. 

T is teach mindsight tools. 

So that's the redirect. So I'll just go ahead and just briefly go over the redirect

R reduce words. So you want to reduce the amount of words that you use.

don't lecture the kids about their mistakes. You don't really want a long-winded conversation about that. 

E is embraced emotion So you're trying to validate their emotions, but not really their misbehavior. So that's the difference that makes the biggest difference. So you want to validate that they're angry, but not validating that misbehavior.

D is described. So you don't want to preach. You want to show them and help them recognize, the bad decisions that they're making. So let's say that they're supposed to put their shoes away or whatnot. You can describe the situation by saying there's a lot of shoes right in front of the front door. that's another way of seeing it so that they can be like, oh yeah, there are a lot of shoes blocking the front door. Oh, it's because I didn't put the shoes away. So you're planting the seed in their mind so that they can problem-solve themselves you're Showing them what stuff to look at.

I is involve your child in the discipline. So you want to make your child feel more involved in the process of discipline. Then they feel more respected. They feel like they have a say in this and you're promoting the whole teamwork in the parent and child. So you want to always, even in couples, if you are getting into an argument, the argument is the enemy and you. And your partner are.

on the same 

team. right Yeah.

So you're not fighting each other. 

 same goes for this discipline. You and your child are in the same team. And you are trying to figure out how to conquer this enemy which is the bad behavior. 

So that's something that you want to do. You want to involve your child in the discipline? You can ask them. Okay. If I did this. What kind of consequences. You guys should be able to agree on. And then R is reframe a note into a conditional. Yes. So instead of saying, no, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. Kids will Be defeated If they hear so many no's. So instead of saying no, 

Let's say they want to go to the store or they want to go to a friend's house, you can say. You can say, of course you can go to the store. Of course you can go to your friend's house. How about this weekend? 

So you can reframe it that way

so that you're not technically saying no, but it's a conditional. Yes. 

E is emphasize the positive. 

You don't want scold the negative behavior, but you want to embrace the positive behavior.

You want to encourage those positive traits?

So whenever they're doing something great. 

Emphasize that they're doing something great. You don't want to always praise them by saying, oh my God. You're so good. You're so smart. Because that can also lead. Down the rabbit hole, because then they're going to be like, oh, I'm not smart

 Yeah 

Tamo: You don't want that to be the goal. You want the. Effort. the, grit you had all the positive things. 

Leading up to the praise or the goal is the more important. 

Akko: things right Yeah exactly. So that's something that you want to really focus on, so you want to say. That tower is so high stuff like that. Not oh my gosh. Good job. You are so brilliant.

They get used to that and that doesn't really help a child grow. 

Tamo: Or something like, oh yeah. You've. I've used a lot of blocks to build this. That's a really tall tower that you made.

how many blocks are there and just, involved them in that way too. 

Akko: Exactly. Exactly and next is Creatively approach the situation. So not all kids are the same and some kids might be more playful than others. Like our daughter.

She loves to play chase. So I feel like once she gets that out of her system, she's ready and receptive to learn. So that's something that we go to a lot. as far as teaching her. But, you can do. You can do a lot of creative games. 

Tamo: In our case, our daughter really loves it poop emoji so we created a character out of it. We have a stuffed Doll in that poop emoji form and then we use it to talk to our daughter.

And so we have a funny voice for it.

Hey, let's get ready, things like that. And then. She gets really excited. Yeah That's been a creative way to connect with their daughter and teach her and ask her to do things 

Akko: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

Next is teach mindsight tools. So this is pretty much what we've been doing this whole time. You're connecting. You're redirecting. You're teaching your child how to empathize. You're teaching your child, how to problem solve. You're teaching your child how to listen to their emotions, and how to listen to their body. So that is. the redirect tool. This way of teaching really helps the child build the life skill of problem solving critically thinking. Empathizing just a lot. That you can teach your child. 

And sometime you did all the steps and sometime it just won't work. So I do want to let parents know that Dan Siegel and Tina Bryson.explain that sometimes these tools might not work for the child.

as in, in some situations, not all the time. It will work. But not all the time. 

Tamo: Yeah, these things, it really depends on the situation. Depends on the child and how the child is feeling, how you're feeling. So these are the ideals to. 

Strive for. You don't be hard on yourself. Don't be hard on your children for this. This is just a great map.

to understand, the territory of, how your.

child 

can be disciplined.

Which means. 

in, our case, we're using guys.

Akko: Yeah so Yeah.

Yeah Yeah. 

In the book they talked about a situation where a daughter wanted the mom take her to school but then, the mom had to do stuff like the mom had to go to work and stuff. So she just literally physically couldn't. So the dad had to, and the mom stayed there, validated her feelings. Did the conditional yes. And did. pretty much all there is to the redirect.

But the daughter just kept crying and she just wouldn't take that. So what had happened was that the dad had to carry his crying daughter. So situations like that will happen. It just sometimes it just doesn't work. Like we said.

Tamo: Yeah. So it really depends, but it's great to try it out and continue to try it out because you will get better. Just like we mentioned in our recent happenings our daughter. Yeah And before redirection has been helping so much in we're really starting to see the fruits of that. 

and so know that, their work needs to be put in, when you're putting that effort into parenting your child, just even that focus attention, the love. Will transmit through to your child. Those difficult times do come and we really empathize with you.

Akko: Yes. 

Tamo: It's not easy, but oh, we're also cheering you on. 

Yeah,

exactly. 

The question of the day is have you tried using the redirect method? If, so how has it changed your child? 

Akko: We'd love to hear from you. Please come say hi by commenting on our website, by going to AKKOANDTAMO.COM. That's A-K-K-O-A-N-D-T-A-M-O-.com

and clicking on the podcast tab.

Tamo: All right. See you soon.

Akko: Bye.