C & D - Connection as Discipline

Well, I am going to cheat for C and do D at the same time because I have gotten behind. Surprise. Considering that I’m winging it and forgot about the challenge until the day before, this is not exactly unexpected. I had a great idea for writing a fictional piece about a controversial doctor, but I just never could get that fleshed out. So I’m settling on something that will be easy for me so that I can hopefully move on tomorrow. It’s connection as discipline. What is that? Well, there’s a saying: Connect before you correct. That just means instead of barking orders, you connect with your child first. When you think about it, it just makes sense. All humans crave connection. For some reason, this gets lost in parenting. It’s much too easy to end up becoming dictators barking out orders for our kids to follow so that we can get to the next item on our To Do list. We lose sight of what’s important – the relationship. We blow the connection over a million different things every day. Well, I do. But what does it look like to connect before you correct? Let’s say you’re trying to get your child ready to go somewhere and he needs a diaper change. You can pick him up and take him against his will. Or you can go over to him, make a comment on what he is doing and then tell him it’s time for a diaper change after you’ve connected. It doesn’t have to take long. In fact, sometimes those short little connections can make all the difference in their cooperation level. Of course you want to connect in big ways too. It’s not always easy, but connection as discipline seems to work better than screaming or being harsh. It always seems to work better when you get to the heart of the matter. And people, not just children, are usually going to respond better when they feel connected. It’s just how we are wired.