Document text
http://www.omniture.com --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Hot Topics Forum Photo Gallery Past Readers Polls Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Online Games Movie Preview August 28, 2006 Is there such a thing as gentle discipline? By Jennifer Margulis Tidings Correspondent Before you have children it's easy to be smug about discipline. You see a child hurling spinach on the floor in a restaurant or having a screaming fit in the produce aisle of the supermarket and you think confidently to yourself that you will never allow your future children to be so _______ (insert negative adjective of your choice here: disruptive, rude, inconsiderate). Then you actually have children and you realize that your former expectations about how they would behave and real-life child development are often not one and the same (to put it mildly). "We don't have a clue what our children will evoke in us until after we have them," says psychologist Harriet Lerner, author of "The Mother Dance." "Your kids will make you love them in a way you never thought possible, but they'll also teach you that you are definitely not the nice, calm, highly evolved person you fancied yourself to be before you became a mother." Nice? Calm? Highly evolved? I'm the kind of person who, when I read Buddhist Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's thoughtful words about mastering mindfulness can't stop my monkey mind, as the Buddhists call it, from thinking: "Ha! He must never have had children!" My friend Hilary Flower, a mom of three and a writer in St. Petersburg, Florida, felt the same way. Then the executive director of the La Leche League, Judy Torgus, asked Hilary (who had already written a book on tandem nursing) if she'd be willing to write a book on "gentle discipline." When Judy first brought the idea to Hilary in 2003 during a LLL conference in San Francisco, Hilary thought she was joking. Pregnant with her third, Hilary had brought her older two children to the conference. They were living testaments to the lack of discipline in her family: running wild in the hotel room, swishing behind the curtains, interrupting the adults with their giggles and funny faces. But Judy managed to convince Hilary that it didn't matter that she was "just another mom" and no expert on discipline, that there were dozens of books by "experts" and that real live discipline is often a sticky mess that might be best captured by someone in the parenting trenches. Instead of offering neat solutions or expert advice, the result of that invitation is a 360-page paperback called "Adventures in Gentle Discipline," that is full of stories, quotes, and anecdotes. While some readers might find it frustrating that the book does not offer a one-size-fits-all theory of how to discipline with love and respect (that is, how to practice gentle discipline), the book is more of a conversation or an invitation than a treatise on how-to-fix-your-family's-discipline-problems. There's something for every parent in the plethora of voices and examples in the book and one of Hilary's take-home messages is that there is not one technique that works for every family or every child every time. She emphasizes the idea that since every child is different, and every child develops at his or her own pace, any discipline method needs to be tailored accordingly. "Doing gentle discipline is not about doing it perfectly," Hilary told me when I asked her about the book over email. "Believing that you have to be Ms. Perfect (and that someone else is doing it perfectly) is so discouraging and misleading Put another way, the most valuable lesson is that you can be yourself, 100% totally yourself, and fully practice gentle discipline, because it's all about being as empathic and respectful as you can in the moment." Now excuse me while I go peel my toddler off the window sill, put my 7-year-old in her room for yanking her younger sister's hair, and suggest my sensitive 5-year-old have some quiet time at the drawing table by herself. Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising Inkjet Printers Student Loans Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Advertisement: Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.