All children–and parents–are unique, so I have no clue what age would be best for any particular child-parent pair to start a system of discipline. All I can discuss are ranges when developmental agendas are unfolding and try to give you some heads-ups.

Between 18-36 months, so much happens developmentally that it’s easy to lose sight of the objective. The long-term goal here is cultivating self-control in the child, not parental control of the child. Through your words and your own behavior during this period, you are teaching the basics of judgment and control that will work not only when you are present, but hopefully when you are not, as in those teen years.

Before shame and guilt show up, discipline by distraction is your best hope.  Shame and guilt are critical partners in disciplining children and they develop late in the second year for most kids.  Shame arises when a toddler gets an unexpected, negative reaction to something he/she has done from someone he/she loves. He/she feels instantly deflated and may or may not blush, but he/she clearly registers a negative physical reaction to this interaction. This reaction doesn’t exist earlier because the brain has only just now developed the complex connections between words, behavior and emotions.

What you do next will help the child learn over time that his negative behavior violates your important standards for his well-being, and that there are ways to avoid guilt, which is the primary consequence of shame and hurts just as much. Therefore, once that shame reaction starts, it’s worth adding a firm but simple “No, we don’t jump on the coffee table.” The toddler’s increasing memory skills are sometimes  helping him to remember that even when the coffee table leap looks like fun, the grown-ups don’t like that behavior.

Your consistent, firm,  low-key and brief repetition of the same words and actions in response to his dangerous or uncooperative behavior enable your child to begin to feel emotional distress (shame and guilt) when he breaks those rules. His desire to please you is something to rely on, but not to manipulate. After about18 months of this kind of interaction, your child will show the beginning of a sense of right and wrong. Voila! A conscience starts to emerge just in the nick of time (about pre-K).

Our kids aren’t the only ones feeling shame and guilt. How we manage those emotions in ourselves is related to our own personal character and temperament. Periodically reassess the fit between you and your child’s temperamental styles enough to stay in sync so that you don’t feel you are ‘constantly battling.’ Laid-back kids are often confused by feisty caretakers, just as shy parents are flustered by feisty kids. One solution is to do more tag-teaming with the parent or grandparent that seems to be less ‘undone’ by the challenging behavior during this stage. Now you know why there are quotes around ‘teaching’ in the title.  Remember, it DOES get better.

Additional guidance is from Chapter 8 of Dr. Pruett’s Me, Myself and I: How Children Build Their Sense of Self: 18-36 Months, Goddard Press.

In addition to the value of a loving touch, we parent best when we stay emotionally available and warm with our children. When we are able to sustain this availability as a constant through our “parental tone”–through feeding, bathing, dressing (when they are babies), meals, limit settings, awakenings and bedtime for older children–it helps us stay responsive to our children’s cues. That’s why it’s best to pick up those crying babies in the first six months of life and see what the problem might be, no matter how many times you have done it before. Or to put your arm around the pouting toddler and say, “I’m right here–what do you need?” If you are lucky enough to figure it out, the baby or toddler will respond instantly, and if you’re not, at least you’ve shared a good, if noisy, cuddle in the meantime. There is no harm in showing him you are there for him and you care enough to try.

These objects are transitional.  As children grow in their capacities to adapt to and manage change and troublesome emotions, they will give them up on their own.  I advise parents not to take them away, especially during these transitions.  On the contrary.  Keep them in good repair!  I have seen blankets and toys that were rags and shadows of their former selves, glues, patched, and re-stitched, still providing soothing magic.

Thumb-sucking into the second year can cause some tooth disruption if it is especially intense and prolonged.  Pacifiers are kinder to the mouth and teeth because they distribute sucking pressure more evenly throughout the mouth.  By the first birthday, the need for non-nutritive sucking usually starts to diminish, so that by 18 months, walking and talking are picking up the self-stimulation slack.  Comforting should be spread out over rocking, cuddling, softies, etc., lessening the appetite for sucking.

The most common age for this behavior is between 3 ½ and 4 ½ years – the twelve to eighteen months before they start kindergarten. Tantrums seem to cluster around those moments when your children – and often you – are hungry, tired, scurrying about, running late and/or stressed out. It’s important to remember that they don’t usually ‘come out of nowhere’ – they tend to be a last straw for your child. Developmentally, they occur when children are struggling to manage their bodies (often having just finished toilet training) and their emotions (aggression, frustration).

My colleagues at Yale’s Parenting Center have been looking at temper tantrum management for years and are on the right track from my view point. They have highlighted the single most critical component of the parent/child temper tantrum interaction – the parental tendency to equal the child’s emotional intensity. This is not helpful. Your child is almost completely unaware of the storm he/she’s making, so when you leap in emotionally and physically charged ‘to get your child’s attention and stop this,’ your child ‘reacts’ to your intensity and escalation is the name of the game.

Their advice (with which I concur):

• Forget punishment and yelling. It could terrify or confuse your child, often has no relevance to their distress given their immature sense of cause and effect, and only briefly satisfies your need to be in control.

• Stay calm. Count to ten, turn away briefly, bite your lip, and above all – breathe – this way you won’t fuel the fire and it allows you and your child to recover more quickly.

• Ignore the negative behavior. This de-escalates the tantrum faster than any other single thing a parent can do.

• Turn your attention to praising the next ‘good thing’ your child does. Be very specific about what you appreciate and why, be sincere in your tone and behavior, and look them in the eye.

After a few weeks of these tactics, you’ll notice the tantruming is less frequent and less severe. One day you’ll look back and say, ‘Wow, it’s been months since the last meltdown.’

Move in sooner rather than later as the excitement of the act itself starts to take over and the child can no longer hear what she might have heard a minute or two before.  Don’t give more than two warnings before you move in to resolve the situation.

Label the child’s feeling or wish:  “I know it’s so hard to wait,” or “That made you so angry.”

Follow with what you expect:  “We don’t hurt people here,” or “Screaming won’t help me know what you need,” or “I will help you calm down.”

Conclude with a solution, joint when possible:  “Is book time a good idea?”  or “Would ‘softie’ help you settle down?” or “How can we fix this?”

Always remember to count to 10.  It actually works.

If needed, punishment tactics that have proven their worth over the years are:

• Timeouts
• Physical Removal
• Immobilization (for short periods – a few seconds)

Parents intend to delight – and delight in – their preschool child’s playful participation in this fall ritual. But less is more when it comes to keeping a preschooler comfortable and entertained. Here are some guidelines:

Age

Halloween is really meant for school-age kids and adults who have no trouble telling fantasy from reality and whom are way past being afraid of the dark and of scary masks. The preschooler is less likely to laugh and more likely to anxiously ask the mask-wearer a question – cute, but neither funny nor entertaining.

Length

Tying Halloween into dinner plans often stretches the evening out beyond your preschooler’s stamina, making all the other strange stuff inherent to the event harder to manage and understand. Plan to stick to your routine, and celebrate well before bedtime so your preschooler has a chance to settle down.

Sweets

Candy is the antithesis of your normal bedtime snack, giving your child a sugar rush. So, keep them away from the candy bowl. You may want to reconsider having them stay home to ‘help hand out the treats,’ tempting though it may be to have them ‘safe’ with you at your own front door.

Scariness

Because the preschool mind is just mastering the difference between reality and fantasy, things that slip back and forth over the edge of that distinction – like Halloween itself – aren’t very comfortable training grounds for this kind of learning. Older children can see the joy in being scared because they understand the difference. A preschooler is not quite ready for this kind of ‘fun.’

For your young ones, then, I suggest you make it a dress-up party without the gore, leave the trick or treating to the grade school professionals, check your favorite parents magazine/Web site for some simple games to play with peers and get them to bed at a reasonable time. Giving them and yourself a few more years to get ready for the delightful weirdness will be deeply appreciated by them and you.

An enlightening new study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop,, “Always Connected: Young Children’s Media Use is On the Rise (March 2011),” tells us what parents are actually doing. It seems like many parents don’t know about the guidelines anymore, given that the majority of parents ignore them.   They may feel a need to ‘plug the kids into something besides me [i.e. the parent],’ or they turn a deaf ear because they feel that media exposure stimulates intellectual growth and development or they feel that ‘it’s something the world will expect my kid to be able to use, so the earlier the better.’ The report goes on:

• For the time being, television remains the favorite medium.  90% of the average families sampled with children over five had kids who were regular, even enthusiastic, viewers. They watched an average of three hours per day.

• Media use by young children ranges across a variety of platforms. 80% of sampled kids five and under are on the internet at least once a week and slightly less than half of all six-years-olds regularly play video games.

• Media multitasking is growing quickly, with over a third of two- to eleven-year-olds using the television and the internet simultaneously (sound familiar?).

• These usage patterns are likely to change, given that four of the top five electronic devices owned by children are mobile platforms.

So, back to that question of what is a parent to do, given that the expert advice out there seems not to have kept pace? [Keep your eyes open for some fresh guidelines from NAEYC on this topic coming to its website this year – maybe they WILL have kept pace].

• If you want your kids to play imaginatively (great pre-literacy foundation!), keep the playthings away from the screen. University of Massachusetts researchers found that toddler play erodes and disorganizes when TV is on.

• Keep the media diet balanced.  Print materials, screen devices, video games and DVDs should be rotated and refreshed (if not occasionally ‘lost’). Think of nutrition’s representation of a healthy, balanced diet. The food pyramid evokes positive images of a ‘media pyramid.

• The best way to use the positive impact of TV (yes, there is one and this is it) is to engage parent-child pairs in co-viewing programming that stimulates learning and delight with the use of humor and playfulness (not silliness), novel topics and perspectives. This prevents the use of TV as a baby-sitter, but that’s the point. There is no stand-in for you, or the delight that you take, in your child’s growth and health.

So here’s the deal: pacifiers have their place. Once your infant is gaining weight and nursing reliably, a little non-nutritive sucking can be a good thing if your particular child is interested in it (most are). We’ve raised both kinds of children, so it’s worth waiting to find out if yours is interested, rather than giving a pacifier to a baby who doesn’t want it. It should be a joint decision between baby and parents.  However, babies who suck at night seem to have a lower risk of SIDS and tend to sleep more regularly for a bit longer as their sleep habits mature, so it might be worth encouraging, even if your child doesn’t take to it immediately.

Trouble with pacifiers doesn’t usually start until children start to walk. They start dropping the pacifier in the most disgusting places. If they also start to talk soon after, the cork effect seems troubling to parents. One of our early talkers would remove it to fire off a few sentences and then re-plug herself so quickly we had to turn our attention away to keep from laughing.

So when should the child stop? Most pediatricians in the U.S. (standards vary globally) will encourage stopping by age two.  I don’t believe that long-term pacifier use slows speech development.  However, my dental colleagues have stronger science backing up their concerns that ‘extended pacifier use (heavy use beyond 20-24 months)’ leads to crossbites and open bites. When back teeth close during chewing and front teeth don’t, a child has an ‘open bite,’ which can sometimes self-correct. When the upper palate and arch narrow through extensive pacifier use, self-correction is rare and your dental co-pay will get your attention.

If you’re worried that you’re approaching or in the ‘danger-zone’ of extended use, talk to your pediatrician about strategies for weaning your child from the pacifier – you’ll need the pediatrician to support your own resolve since fatigue so regularly erodes parental judgement. Strategies can range from helpful children’s books on pacifier farewells, outright bribery (goods and services in exchange for pacifier pitching), the invocation of magical forces (pacifier fairies) or promoting the joys of giving pacifiers to babies when you are not one anymore (passing down pacifiers). The earlier you start, the easier the process, but prepare for some tears and stress. As you’ve heard in this blog before, manageable stress ending in mastery is emotional nutrition and feels really good – eventually.

A comprehensive study sponsored by The Goddard School^® for Early Childhood Development and conducted by BluePrint Research Group, shows that fathers are more involved in their children’s lives as decision-makers and caregivers than ever before.

The Goddard School, with the guidance of Dr. Kyle D. Pruett, advisor to The Goddard School and internationally known child psychiatrist and author, sponsored the research in order to learn more about the changing dynamics of the father/child relationship, the areas of concern for fathers and fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives.

“While there’s an abundance of research on mother/child relationships available, there is only a fraction highlighting the father/child relationship and fathers’ roles in the home,” Pruett said. “We felt it was imperative, given the changes in the family in recent generations to look into the importance of fathers in the lives of our nation’s children.  And we found some surprises.”

The findings, drawn from a survey of over 1,000 fathers across the United States, revealed a ‘top ten’ of areas in which fathers are most focused on their children’s welfare—notably regardless of income bracket, race or ethnicity. The list, in order of importance, includes:

1. Providing basic needs (food, clothing, shelter)
2. Providing and maintaining a safe home environment
3. Giving financial support
4. Ensuring children have a good education
5. Teaching children to respect their mothers
6. Providing healthcare
7. Supporting their children’s mothers
8. Telling their children they love them
9. Understanding and relating to their to children’s problems
10. Spending quality time with their children

“When Dr. Pruett approached us with the idea of conducting this type research on fathers, we immediately agreed because it aligns perfectly with our mission to understand the needs of both parents and children,” said Lisa Fisher, Director of Marketing, Goddard Systems, Inc (franchisor of The Goddard School). “We conduct ongoing research with parents (usually mothers) and children. Our research focus is to help us understand the role our schools play in families’ lives—relationships with teachers, curriculum development, environment and materials.  And then, about two years ago, we conducted our first qualitative research with fathers.  We saw a growing number of fathers who were involved in the ‘school decision’ and their children’s overall education plan; we knew we needed to be at the forefront of research about fathers.”

In addition to fathers providing good home lives and emotional support to their children, researchers also discovered that providing a good education for their child ranks most important for fathers in terms of being a role model, with three out of four fathers visiting a preschool before enrolling their child.

“Since we opened our doors, almost 25 years ago, the role of fathers in choosing a preschool for their children has changed—we’ve seen and heard this anecdotally from school owners and education directors,” adds Fisher. “While fathers have always been involved in our schools, the level of involvement seems to have shifted—and this is supported by the new research.  Today’s fathers want to learn more about their child’s program, experience the overall environment and to understand what their child will be learning—before they commit to enrollment.”

Pruett attributes the influx of a father’s involvement in the preschool enrollment process to their desire and need to feel that they are making a financially sound decision—a good investment into their child’s future.  “This is one of the largest U.S. studies of fathers and fathering values that cuts across income brackets, races and ethnicity in order to be complete and balanced,” said Pruett.

Pruett said the researchers surveyed fathers from diverse demographic groups to ensure the broadest possible understanding of how American fathers perceive their roles in their families and particularly their children’s lives.

A few noteworthy first timer tips:

• The ‘sensory surprise’ is my phrase for what catches many moms and dads off guard early on; holding the naked baby next to your skin (which is a very good thing to do) is calming and soothing for both you and the baby. Who knew? This touching, smelling, caressing stuff helps us find each other as sensory beings in this way too verbal world.  This is especially true for dads who have been in the cheap seats for the physical/sensory aspects of the gestation.

• The ‘vocal surprise’ follows. When was the last time you found yourself singing or humming to anyone who would listen? Babies listen intently and seem to have an appetite for the human voice when it’s playing with sounds as in rhythmic speech, singing or cooing. Don’t hold back. This is the vocal equivalent of skin-to-skin cuddling and is just as enriching for both of you.

• The next ‘surprise’ for the first timer might be the magical effect of swaddling on a fussy baby. Firmly but tenderly securing the babies arms and legs in the swaddling blanket keeps the baby warm and secure and is an important thing to learn how to do well. It seems to automatically comfort most babies and makes you feel like you know what you’re doing – especially important for first-time dads.

• Two-thirds of his/her early life will be devoted to sleep, lumped into three-or four-hour segments at first. Sleeping through the night will come, but stomach capacities of the newborn aren’t initially adequate to this task. So get yourself informed about what to expect, problem-solving with your nurse/pediatrician ahead of time.  Sleep issues are among the thorniest for first timers, so listen to the seasoned pros about whether to sweat or not.

• First time parents are often accompanied by first time grandparents. Here are a few tips for the first time grandparent:

• • Ask permission before rattling off advice. Egos are a little raw just now, so make sure you aren’t overstepping family boundaries.
  • Support the parents, both of them. Show them your tricks only if asked; this child is theirs, not yours.
  • Don’t expect much attention or entertainment when helping out.
  • When you help, help them both.  Helping your child’s partner is helping your child raise your grandchild.