How to Teach Children to Manage Their Own Behavior

Written by Kelly Bartlett for Parenting From Scratch.

As with any “big picture concept” in parenting, the follow-up question is always how? I love this idea, but how does it work? I agree with this, but how am I supposed to put it into practice? I’m on board with this philosophy; can you give some examples of how it works? Last week, I wrote about the concept of teaching kids to manage their own behavior, rather than trying to manage it ourselves. Nice idea, right? Lofty aspirations. But how?

How do you work through a situation in which a child needs to behave in a way that is teaching them to manage their own behavior rather than a parent’s attempt to manage the child’s behavior in the moment? Try these steps for turning punitive moments into teachable ones.
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