Tips for Practicing an Effective Discipline Strategy from In

Your new baby is a handful. He cries and you pick him up to reassure him that everything’s alright. When he’s hungry, you feed him and when his diaper is wet, you take care of the changing. You do whatever it takes to answer his every need because he’s just getting started in life and you’re the one charged with helping him get through it. But soon enough he figures out that when he cries, you’ll come; and when he’s wet, you’ll change him. By then, he has you pretty well trained to do almost anything that he likes. And that’s where the problem begins. You begin to wonder if his “needs” are really just his “wants” instead. Just how many times do you have to grin and bear it when he overturns this cereal bowl, or how often do you need to pick up a tossed pacifier before and take some corrective action? Is there an age when you change from being the all­abiding mother doing whatever it takes to keep the peace and turn into the disciplinarian mother who teaches and guides and, sometimes, may even need to inflict some punishment along the way? In most cases, when a baby seems to misbehave, he doesn’t do it on purpose. Babies constantly make observations about the new world they’re living in, and they’ll grab at things as part of their exploratory nature. They’ll grab your glasses to see how they feel, or smash food between their fingers to see how it feels between their fingers. What then do we do to keep our baby from breaking something without stymieing his creative energies? Here are a few strategies that may help you and your child cope from infant to toddler:

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