Gene Bedley's 12 Commandments of Effective Discipline
1. When you validate, value, and affirm your child, you become valued, validated, and affirmed.
2. When you demean, weaken, and devalue your child, you become weak, powerless, and ineffective.
3. Praise in little amounts reaps high dividends. Praise in large amounts is destructive. Encouragement contributes the most toward responsibility!
4. Effective discipline includes intrinsic value statements with all extrinsic rewards.
5. If children are not taught problem solving skills and how to make decisions, they will never become full mature adults.
6. Children learn correct behavior from observing and listening to positive role models. Seldom does any child improve without a model.
7. Children benefit when they recognize taking energy away from the family requires giving energy back to the family.
8. Children need to know what adults need from them: Empathy when they fail, a plan to improve, self-made reminders to follow through, affirmations when they meet goals.
9. Children grow as they discover choices are theirs to make and live with.
10. Children need to understand ethics and logic as much as they need to follow rules and regulations.
11. Children excel when they develop core ethical values to guide their purpose in life.
12. Children mature when they question ethical shortcuts. Develop the theme in your home- “Is that the ethical thing to do?”