Positive Discipline Teacher's Tool Cards by Jane Nelsen and Kelly Gfroerer and Positive Discipline Parenting Tool Cards by Jane Nelsen and Adrian Garsia, each offer 52 Positive Discipline tools that are available to help with many teaching and parenting challenges. Kind and Firm is the highlighted tool in this blog post.
After trying out this tool with the children in your life, please share a story of success, or struggle, you've had with it. Thank you! The more you apply the Positive Discipline teaching and parenting tools, the more they will become a part of your own lifestyle. Practice makes better!
Teachers
Story - The teacher, Mrs. Peterson, had a student, 9-year-old Kathy, who didn't easily follow directions in the classroom. Mrs. Peterson spent a lot of time reminding Kathy what needed to be done. Kathy often wanted to do her own thing instead of what Mrs. Peterson was directing the class to work on. This frustrated Mrs. Peterson quite a bit.
Mrs. Peterson decided to try something different and chose the "Kind AND Firm" card as her next tool of choice. What she found is by first doing the Kind part (Validating Kathy's feelings) followed by the Firm part (What needed to happen next), Kathy was more willing to follow directions. Mrs. Peterson to Kathy, "I can see you like to draw pictures and it's time to go to P.E."
Parents
Story - 7-year-old Bob loved to play with his toys. After 30 minutes of playing, the family room looked like a cyclone had hit it. Bob played with one thing and moved onto the next without cleaning anything up. His parents were tired of fighting with him about cleaning up and at their wit's end, ready to get rid of many of the toys, to punish him.
Instead, they took a Positive Discipline approach and chose the Kind AND Firm tool. Before Bob started playing with his next set of toys one day, Bob's dad said to him, "I know you want to play with other toys now, and first you need to clean up the toys you were playing with."
Bob hesitated, since this was new to him, and then grabbed for the next set of toys. Bob's dad came over and kindly repeated his phrase (followed through) and Bob knew his dad meant what he said. Bob cleaned up the first set of toys and then took out the next set.
Where can you purchase these tool card decks? The card decks are available at www.positivediscipline.com (Select products, then select tool cards) and there are versions available for iPhone and Android in the App stores on the phones.
