Welcome to the Gentle Discipline forum! This forum is a place to find support for and learn about
Grace-Based Discipline and parenting our children in a gentle, grace-filled, Biblical way that builds relationship with our little ones and seeks to model how God, our loving Father, parents us. Children need active guidance and well-established boundaries, but can and should be given the opportunity to learn without punishment, without fear and purposely inflicted pain or anything added on to teaching to try to make them feel badly. Instead of either punishments or
permissiveness, children should be discipled with an appropriate mixture of kindness and firmness in a manner that respects their feelings and their developmental, emotional, and daily needs. Since the goal of this forum is to help parents find solutions and "tools" that will best help them parent this way and to encourage this way of discipline, there will not be any support here of punitive approaches to parenting which include punishments such as spanking,
traditional time outs, soap or hot sauce in the mouth, etc. And neither will there be support for permissive styles of parenting such as
TCS ("Taking Children Seriously") or non-coercive parenting.
To make this forum work best for you, please post as specifically as you can about situations you are facing with your children. That way we can share what has worked for us and help brainstorm ideas for what will work for you. Also, it helps if you share what you have already tried so that we won't suggest that.
You will also find a lot of excellent and helpful information in the
GD Info and FAQs forum, which is a sub-forum of this forum. Besides many helpful individual threads on topics such as
The Five Steps,
Time-Outs (why not to do them),
Playdates,
Defiance, and
Bean Dip, there are also some stickies there which include collections of past posts on
Biting,
Hitting,
Screaming,
Cleaning Up,
Comfort Corners,
The Five Steps, and
Gentle Discipline Success Stories. There is also a list of
Gentle/Positive Discipline Books and
Helpful Gentle Discipline Links. We encourage you to check the
GD Info and FAQs forum out!
If there is ever any way we can assist you or encourage you as you seek to discipline with gentleness and grace, please don't hesitate to write one of the moderators or admins.