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chapter 1 our approach to discipline

How do parents get children to do the things they want them to do – and to want to do those things? This is the age-old problem of discipline, a matter not only of directing children’s behaviour but also of motivating it. The answer is grounded not in a catalogue of behaviour-controlling techniques but in the parent-child relationship itself.

If you know your child well and are sensitive to his needs, so that he trusts you, the ability to get him to behave well will follow naturally because he wants to please you.

Discipline is more about having the right relationship with your child than it is about using the “right” techniques. One of our goals in this book is to help you and your child become more sensitive persons. Our main approach to the topic of discipline can be summed up in one word – “sensitivity” – teaching parents how to understand the mind of their child, and teaching children how to consider the effects of their behaviour on others. Many of today’s discipline (and social) problems can be traced to one source – insensitivity toward oneself and others. So while we do present behaviour-improving ideas throughout this book, we focus mostly on the important parent-child connection. We call this the “attachment approach”.

styles of discipline

In order to better understand exactly what is different about our attachment approach, it helps to take a look at various other methods of discipline. Discipline methods fall into three categories:the authoritarian style, the communication approach, and the behaviour modification approach. All three of these ways of guiding children’s behaviour have strengths and weaknesses. In twenty-two years of experience in handling discipline problems in paediatric practice, and in disciplining eight children of our own, we have found that all three of these approaches are useful at different times, though by themselves they are not enough.

The authoritarian style. The traditional way of disciplining, authoritarianism, focuses on parents as authority figures whom children must obey or face the consequences. As one authoritarian father put it: “I’m the dad, he’s the child, and that’s that! I don’t need this modern psychology stuff. If he gets out of line, I’ll show him who’s boss.” With this style of parenting, smacking is considered appropriate, even necessary. The good part of this approach is that it makes it clear that parents must take charge of their children. Many of today’s discipline problems result from adults avoiding responsibility for the behaviour of their children. Children need wise authority figures in order to learn what to do and what not to do. Authority will always be an important part of the discipline package.

Yet many problems can occur with authoritarian parenting. For one, the child can fail to feel the parents’ love. The child can also internalize fear of the parents’ power to the point that it controls her life, even in adulthood. Most important, however, is that when it is used as the sole method of discipline, authoritarianism simply doesn’t work. There are several reasons for this. First, it causes parents to focus so much on stamping out the bad in their children that they tend to overlook the good. Also, the emphasis on punishment keeps parents from learning more appropriate ways to correct their children, ways that could lessen the necessity for punishment in the first place. Worst of all with authoritarian discipline, children behave more out of fear of punishment than desire to please. As a result, they develop no inner controls. Once the controllers’ backs are turned, the controllees can run wild. They may not throw their toys on the floor as adults, but they will lack the inner discipline needed to motivate and control themselves when there is no threat of dire consequences.

The authoritarian style regards discipline as something you do to a child, not a learning

discipline is therapeutic

Disciplining a child, especially a difficult child, brings out the best and the worst in parents. It challenges them to act like the adults they want their children to become. Thus, in disciplining your child, you discipline yourself. To fix your child’s behaviour, you must fix your own. As you train your child, you train yourself. Yet childish behaviour can also push buttons that produce irrational reactions in parents. Understanding your child’s feelings and your reactions to them can lead to greater self-understanding. Disciplining your child becomes a personal discovery in how you were parented. A mother once told us, “I notice my own mother’s voice coming out of my mouth.” Problems from your past may surface in your relationship with your child and infect your ability to discipline. If you had a childhood full of dysfunctional discipline, you are at risk of passing on these problems. The desire to discipline well compels you to heal the unhealthy parts of yourself so that you can be a healthy parent to your child.

process you go through with a child. The newborn who cries a lot is seen as a tyrant whose noises should be squelched rather than as a little person who needs help. The toddler is a manipulator who is out to dominate the parents if they aren’t careful. This sets up an adversarial relationship between parent and child, and confuses taking charge of the child with controlling the child. Authoritarianism creates a distance between parent and child, for two reasons: it is based on punishment, which can easily create anger, and thus distance the child from the parent, and it makes little or no allowance for the temperament or developmental level of the child. Wise disciplinarians become students of their children and work to know their children well. Controllers often find this consideration demeaning to their authority and therefore do not believe it belongs in their discipline package. Because authoritarian parenting is not geared to the child as an individual, this style of parenting seldom brings out the best in parents and child, even when a warm heart is behind the heavy hand.

The communication approach. This philosophy teaches that communicative rather than punitive parenting is the way to discipline. Dissatisfaction with the authoritarian/ punishment approach to discipline spawned several schools of discipline based on teaching parents how to better communicate with their children. Most of today’s discipline books and classes are based on this approach. This philosophy suggests there are no bad children, just bad communication; and that children are basically good; parents just have to learn how to listen and talk to them. The good news about this “modern” approach is that it respects the child as a person whose actions result from feelings and encourages parents to delve into the feelings behind the behaviour. Parents learn constructive ways to convey to their children what behaviour they expect. Parents also use empathy and understanding to create a generally positive atmosphere in the home, so they can limit the use of the word “no”. The communication approach emphasizes parenting skills that lessen the need for punishment. Psychology replaces punishment. Smacking is taboo.

The main problem with the communication approach is that parents tend to lose their authority, instead taking on the roles of amateur psychologist, negotiator, and diplomat. Children may end up not respecting authority because their parents do not expect them to. This lack of respect for home authority carries over into lack of respect for others, including, for example, teachers and police officers. And if it is overused, most children regard this approach as phoney. The dialogue sounds like nothing more than a list of emotionally correct phrases mum and dad learned at last night’s parenting class, not true communication at all. Instead of saying, “Don’t hit your brother”, communicative parents tend to address their child’s feelings: “You must be very angry with your brother.” This sounds right, and to many parents feels right, but what happens if after identifying his anger the child continues to hit? What do you do then? Another problem is that parents often become so worried that they will damage their child’s psyche if they don’t react in the “psychologically correct” way, that they end up unwilling to take a stand. This style of discipline, therefore, runs the risk of being over-permissive.

The behaviour modification approach. Behaviour “mod”, as it is known, teaches that children’s behaviour can be influenced positively and negatively according to how parents structure their child’s environment. If the child continues to hit other children even after you have given him all of the psychologically correct communication you can provide, you simply remove him from the group. Most children respond well to behaviour modification; some regard the techniques as contrived. Although somewhat mechanistic in its approach (it’s strikingly similar to training pets), behaviour modification gives parents techniques, such as time-out, positive reinforcement, and the teaching of natural consequences, which can be called on when the authoritarian and communication approaches are not working. Behaviour modification may be especially useful for children with emotional problems or difficult temperaments who don’t respond to other methods. The trainer focuses on shaping behaviour, conditioning the child without judging her.

The bad news about behaviour modification techniques is that sooner or later you are going to run out of them, or run out of the energy it takes to apply them consistently. The greater danger of behaviour modification is that it focuses on external techniques rather than on the parent-child relationship, so that the child is approached as a project rather than a person.

The attachment approach. Parents who rely on any of the three above approaches to solve a discipline problem may find that their child’s behaviour improves, but only temporarily. Without a secure grounding in parent-child attachment, the other discipline approaches are merely borrowed skills, communication gimmicks, techniques that are grabbed from the rack and tried on in hope of a good fit. None of these approaches incorporates the idea that discipline must be custom-tailored to the age and temperament of the child and to the personalities of the parents. Every family, every child, every situation is different, and parents must take all these things into account when they are working to correct their child’s behaviour. To do this, they must know themselves and know their child.

We use the best from all of the three approaches outlined above, but only after going much deeper to construct a firm foundation: Discipline depends on building the right relationship with a child. With a firm grounding in a connected relationship, a parent can use the other three approaches to discipline (authority, communication, and behaviour modification) in a balanced way. If your child is having discipline problems, you can use your close relationship with her to figure out what to do. Ask, “What is going on inside my child, and how can I help her deal with these problems?” rather than, “How can I get her to behave?” This approach helps parents and children to work together rather than clash. Picture the attachment approach as a pyramid: the foundation is wide and strong, and it takes longer to build, but as you go up you have to use less energy and material. The structure is solid and stands forever. Other approaches may appear convenient initially, but without that broad foundation you will always be making tricky repairs later on.

consult the experts

When I counsel paediatric students about to enter practice, I tell them: “Surround yourself with wise and experienced parents, and learn from them.” These are the true discipline experts. In fact, much of the material in this book comes from veteran parents in our practice who shared their successes and failures with us. In formulating our own philosophy of discipline we took note of what these wise disciplinarians did and how their kids turned out. This is what we learned: wise disciplinarians spend time and energy keeping one step ahead of their child and setting conditions that promote good behaviour, leaving the child fewer opportunities to misbehave. Wise disciplinarians

• stay connected to their children

• develop a mutual sensitivity between parent and child

• spend more time promoting desirable behaviour, so they need less corrective discipline

• have a working understanding of age-appropriate behaviour

• use humour to promote cooperation in the child

• are able to get behind the eyes of their child and redirect behaviour

Love for your child makes you vulnerable to any advice that promises to create a bright and well-behaved child. One of our goals in this book is to sharpen your sensitivity so that you learn to discern between advice that creates a distance between you and your child and advice that draws you closer together. Pick advisers who have raised lots of children and whose kids you like. Make friends with them, watch them in action, and learn from them.

Yes, you must take charge of your child, but not in a controlling way. Yes, you should communicate with your child, but in the context of a trusting relationship. Yes, you need discipline tools to help you handle real-life situations, but when these techniques don’t work, you need to fall back on a deeper understanding of your child. With an attachment approach to discipline, you can have confidence that your child will (for the most part) behave well and develop the inner controls needed to live a happy, productive life. Where the authoritarian approach says, “I’ll tell you what to do”, the communication approach says “What do you think is the right thing to do?” and the behaviour modification approach says “If you do that, then this will happen”, our suggestion is to give your child the attachment message “You can trust me to help you know what to do.”

Strong parent – child connection.

Weak parent – child connection.

In the next section we will give you an overview of the attachment approach to discipline. You will see how all these other approaches fit into the total package. Remember that discipline is a package deal, and that all the separate parts must be held together by a right relationship with your child.

discipline’s top ten – an overview of this book

One day I was watching a family in my waiting room. The toddler played happily a few feet away from the mother, sometimes returning to her lap for a brief reconnecting cuddle, and then darting off again. As he ventured farther away, he glanced back at her for approval. Her nod and smile said “It’s OK”, and he confidently explored new toys. The few times the child started to be disruptive, the mother connected eye-to-eye with him and the father physically redirected him so that he received a clear message that a change in behaviour was needed. There was a peace about the child and a comfortable authority in the parents. It was easy to see that they had a good relationship. I couldn’t resist complimenting them: “You are good disciplinarians.” Surprised, the father replied, “But we don’t smack our child.”

Our understanding of the word “discipline” was obviously different, like many other parents, they equated discipline with reacting to bad behaviour. They didn’t realize that mostly discipline is what you do to encourage good behaviour. It’s better to keep a child from falling down in the first place than to patch up bumps and scrapes after he has taken the tumble.

Discipline is everything you put into children that influences how they turn out. But how do you want your child to turn out? What will your child need from you in order to become the person you want him to be? Whatever your ultimate objectives, they must be rooted in helping your child develop inner controls that last a lifetime. You want the guidance system that keeps the child in check at age four to keep his behaviour on track at age forty, and you want this system to be integrated into the child’s whole personality, a part of him or her. If your child’s life were on videotape and you could fast-forward a few decades, what are the qualities you would like to see in the adult on the tape? Here is our wish list for our children:

• sensitivity

• confidence and solid self-esteem

• wisdom to make right choices

• ability to form intimate relationships

• respect for authority

• skills to solve problems

• sense of humour

• ability to focus on goals

• honesty, integrity

• healthy sexuality

• sense of responsibility

• desire to learn

Once you know your objectives, you can set about figuring out how to achieve them. Remember, your child is not a blank slate on which you write your wishes. Your child’s personality is guided, not formed, by you and other significant persons. You must take the child’s individuality into account. Because children and parents have different temperaments and personalities, and families have different lifestyles, how parents guide their children will vary. Nevertheless, there are basic concepts that underlie all discipline, no matter what the characteristics of parent and child. The ten basic principles that follow should help you get started in thinking about how discipline will operate in your home. We’ll discuss each of these principles fully throughout the rest of the book.

1. Get Connected Early

Discipline is grounded on a healthy relationship between parent and child. To know how to discipline your child you must first know your child. This kind of knowledge resides deep in parents’ minds. You could call it intuition, but that term has a kind of mystique that confuses parents. (“How can I trust my intuition? I don’t even know if I have any!”) The term “connection” is easier to understand. With the high-touch parenting style called attachment parenting (to be explained in Chapter 2), you can build and strengthen this connection between you and your child, laying the foundation for discipline. Connected parents become their own experts on their own child, so they know what behaviour to expect as appropriate and how to convey their expectations. Connected children know what behaviour parents expect, and make an effort to behave this way because they want to please their parents. These parents and children together develop a style of discipline that works for them. In Chapter 2 we describe the tools for connecting with your baby and young child so that you can read your child’s behaviour and respond appropriately, and the two of you can bring out the best in each other. Throughout the rest of the book we help you stay connected to your child and show you how to reconnect if you had a shaky start in the early years of parenting.

Unconnected parents, unsure of what is going on in their child’s mind, may lack confidence in their own disciplinary skills, so they search for answers to their child’s behaviour from outside experts. They wander from method to method, groping for answers to problems that could have been prevented. If you and your child are having discipline problems and you feel there is a distance in your relationship, chances are the connection between you and your child needs some work. It’s never too late to improve that relationship, although the earlier you connect with your child the easier discipline will be. Getting connected and staying connected with your child is the foundation of discipline and the heart of the attachment approach.

2. Know Your Child

These are the three most useful words in discipline. Study your child. Know your child’s needs and capabilities at various ages. Your discipline techniques will be different at each stage because your child’s needs change. A temper tantrum in a two-year-old calls for a different response than it does in a four-year-old. In later chapters we will point out what behaviour is normal, what’s not, and what to do at each stage of a child’s development.

Know age-appropriate behaviour. Many conflicts arise when parents expect children to think and behave like adults. You need to know what behaviour is usual for a child at each stage of development in order to recognize true misbehaviour. We find discipline to be much easier with our eighth child than it was with our first child, mainly because we now have a handle on which behaviours call for instruction, patience, and humour, and which demand a firm, corrective response. We tolerate those things that go along with a child’s age and stage (for example, most two-year-olds can’t sit still in a restaurant for more than a few minutes), but we correct behaviour that is disrespectful or dangerous to the child or to others (“You may not climb on the table”).

Get inside your child’s mind. Children don’t think like adults. Kids try crazy things and think crazy thoughts – at least by adult standards. You will drive yourself crazy if you judge a child’s behaviour from an adult viewpoint. A two-year-old who runs out into the street isn’t being defiant, he just wants his ball back. Action follows impulse, with no thought in between. A five-year-old likes her friend’s toy so much that she “borrows” it. An adult may stop and weigh the necessity, safety, and morality of an act, but a young child doesn’t. Throughout this book we will show you ways to get behind the eyes of your child, so that you can understand what causes your child’s behaviour and figure out how to redirect it. We call it thinking “kid first”. Here’s an example.

Our Matthew at age two was a very focused child. He would become so engrossed in a play activity that it was difficult for him to let go when it was time to leave. One day when he was playing and it was time for us to depart (we were late for an appointment), Martha scooped Matthew up and carried him to the door. Matthew protested with a typical two-year-old tantrum. At first Martha had the usual “Hey, I’m in charge here” feelings and felt that she was justified in expecting Matthew to obey quickly and be willing to leave his toys. But as she was carrying the flailing child out the door, she realized that her discipline gauge was out of balance and she was not handling things in the best way. Her actions were a result of her need to leave, but they didn’t take into account Matthew’s need for advance warning and a more gradual transition. She realized it wasn’t in Matthew’s nature to click off his interest in play so quickly, even if we did have a deadline. He was not defying her but was just being true to himself. He needed more time to let go of his activities. So she calmly took him back to the play setting, sat down with him, and together they said “Bye-bye, toys, bye-bye, trucks, bye-bye, cars”, until he could comfortably release himself from the activities. It only took a couple of minutes, time that would otherwise have been wasted struggling with Matthew in the car. This was not a “technique” or “method”; this disciplinary action evolved naturally from the mutual respect between parent and child and the knowledge that Martha had about Matthew. At the end of this exercise Martha felt right because it had accomplished what she wanted – getting Matthew out of the house with the least amount of hassle. She taught him a method of releasing himself from an activity without resorting to a tantrum. That’s what discipline is all about.

Realizing how much better discipline worked when we considered our children’s needs in our decisions was a major turning point for us. Initially, we had to work through the fear that we were letting our children manipulate us, because we had read, heard from others, and grown up with the idea that good parents are always in control. We found, however, that considering our children’s point of view actually helped us take charge of them. Knowing our children became the key to knowing how to discipline them. They knew we were in charge because we were able to help them obey. That left no doubt in their minds or ours that mum and dad knew best.

3. Help Your Child to Respect Authority

Parents, take charge of your children. That’s basic. But being a trusted authority figure in your child’s life does not automatically come with the job of being a parent. The child who is told he must obey “or else” may behave, but he does so out of fear, not respect. “Honour thy father and thy mother” is the wise and time-honoured teaching; not fear them. Honour implies both obedience and respect.

How do you get your children to respect you? An authority figure needs to be both warm and wise. First, get connected to your child. Start as a nurturer, a baby comforter. In so doing, you get to know your baby and your baby trusts you. Respect for authority is based on trust. Once your child trusts you to meet her needs, she will trust you to set her limits. One day I asked a mother why she felt so confident as an authority figure. She said, “A lot of my security comes from knowing my children.” Because she understood her children, she was able to guide them wisely and know they would follow. Many parents confuse being in charge with being in control. Instead of directly controlling children, wise authority figures control the situation in order to make it easier for children to learn to control themselves. Children respond with genuine trust and respect rather than fear and rebellion.

4. Set Limits, Provide Structure

Establish rules, but at the same time create conditions that make the rules easier to follow. Children need boundaries. They won’t thrive or survive without limits; neither will their parents. To learn about their environment, toddlers must be energetic and exploring. That’s their job. Environmental control is the parents’ job. This involves both setting wise limits and providing structure, which means creating an atmosphere in the home that makes these limits easier to respect. The limit-setting part of disciplining a toddler is to say no to an exploring child who is headed for trouble; the structure part is to childproof the home to provide busy minds and busy bodies a safe place to play and learn.

5. Expect Obedience

Your child will be as obedient as you expect or as defiant as you allow. When we ask parents of obedient kids why their children obey, they all answer, “Because we expect them to.” Simple as this sounds, many parents let this basic fact of discipline slip away. They are too busy; their child is “strong-willed”; they make excuses: “It’s just a developmental phase.”

In the early years children don’t know what behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable until you tell them. One evening at a kid-friendly restaurant, we observed two families handle the same discipline situation in two different ways. The two-and-a-half-year-old in one family was incessantly climbing over the back of the booth, and she kept this climbing behaviour up until it became disruptive to nearby patrons. Wimpy “don’ts” from the parents did not deter the persistent climber. It was clear this child had no idea that climbing was unacceptable behaviour. She got the message “We prefer that you not climb, but we’re not going to do anything about it.” Another two-and-a-half-year-old got a different message and showed different behaviour. The parent sat the child next to him, frequently acknowledged the child, and kept him involved in the family conversation. As soon as the toddler began to climb, the father immediately redirected him and politely planted the climber back in his seat. With a combination of creative distraction and respectful restraint, the parent conveyed to the child that he was expected to refrain from climbing because climbing would disturb the people in the next booth. The child got the message that any effort to climb the seat would not be all right. The child filed this experience into his memory bank, to be retrieved the next time they went to a restaurant, when, presumably, he would make fewer attempts to climb over the seat.

Was the parent in the second family exhibiting controlling behaviour? Yes, but in the right sense of the term. Abusive control is when you forcibly impose your will upon your child, expecting her to obey, but to the detriment of your relationship. When you insist on obedience and help the child to get control of herself, you are using your power over the child in a good way that helps her develop inner controls. Remember, children want limits so that they don’t feel out of control, and they want parents to stand by those limits. They keep testing the limits to see if you will uphold them. When you don’t the child feels anxious that no one is strong enough to contain her. To a child, that is scary.

In the following chapters we will show you how to plant a cooperative attitude in your child so he will want to obey. Also, we will share with you tips for getting and holding your child’s attention long enough to get your point across. Your child must understand your instructions in order to follow them. Expect whatever behaviour makes your child a nice person to live with, and then help your child to comply. Your child will thank you later.

6. Model Discipline

A model is an example your child imitates. The mind of a growing child is a sponge, soaking up life’s experiences; it’s a video camera capturing everything a child hears and sees, storing these images in a mental vault for later retrieval. These stored images, especially those frequently repeated by significant persons in the child’s life, become part of his personality – the child’s self. So one of your jobs as a parent is to provide good material for your child to absorb.

“But I can’t be perfect.” Of course not. No parent is perfect. While writing this book, Martha and I would often say, “We know all this stuff and we still keep making mistakes.” In fact, it’s unhealthy to model perfection – a goal that neither parent nor child can meet (though many are crippled by trying). It’s the overall impression that your child receives that counts, not the occasional blunders or outbursts. If a parent is habitually angry, anger becomes part of the child’s self. The child learns that this is the way people deal with life. If a parent models happiness and trust, with an occasional angry tirade, the child sees a healthier model: people are happy most of the time, but sometimes, difficulties make you angry. You handle the situation and go back to being happy.

Parents, you are the first people your child knows. You are the first caregivers, authority figures, playmates, male and female. You set the standard for your child’s attitude toward authority, her ability to play with peers, and her sexual identity. Part of yourself becomes part of your child. Yes, much of a child’s behaviour is genetic. More than one parent has been known to remark, “He came wired that way”, but much is also influenced by the child’s behavioural models. Throughout this book we will show you how to provide your child with a disciplined model.

7. Nurture Your Child’s Self-Confidence

A child who feels right acts right. In the first part of this book we will show you how to help your child like herself. The growing person with a positive self-image is easier to discipline. She thinks of herself as a worthwhile person, and so she behaves in a worthwhile way. She is able to forgo some wilful misbehaviour to maintain this feeling of well-being. When this child does misbehave, she returns more quickly to the right path, with less need for punishment.

Not so the child with poor self-image. The child who doesn’t feel right doesn’t act right. His parents don’t trust him, so he can’t trust himself. No one expects him to behave well, so he doesn’t. The bad behaviour cycle begins: the more misbehaviour, the more punishment, which intensifies the child’s anger and lowers his self-esteem, producing more bad behaviour. This is why our approach to discipline focuses primarily on promoting inner well-being in the child from the beginning. Throughout life your child will be exposed to people and events that contribute to his self-worth and to others that chip away at it. We call these builders and breakers. We will help you to set the conditions that expose your child to many more builders than breakers, and, of course, to become a builder yourself.

Builders and breakers.

8. Shape Your Child’s Behaviour

A wise parent is like a gardener who works with what he has in his garden and also decides what he wants to add. He realizes he cannot control the characteristics of the flowers he has, when they bloom, their scent and colour; but he can add those colours that are missing in his garden, and he can shape it to be more beautiful. There are flowers and weeds in every child’s behaviour. Sometimes flowers bloom so beautifully that you don’t even notice the weeds; other times the weeds overtake the flowers. The gardener waters the flowers, stakes the plants to help them grow straight, prunes them for maximum bloom, and keeps the weeds in check.

Children are born with some behavioural traits that either flourish or are weeded out, depending on how the children are nurtured. Other traits are planted and vigorously encouraged to grow. Taken altogether, these traits make up a child’s eventual personality. Your gardening tools as a parent are techniques we call shapers, time-tested ways to improve your child’s behaviour in everyday situations. These shapers help you weed out those behaviours that slow your child down and nurture those qualities that help him mature.

The goal of behaviour shaping is to instil in your child a sense of what is “acceptable behaviour” and to help him have positive feelings about it. The child learns to behave, for better or for worse, according to the response he gets from his authority figures. When a child gets encouraging responses to desirable behaviour, he is motivated to continue it. When a child gets unpleasant responses to desirable behaviour, it dies out. However, when a child gets lots of attention, positive or negative, for undesirable behaviour, it may continue, especially if that’s the only behaviour that gets a response. Be careful which behaviours you reinforce and how you do it.

Most shaping of a child’s behaviour is a when-then reaction. (When Billy’s room is a mess, Mum says, “No more playing outside until it’s cleaned up.”) Eventually, the child internalizes these shapers, developing his own inner systems of when-then, and in so doing learns to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. (“When my room is a mess, it’s no fun to play there, so I better clean it up.”) He learns to shape his own behaviour.

At each stage of development, your shaping tools change, depending on the needs of your little garden. In the pages ahead, we give you gardening tips to help you confidently shape your child’s behaviour and make his personality work to his advantage. He will be a more likable person who contributes to the garden of life.