Have you ever felt the desire to make your child feel guilty about a certain behavior or incident? Positive parenting is exactly opposite of this behavior, which I call  “guilt conditioning.”

Maybe it goes something like this for you: If you are trying to get your child to stop writing walls, you tell him/her,  “Mommy will be really sad if you write on the wall.” You have just made a classic mistake that most parents make at one time or another - instilling a sense of guilt to control your child instead of reinforcing positive behavior. As a parent in this situation using positive reinforcement you might have said: “If you don’t write on the walls today, Mommy will read two of your favorite books to you before AND you’ll get a gold star on the calendar for today. This is an example of positive reinforcement.

Guilt As A Control

Parents using guilt as a way to control their children is a common strategy. The use of guilt to control a child’s behavior can develop a pattern of the child pleasing others to avoid a guilty feeling- a rather poor foundation for developmental growth, self confidence and a happy, secure adulthood. And, don’t think for an instant that your child won’t learn this technique well to control YOU - the parent! Your child will turn this “guilt reinforcement training” towards you as soon as he or she learns that guilt can control the parent. It’s a vicious cycle that’s difficult to break. Positive parenting can avoid this parent trap, and help you “dig out” if you have been using guilt as a parenting strategy.

Aside from guilt’s traditional role as part of a person’s conscience, this “trained guilt” can be a very damaging tool that can negatively affect your child for years to come. Sexual guilt, guilt through “love” and other forms of behavior acted out not as a correct response to the situation, but actions brought out solely as a result of guilt.

Replace Guilt With Positive Parenting

What to do if guilt has been a pattern in your family? Thankfully, it is never too late to correct poor behavior, but as the child grows older, certain behaviors get more difficult to reverse. But, don’t lose hope - with work, positive rewards and consistency, “guilt conditioning” can be reversed. The sooner you start to reverse guilt conditioning and replace it with positive parenting, the easier it will be to successfully “unlearn” the negative training.

And, your whole family will glow with happiness as you learn to excel with positive parenting!

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