Gentle Discipline

May 15, 2017
Ockwell-Smith, a parenting blogger, presents a primer on placing empathy and respect for children at the center of parenting. Her aim is to help parents comprehend why their kids misbehave and how they can respond effectively and gently, first by replacing old-fashioned reward-and-punishment behaviorist ideas with “authoritative” but not “authoritarian” models oriented toward self-esteem. Furthermore, Ockwell-Smith writes, her plan takes into account current ideas about childhood neurological development and cognitive ability. While the first three chapters delve into the science of behavior and learning, and chapter four identifies what’s wrong with familiar disciplinary methods, the rest of the book addresses, in individual chapters, common problem areas. For example, “parental demons,” the baggage parents carry from their pasts, can sabotage “gentle discipline,” so one chapter gives guidance for modeling the behavior parents want to see in their children. A valuable, simple intervention mnemonic, SPACE—stay calm, proper expectations, affinity for your child, connect and contain your own emotions, explain and set a good example—sums up Ockwell-Smith’s parenting tenets nicely. This volume offers a natural next step for attachment-parenting proponents.