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Taking Control of Their Actions
5 Ways to Encourage Self-Discipline
By Lisamarie Sanders
Another thing parents can do to help their young children learn internal control is to offer them opportunities to control themselves. A specific example would be the use of a control room. Like time-outs, control rooms remove children from difficult situations so they can calm down and rethink their behaviors. However, unlike parent-mandated time-outs, the child decides when to go to the control room and how long to stay.
Implementing a control room doesn't take much effort. Simply discuss with your child the feelings associated with a loss of control, such as yelling or crying. Have your child tell you when she has felt this way or some of the other signals she gets when she's losing control. Let your child know that these feelings are completely normal and that we all lose control sometimes. Tell her that whenever she feels like she's about to lose it, she can go to her special place, get herself back into control and then rejoin the activities. Control rooms work well for grown-ups, too. They not only help diffuse tense situations, they let your child see that we all need to remove ourselves sometimes.