More Winnipeg parents are going back to school to find solutions to discipline their children without spanking or yelling.
It's a parenting style that's becoming more important with today's moms and dads who say they don’t want to use any form of violence when it comes to disciplining their kids.
The style is also attracting more parents back into the classroom to take a course on an approach called “positive discipline,” which doesn’t involve spanking and yelling.
At three years old, Hugo has been testing the limits so his parents went out looking for strategies to cope.
“I mean you have to be pretty patient. Sometimes it takes him 20 minutes to put a jacket on,” said his father Chris Beauvilain.
Instead of lashing out, Beauvilain and his wife Shauna found a way to cope by taking a class on positive discipline.
"Many parenting programs focus on getting children to change their behavior, getting the kids to comply. In positive discipline, we like to look through things in the child’s lens,” said Jean Tinling, who teaches the class at Mosaic Newcomer Family Resource Network in downtown Winnipeg.
University of Manitoba Child Psychologist Joan Durrant created the positive discipline curriculum.
She said positive discipline asks parents to question what is the child thinking - in their moment of frustration - and to think about what's happening inside the child's brain at their different stages of development.
Teachers of positive discipline said by parents understanding the child's the point of view, the anger goes away when parents look at the conflict as a way to teach the skills the child still lacks.
"Physical punishment - being things like slaps and spank, yelling and name calling and belittling - there is not a single study that has ever shown that those kinds of experiences benefit the child," said Durrant.
Still, some parents feel there is nothing wrong being firm.
"It's okay to get mad at them if it's necessary. It's just how far you take that getting mad,” said father Chris Bilingsely.
The most useful piece of advice Hugo's parents picked up from the class: model the behavior.
"One of the things I liked - don't force your child to say thank you. Say thank you for them, and they will see you doing it and copy that behavior," said mother Shauna Labman, who took the positive discipline classes.
Mosaic Family Resource Centre said 500 parents have taken the course. Seven Oaks School Division is also offering the program this spring, but is full and has a waiting list of parents looking to sign up.
For resources available online, people can visit:
More information on classes is available on the Mosaic Family Resource Centre website and on Seven Oaks School Division's site.
