New parents, and experienced ones alike, wonder about disciplining their children and whether or not they should discipline girls differently than boys and vice versa. The basic consensus on this topic is that when a child misbehaves he should be punished. The punishment is not based on the childs gender but instead on his actions. Too often parents have ideas of how girls should act and how boys should act and they are not always the same. So, the result is that children of opposite sexes might receive very different punishments even when they had the same infraction. One way to overcome this is to sit down with your children and talk to them. Let them know that each infraction has a specific penalty. For example, if your daughter misses curfew she loses her favorite privilege for a certain period of time. And, if your son misses curfew he also loses his favorite privilege for a certain period of time. When you sit your children down and discuss with them the different punishments that will go along with certain rule breaking then it is a lot easier to discipline the two genders the same. If you simply discipline on the fly then you will be able to look back and see where you went lighter on one gender and not the other. You dont want to do this so make sure you have some basic punishments planned out for specific infractions. Remember as well that if both of your children know that they will receive the same punishment you will have fewer problems with one gender repeatedly breaking rules simply because he knows the punishment will not be all that strong. As long as you already have a punishment plan in place and your child knows what his fate will be before misbehaving then disciplining your children despite their gender will be much easier. It is really easy to fall into societal conceptions of how boys should be treated and how girls should be treated. But, if you take the decision making in the moment out of the equation and have the punishments already planned out then you will not have many problems.

Posted in Parenting

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