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Most children, and many of us as adults, learn by repetition. How do you master a new skill on the computer, or a new program you just purchased or installed? Back in the day, you might have read an instruction manual, whatever those were. These days, you'll learn by actually using the programby repeating the tasks you use the program to perform.

You are repeating a cycle that teaches your children what is expected of them. At a deep psychological level, this is comforting and reassuring to them.

The more times you open a file in Microsoft Publisher, the better you'll understand how to use the program. The more times you upload a digital photo from your camera to a Web-based album site, the faster you'll get at completing the steps. Just like your children, you also tend to learn by repetition.

Still not convinced? If you're over 40, can you sing most or all of the Gilligaris Island theme song? If you're twenty-something, can you name everyone on Friendsnot just the characters' names, but also the names of the actors?

You have these skills, and other skills like them, because you learn by repetition. Your children learn in the same way. As you repeat your boundaries, as you monitor the rules to be sure they're followed, as you enforce some age-appropriate consequences if those rules are broken, you are repeating a cycle that teaches your children what is expected of them. At a deep psychological level, this is comforting and reassuring to them. It helps them understand their correct place in the family system and in the household.

Your children will be and will become the kind of kids other adults are comfortable being around. Teachers, Sunday-school workers, camp counselors, and others will be grateful to you. Further down the road of life, employers and spouses will be grateful to you as well. You will have done an excellent job of raising children that behave responsibly and appropriately.

Expressing Love

Be sure to express your love to your children. Effective single parents set boundaries precisely because they do love their children! The healthy discipline of children includes monitoring of the rules as a way of showing children that someone cares about them and their behavior. The enforcement stage occurs as an act of love also: someone cares about the child so much that they are willing to enforce consequences as a way of helping the child learn, mature, and grow.

After enforcing a consequence, particularly with younger children, it may be useful to restate your love, while also adding that you expect a change in their behavior in the future. Doing so clarifies that you are not planning to withdraw from your children or go away because you are angry. Rather, as a loving parent, you are planning to stay involved, to keep on monitoring, and to correct them as many times as needed because you care enough to keep on helping them.

Let's face itit's much easier in the moment to ignore bad behavior than it is to correct it. Yet ignoring your children's social skills, manners, or choices is not an act of love but rather the absence of it. Do you love your children enough to care about them all the way through the cycle of effective discipline? It takes a large and generous love to expend the physical and emotional energy you'll deplete while setting the boundaries, monitoring compliance, and enforcing consequences.

Love communicates, love monitors, and love responds with consequences.


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