Today I want to share with you a Conscious Discipline technique posted directly from their Facebook page.

Disagreements happen. They happen in the classroom, they happen at home, they happen between siblings, they happen between friends. Our friends at Conscious Discipline posted about it this week, and I felt a sense of peace just reading the description.

Stop, take a breath, be calm. Give each child a chance to voice his or her feelings. Help each child express those feelings with words. Help the children learn positive choices that can be made in the middle of a disagreement.

Does this actually work? It does, and we see it every day. What happens in this exchange is that as calm is restored and positive choices are promoted, the brain actually functions differently – the child (and possibly the adult, too) goes from making decisions in the part of the brain that controls self-preservation type reactions to the part of the brain that controls conscious and rational decisions. We make better decisions when we are operating out of our executive function, and that is the purpose of Conscious Discipline as a technique.

These experiences and tools can benefit children for years to come. Check out Conscious Discipline on Facebook, and let us know your thoughts!