I really loved the book “no drama discipline”! We practice gentle and attachment parenting but we are not permissive. Mainly, we follow a lot of natural consequences, setting up the environment for success, and clearly stating boundaries + following through. We parent respectfully and focus on success, never shame for mistakes, and have developmental expectations. We do not yell. We separate the act from the individual (“you are a kind person, but this was not a kind choice. how can we make a kind choice?”) For example, the above situation of my daughter painting somewhere she shouldn’t has never happened to me because there’s no paints accessible to her without supervision. When art tools are introduced they are supervised until my daughter understands how to use them properly - there weren’t crayons independently accessible, but now they are because she knows how to use them. We teach a lot of Montessori principles like collectively taking care of our things, including our home, and she knows that writing on the wall would be damaging to our house. If she did paint on the wall, I would explain why we don’t do that, have her help me clean it up, and tell her the paints would no longer be accessible to her independently until she shows me she’s ready to use them successfully. If she made a mistake like that it would be more my fault than hers because I let her have unbridled access to paints and she can’t fully understand the consequences of her actions yet. We aim to be calm but authoritative leaders because children want to trust us to take care of them. We provide age appropriate explanations for rules and boundaries (i.e. very little “because i said so”). We lead by example! We also dont don’t do “punishments” but instead use natural consequences (ex. If you are not being safe with this toy you do not get to play with it).
As for temper tantrums in public? Those are developmentally appropriate. Children cannot self regulate their emotions or have adult level impulse control. I support my child through big feelings but don’t try to stop them from happening. I stay calm and model regulation and wait for her brain to come back to calm. I maintain my boundary, offer choices to move on, and if she can’t calm down I will physically move her body for her.
