Originally posted on my Moonlight blog, October 5, 2017.
The four Ds give a rough guide on when to step in and guide the child. When these four items are not in question, ask yourself why you may be having the urge to step in. Perhaps it is because you were always disciplined for those things. Perhaps it is to get an outcome that you desire. As caregivers, we always need to look to ourselves and understand why we are doing something.
Decorum: These are things at the caregiver’s personal tolerance level. Much of these types of things say much more about the caregiver than the child and their behaviors. This would be things like noise level, “politeness”, manners, etc. Before enforcing discipline with these issues, really check within oneself to see if you can change your own tolerance level. After assessing yourself in these situations, if you still find that the behaviors are intolerable, these are infractions that are best handled not in the situation, but rather in modeling and lessons on how to properly comply. In Montessori we call these “Grace and Courtesy” lessons. As adults, we can tend to assume that children should instinctively already know how to do these things, so we forget that these are lessons that need explicitly taught. When children make decorum mistakes, and we decide that these are things that really are important, we need to teach a lesson showing them proper behavior. For example, if a child is being loud, we can play a game with the children in which they must whisper. This helps them develop the muscles for whispering (PCA and TP muscles) and gives an example of what quietness sounds like and why it may be important in certain situations. It may also be appropriate to tell the child how you honestly feel about something. Not in a punishing or belittling way, in a factual way, like “That loud talking is making it hard for me to hear others.”
Disrespect: The next level of infractions are things that many would categorize as disrespectful. Noncompliant behaviors, rudeness, and inappropriate behaviors would all be in this category. This is another time when immediate intervention is often not necessary, but rather modeling and lessons. These are times when we are role playing kindness, community, and helpfulness. Respect can also be built by community-building activities, such as caring for shared spaces together, breaking bread together, and seeing respect between the adults around them and between adults and children. In order to teach respect, it is very important for adults to treat children with the same respect as they treat adults. If you wouldn’t say/do something with/to an adult, then do not say/do it with a child. It may also be appropriate to address the incident at the time, “I see your cousin’s face and it looks sad. Let’s say that in a more kind way.” Then offer an alternative, appropriate, way for the child to get their message across.
Disruption: This applies to behavior that not only bothers the caregiver, but is bothersome to some or most of the people around the child. It could be loudness or activity that is noticeably interrupting others or it could be literally interrupting others. In this case, caregivers do need to stop the behavior. However, it should be stopped in the least intrusive way possible. For example, if your child is jumping on the chair in a restaurant you could quietly say to the child, “You have a lot of energy right now. It is bothering other people that are trying to eat. Would you like to sit down and color with me, or go outside where you can jump for a bit?” Try to address the root cause of the behavior, rather than the behavior itself. In the previous example, need for movement is probably a root cause.
Danger: The fourth level of misbehavior is danger. This could be when a child is dangerous to himself, others, or the environment around him or her. This also needs immediately stopped, and if possible, in the least embarrassing way to the child. For example, if your child is banging on a window this could be dangerous to the child, to others that could potentially step in broken glass, and to the environment (the window). In this case, block the child from hitting the glass and say “It is dangerous to beat the glass. Let’s go bang on the drum over here.” Often times in these situations, we need to address the child’s emotional state. Let the child know that all emotions are OK to feel, but it is not OK to hurt someone. “You look mad. You want your classmate to stop using that toy, so you hit her. It is OK to be mad, but I see that it hurt her and she is crying. You can ask her to stop using the toy.” Empathy is not something that comes naturally to children, but it is a learned skill. Helping them to notice that their words and actions effect others will help them build this skill.
Using the 4Ds can be a check on ourselves to make sure that our own actions and expectations are a match with child development.
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