Maureen asked: I know we belabor the point here, sometimes…
But, whenever I read people replies from people in the neverending spanking/not ******** debate, it seems like there are some who think the only choices for teaching our children are:
Spanking
Timeouts
Taking away toys/priveleges
1-2-3 Magic
That’s it. Just straight pavlovian stimuli/response to train the children what to do and what not to do, until they’re grown.
Just wanted to get a list of other parenting methods that people use, to let people know that there are other choices that involve actually teaching your child to make good decisions without the contrived stimuli/response reward/punishment system.
So, what are some of the other alternatives (besides, I guess, totally ignoring & neglecting your kids or abusing them). What are some parenting methods that you’ve used or seen working in real life, besides the above ones?
Along with using facets of attachment parenting (http://www.attachmentparenting.com/ ), we, for the most part, use the methods described in the book Parenting with Love and Logic (http://www.loveandlogic.com/ ) which helps you guide your children to an understanding of how their choices affect themselves and others, using the natural consequences of their actions to help them really internalize the lesson and be able to apply it to other choices in their lives.
It’s worked pretty well, so far, on our natural kids.
Didn’t work too well on a niece who we fostered through her early teen years, but, as she had Reactive Attachment Disorder, I’m not sure what would have worked on her.
Oh, and we’ll use 1-2-3 magic and timeouts from time to time. Life is hectic & sometimes you just need a quick solution.
When trying to create good habits, we’ll go with a sticker chart.
And, like Biz, we’ve found that sometimes ‘natural consequences’ aren’t obvious enough, so we’ll creatively enhance them a bit if needed 
