Positive Discipline

Positive Discipline® helps children become confident, capable and happy adults.

Positive Discipline is practiced in over 80 countries. Teachers, parents and care-givers who use it speak enthusiastically about how Positive Discipline improves their “work” with children on many different levels. (Link to Positive Discipline Association website)

Practical "tools" for challenges such as:

  • chores
  • homework
  • sibling squabbles (and worse!)
  • power struggles
  • lack of respect
  • school stress
  • digital devices
  • and more
Every challenge is a chance for children to learn important life skills.
-Lynn Lott

Positive Discipline is a solution approach by Dr. Jane Nelsen and Lynn Lott, inspired and developed based on the visionary work of Dr. Alfred Adler and Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs.

The 5 criteria for effective discipline (by Jane Nelsen):

  1. Helps children feel a sense of connection (belonging and significance).
  2. Is mutually respectful and encouraging (kind and firm at the same time).
  3. Is effective long-term (takes into account what the child is thinking, feeling and deciding about him- or herself and about the world – and what he or she has to do in the future in order to survive or thrive).
  4. Teaches important social and life skills (respect, caring for others, problem-solving and cooperation, as well as the ability to contribute to the larger communities in which they live).
  5. Invites children to discover how capable they are (strengthens the constructive use of personal power and autonomy).
Positive Discipline courses are designed to support parents, teachers and others who work with children, in teaching self-discipline, responsibility, cooperation and problem-solving skills to the young ones in their care.

The ground-breaking psychiatrists and thinkers, on whose insights Positive Discipline rests

– Rudolf Dreikurs

“A child needs encouragement like a plant needs water.”

– Dr. Alfred Adler

“We should learn to see with the child’s eyes, hear with the child’s ears, feel with the child’s heart.”

The Founders of Positive Discipline

– Lynn Lott

My goal has always been to make people’s lives better and to increase the ways they encourage themselves and others.

– Dr. Jane Nelsen

“Children learn responsibility when they have opportunities to learn valuable social and life skills for good character in an atmosphere of kindness, firmness, dignity, and respect..”