Parenting Technique to Manage Your Child’s Behavior

There are times when parents can feel utterly overwhelmed with, well, parenting.

decided to take a proactive approach to help by offering a parenting seminar to arm mom and dad with the tools needed for a more stable and less volatile family atmosphere.

MaryJean Mollen, the director of Faith-Full Families at St. Andrews, brought in Krystine Milewski of the Anne Arundel Community College Parenting Center to teach a technique that helps manage a child’s behavior without yelling or spanking. It is based on concepts from the bestselling book, “1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children.”  This technique is geared towards children ages 2-12.

The Faith-Full Families' purpose is to serve the St. Andrew by the Bay community through family events focused on social, spiritual and service to the community.  Mollen said they want to offer programs to help build up and strengthen families.

Dawn Pumprey of Millersville said she attended because she was looking for different techniques and ways to improve communication with her three young children.

Milewski worked for the Anne Arundel County Tots Line for 11 years before teaching at Anne Arundel Community College.  As a mother of three boys herself and practitioner of the "1-2-3 Magic" technique, she joked that she already knew how to be a parent before her children were even born.

"1-2-3 Magic" provides parents with a way to stop bad behaviors like arguing, screaming, and tantrums that involves a counting system allowing a parent to firmly notify the child that a bad behavior is unacceptable. This is allowed to happen twice. On the third instance of the same behavior, there needs to be an immediate consequence, usually a timeout for younger children and a removal of a favorite activity for older children.

While the bad behavior and resulting consequences seem like common sense, Milewski points out that consistency and parental teamwork are just as essential as is the way in which you address the child during the bad behavior.

The technique promotes a “no talking, no emotion rule” where, during the consequence phase, a parent should not yell, be animated or emotional and should save any discussions about the behavior until after the consequence has been carried out.  This helps a parent avoid getting drawn into an argument with the child and also diminishing the focus of the behavior you are trying to correct in the first place.

Milewski assured all the parents that your kids can drive you crazy and they will, "because that’s their job." But she reminded everyone, that children have to be taught how to behave and sometimes parents forget that kids cannot reason like an adult.  “You owe it to your children to be the authority figure,” Milewski said.

“This was a great opportunity to learn more. You can never know too much about parenting,” said Jennie Forney of Cape St. Claire.

Another Broadneck parent said “it was nice to hear what questions and concerns some of the other parents had.”

Additional helpful links:

Network of Care: a database of resources in Anne Arundel County

Infant & Toddler Early Intervention System in Anne Arundel County, ages 0-2

Preschool Special Education Services in Anne Arundel County, ages 3-5