Credit: SWNS / Hannah Canavan
Meet the single mum who has never punished or rewarded her kids and says she never will.
Hannah Canavan, 33, decided to have a gentle approach to parenting after working in a pupil referral unit for troubled children.
She said that giving natural consequences rather than punishment to those kids helped their behaviour.
Hannah - who home educates her daughters Esmae, 11, Eira, nine, and Elfie, seven - chose to adopt the same technique when raising her brood.
Rather than shouting and taking away their iPad or a treat for doing something wrong she will calmly explain why something isn’t right.
Meet the single mum who has never punished or rewarded her kids and says she never will.
Hannah Canavan, 33, decided to have a gentle approach to parenting after working in a pupil referral unit for troubled children.
She said that giving natural consequences rather than punishment to those kids helped their behaviour.
Hannah - who home educates her daughters Esmae, 11, Eira, nine, and Elfie, seven - chose to adopt the same technique when raising her brood.
Rather than shouting and taking away their iPad or a treat for doing something wrong she will calmly explain why something isn’t right.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 should they listen to me? It's a relationship not a dictatorship so that
00:03 respect needs to go both ways. The reason I don't use punishment with my children
00:07 is because I don't think it's effective. There have been studies done on
00:10 punishment and it shows that if you use punishment it only really work in a very
00:15 narrow context if you do things in a very specific way. When we talk about
00:20 discipline if you look at the root of the word discipline coming from
00:23 disciple it actually means to follow, it doesn't mean to do things to people to
00:27 manipulate their behaviour. So I guess there are four principles I'm bearing in
00:31 mind when I'm talking to my kids or when we have a situation where they need to
00:34 learn something. The first is modelling. If I'm not modelling a behaviour I can't
00:38 expect my kids to do it. The second thing is listening to them and I think this is
00:42 very important because if I'm not going to listen to them why should they listen
00:45 to me? It's a relationship not a dictatorship so that respect needs to go
00:48 both ways. The third thing I bear in mind is consequences. There are consequences
00:53 to actions. I'm going to have less time to play with them because I'm not going to be trying to fix
00:55 whatever mess has been created. The fourth thing is individual differences.
00:59 So my children are very different I'm sure yours are too. One of mine is autistic
01:03 and so it's about adapting the approach slightly for each child. Very very busy
01:07 day, I'm very tired and the kids are still basically demanding things of me. So here's what I do. I keep my replies as short as possible in a quite calm tone and I lower my voice deliberately.
01:18 And if I find something I don't like I just state it in fact as opposed to a question or telling them to do something.
01:25 So I just walked into my bedroom and Alfie's eating a chocolate ice lolly on my bed.
01:29 If they think I was white they know I'm not happy with that. So I took a deep breath and I just said I don't want ice lollies in my bed.
01:37 And she went okay and she got up and off to have some. So this is in the kitchen. I don't want my kids to think I'm going to pick up after them all the time.
01:43 At the same time I don't need to get mad about it they're only kids.
01:45 Whoever had their yogurt drink and had a green bar with a lolly please can they come clear it up?
01:52 Not you. Hello. Is it yours? Please you can put it in the bin. Thanks Zain.
01:59 If punishment worked our prison system would not be full of second, third, fourth time offenders.
02:04 So when I say I use natural consequences for my kids that's a bit of an oxymoron. Like I don't really do anything I just let their actions be for themselves.
02:12 (gentle music)
02:14 [Music]