A great overview of positive discipline

I stumbled upon the Essential Parenting blog today and really love this post that gives a great overview of what positive discipline is and how it differs from more tradtional shame and control based approaches.

Positive discipine uses Vygotsky's concept of scaffolding: enabling a child to exhibit more mature behavior than they naturally are capable of until they mature to a point where that behavior becomes their own.  In other words, setting up for success. 

Or as the blog puts it the goal of positive discipline is

to help the brain and mind of the child reach full maturity not through punishments and rewards used in a way that manipulates the child toward a particular behavior, but rather through a process of helping the child understand the rules and roles of the culture while simultaneously helping them to remain regulated and interested in choosing “the right thing.”