5 Effective and Loving Ways to Discipline Your Child Part 2: The No Fun Chair
Updated 10-7-2020
Discipline is a big topic that is so key for parenting! It’s not a one size fits all topic, so that’s why I’ve created this blog series, "5 Effective and Loving Ways to Discipline Your Child.” To read part 1, click here.
There are many verses in Proverbs about the rod of discipline. Proverbs 22:15 says, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” All throughout my childhood I heard this phrase, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” What this meant was that if you didn’t spank your children, you would ruin them. Many people focused on the rod specifically, instead of discipline.
These verses don’t mean that spanking is our only option for discipline! There are other ways to give consequences and other ways to remove foolishness from our children. Actually, when we think about consequences adults get for their choices, very few of them involve physical pain. This means we can give our children consequences that will be much more like real life than a spanking will.
The “no fun chair” is one method that we use in our home that has had a lot of success. We make sure that the location of the chair isn’t isolating for the child. We don’t want them far off in another room or in a corner somewhere feeling worse than they should for the situation. We want them to be in the room with us feeling somewhat present. They should feel separate enough to gather themselves, but we also don’t want them to feel ashamed.
We use this method a lot for whining. If one of our kids is having a bad day and starts whining, I’ll say in a very calm tone, “I would love to talk about this, but only once your voice sounds like mine. Are you able to talk in a voice like mine or do you need a minute?” Sometimes they’re able to instantly come down and have a conversation in a calm tone of voice. Other times they need some time, and that’s okay!. If they’re struggling, I’ll have them go to the no fun chair, because whining is no fun in our house.
They can sit there for as long as they need. If they’ve sat there for as long as 10 minutes, I’ve probably gone and checked on them a few times to see if they were ready to come back and have a calm conversation with me. Even if they’ve only been there for 10 seconds, if they say they’re ready, by all means, they can leave the chair. They don’t need to stay there longer for a punishment if they’re ready to change. It’s not about a set amount of time, but taking a break until they’re ready to change their behavior.
I’ve had a lot of questions about this, but the most common one is about separating the child from us, and how can that demonstrate who God is to our children?
With all of these tools, we need to understand that our heart behind them is really important. The heart behind this tool is not to separate our children because we don’t want to be with them. We want to be with them, but we do have some things we require in order for them to be there.
When we are separating ourselves from them, we’re allowing them to see that their choices are separating them from us, and the way we deliver these consequences will show them that we actually want them to be around us.
How does this work for young children? When our kids were 18 months old, we did it a bit differently. If the child was yelling or screaming, as babies do from time to time, we’d say, “Fun or crib?” If they didn't stop whining, we’d set them down in the crib and say with a soft voice, “Buddy, when you’re ready to have a happy heart and a happy voice, you can come back and play.” We didn’t leave them there for more than a couple of minutes, but this way, they started to learn the concept behind the no fun chair before they were even old enough to sit in it.
As with a lot of this series, the inspiration came from Danny Silk’s book Loving your Kids on Purpose. I highly recommend it and any of Danny’s teachings. This is simply our take on his foundations.