Your Child's Discipline Should Get More Effective By Now

By this stage, your child must follow effective discipline. However, the "terrible twos” are a time of great change for most children. They are learning how to be independent and often are defiant, yet this new found freedom sometimes unsettles your child.

They can understand more complex concepts than they can articulate verbally, leading to frustration and tantrums. They are highly inquisitive about the world around, but they have not yet developed a sense of personal safety, so they don't understand why certain activities are forbidden.

What you need to know

An opportunity to teach them proper behavior arises when your child deliberately makes a mess for you to clean up. For the latter, you can use the incident as an example of cause and effect. If your child deliberately colors on the walls after you have forbidden them, having your child help you clean up the mess can teach a valuable lesson about responsibility and consequences.

The most important tool in your disciplinary repertoire is consistency. Impose the same discipline every time your kid misbehaves. If you allow a particular behavior one day and punish it the next day, your child will be very confused. Children at this age are too young to understand special exceptions so you should stick carefully to your established routines as much as possible.