You're not disciplining the wrong way, you're disciplining at the wrong time.

Neuroscience reveals that WHAT you say, and even HOW you say it, is less important than WHEN you say it.

Ready for the least sexy, least viral worthy, and yet probably the most important parenting advice of all?

Timing is everything.

If you go over to Instagram, Tiktok, or Facebook (is that still a thing?) you’ll be inundated with clips of parenting educators like me telling you what to calm down a tantrum when you’re at the grocery store or how to get your kid to let you brush their teeth without resorting to tying them up like a cartoon villain.

But as attractive as those “break glass in case of emergency” hacks and tips might be, the best discipline doesn’t happen in those moments… no matter what the influencers tell you.

Neuroscience of Learning

To discipline, as Tina and Dan point out in their perennial best-seller The Whole Brain Child, does not mean to punish but to teach. The problem is, brains, especially young brains, are not always ready to learn.

When our children are throwing a tantrum, longing for attention, hungry, tired, or otherwise dysregulated, their brain switches out of “learning” mode into “survival mode.”

What most of us don’t realize is that the modes are mutually exclusive.

And yet, when is it that most of us try to do most of our discipline? Not in the moments when our kids are quietly drawing with markers or playing with lego, but rather right after they’ve done something that really triggers us.

This is, in no small part, because while we were growing up, those were the exact moments when our parents disciplined us. But, according to what we now know about learning and the brain, teaching in those moments was, and is a mistake…

To put it in overly simple terms, those moments when we are most conditioned to discipline, are usually the worst possible times to discipline.

Working With the Brain

I want you to imagine for a moment that your child’s brain is like a super powerful magnet. They go around the world sucking in information and learning faster and more effectively than any adult we know.

During moments of fear, or dysregulation, that magnet flips to the opposite side, repelling rather than attracting that learning.

Anyone who has tried to forcibly push together two magnets repelling each other knows how futile it is. Even weak refrigerator magnets, the ones shaped like the alphabet, adamantly refuse being pressed together.

The physics here are potent enough that many high speed trains function using maglev, or magnetic levitation, where by trains weighing thousands of pounds can seem to defy gravity all with the power of magnets.

I want you to imagine that this is what it is like when we try and force a child to learn their lesson while they are dysregulated.

No matter how amazing the script is you’re using or how calm and therapeutic the cadence of your voice, we are talking to a brain which is actively repelling learning.

So what is the right thing for a smart and compassionate parent to do?

Connect and then just wait.

Your most powerful discipline tool…

The most powerful discipline tool you possess is mastery over your own nervous system.

Your ability to pause, comfort, and resist the urge to teach.

The ability to do nothing and just connect with a dysregulated child can be a Herculean feat in many circumstances. I fail at least as much as I succeed and I’m the guy who literally wrote the book on it.

We have been conditioned, by society and our own childhood, to do something when our children are at their worst and it’s hard not to react in those moments.

But our greatest power lies in our ability to ride out those storms and wait for the calm where our words, actions, consequences, and boundaries will be sucked in by our kids’ insatiable magnetic desire to learn and grow.

The great irony here is that most kids spend 3/4 of their time in a fantastically teachable brain-state. They learn language and songs, social skills and engineering in the midst of play (which is their MOST teachable state).

The problem is, most of us have been conditioned to wait for them to be unteachable before we start trying to teach.

What do I do?

While my encouragement this week is simple, it is FAR from easy.

When every instinct in you tells you to correct, punish, yell, scold, or in ANY WAY teach your child when they are out of control, stop. Pause. Do nothing at all.

And then later, when the storm has passed… then we teach.

Bonus Resource for Paid Subscribers:

My bonus resource for paid subscribers this week is a “scripts pack” for those moments when you’ve waited it out and still don’t know what to say.

Scripts here included are what to say:

• When they interrupt you repeatedly

• In “Danger” moments when you can’t wait

• Sharing

• Hitting/Biting

• Cleaning Up

• and Disappointment

As always I am SO grateful for those who throw me $5 a month and allow me to make this content for all of you!