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Restitution
Discipline can be challenging.
The name is misleading. This is not to be confused with the
police version of restitution where the victim is compensated
for wrongful doings, but there are similarities in theory.
If we spend
80 % of our time disciplining 10 % of our kids then that tells
us that what we are doing is not working and we need to do
something different.
Restitution
is easy once you know the basics and the jargon.
If we want
kids to take responsibility for their actions, we must teach
them how to do this. |
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I found that Restitution theory is basically
summed up in this idea:
“If you’re doing all the talking, you’re
the only one doing all the thinking!” Donna Gavin
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What is Restitution?
Restitution is creating the conditions for a person to fix their
mistake and return to the group strengthened.
We have to understand
some things about human behavior to internalize what restitution
is all about.
Why do people behave?
Fear
of consequences
Rewards
Self
Traditional discipline
focuses on the first two . They are external.
Restitution focuses
on the internal….the third reason.
The traditional
system doesn’t work for some kids because any consequences
you can dish out can not be worse than the circumstances surrounding
their lives already. Rewards only work temporarily, but research
indicates that once the reward is not there the child will not
behave. Something to think about...
Would you rather
have a child behave because of rewards or punishments…or
because behaving well makes him/her the kind of person he/she
wants to be?
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