What is Conscious Discipline® From an Early Childhood Educator’s Perspective?

Children may be small, but their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can be big. Children deal with difficult situations, and sometimes they will display challenging behaviors, such as throwing tantrums, rebelling, or pushing. 

As an early childhood educator, you have many tasks. One of them is to guide and strengthen your children’s social-emotional skills to lead them toward better outcomes and promote a more positive classroom environment. You may be tempted to tell your children how to manage their thoughts and behaviors; however, Conscious Discipline® calls for a more internal approach, where you show them. 

In this post, we’ll discuss Conscious Discipline®—what it is, how it applies to early childhood education, and how you can learn to implement it.

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What is Conscious Discipline®?

After Dr. Becky Bailey, a clinical psychologist and teacher, spent years working within an early childhood education system of hurting children and frustrated adults—educators and families—she created a new approach to education and development. Through a combination of neuroscience, child development research, and psychology, she developed Conscious Discipline®, a social-emotional learning and classroom management methodology.

Conscious Discipline® is an adult-first technique that “addresses adult self-regulation and skill sets first to empower adults to model, teach, and live the skills and ideals they want children to acquire.” It is meant to demonstrate—for children—healthy ways to manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to deal with conflict and difficult situations.

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There are four components to Conscious Discipline®:

• Brain state model: Understanding how internal emotional states dictate your behavior
• Seven powers for conscious adults: Shifting perception to see discipline encounters as opportunities to teach new skills
• Creating the school family: Building connections by creating a culture of compassion
• Seven skills of discipline: Problem-solving with social-emotional learning

Brain state model

At the foundation of Conscious Discipline® lies its brain state model, a framework that was created to provide insight into brain-body states and how they produce certain behaviors in children and adults. This methodology empowers you to be conscious of these states and gives you the tools to self-regulate, a skill you can pass on to the children in your care. The brain state model is made up of three brain-body states: survival state, emotional state, and executive state.

Survival state

The survival state of the brain state model is triggered by threat. During this state, your brain asks the question, “Am I safe?” At this time, the skills you tend to fall back on are flight, fight, or surrender. While survival states are often talked about in extreme cases, in early childhood education, this response can be triggered by a disrespectful child. The only way to calm the survival state is by creating feelings of safety.

Emotional state

The emotional state of the model is triggered by feelings of upset, when the question, “Am I loved?” is asked. During this state, you go into autopilot. Your ability to see from others’ points-of-view are limited, and you default— in tone, words, and actions—to match the significant authority figures from your childhood. During this state, you may discipline children in the manner in which you were disciplined. The Conscious Discipline® model states that the only way to soothe an upset emotional state is through the creation of a connection.

Executive state

The executive state is optimal for problem-solving and learning. Through Conscious Discipline®, you are empowered to become conscious of your brain-body states and learn how to regulate them. The executive state asks the question, “What can I learn?” You can learn how to let go of past conditioning, attune yourself to the feelings and experiences of others, focus on setting and achieving goals, and consciously respond instead of automatically reacting to life events.

Seven powers for conscious adults

The Conscious Discipline® model states that the biggest threat to a child’s sense of safety is an out-of-control adult. Moving up the pyramid toward successful Conscious Discipline®, the brain state model is followed by the seven powers for conscious adults. These powers provide a foundation that stops you from reverting to impulsive or reactive behaviors. This is where the consciousness of the practice truly takes form. When you can become conscious, present, and responsive to your needs and the needs of your children, this strengthens your classroom management and discipline system. The key to safety for children in early childhood education settings is a conscious, mindful adult.

The seven powers for conscious adults are:

• Power of perception: To teach adults and children to take responsibility for their upset. Big idea: No one can make you angry without your permission.
• Power of unity: To perceive compassionately and offer compassion to others and ourselves. Big idea: We are all in this together.
• Power of attention: To create images of expected behavior in a child’s brain. Big idea: Whatever we focus on, we get more of.
• Power of free will: To learn how to connect and guide instead of force and coerce. Big idea: The only person you can change is you.
• Power of acceptance: To learn to respond to what life offers instead of attempting to make the world go our way. Big idea: The moment is as it is.
• Power of love: To see the best in others so we can consciously respond instead of unconsciously reacting to life events. Big idea: Choose to see the best in others.
• Power of intention: To teach a new skill rather than punishing others for lacking skills we think they should possess by now. Big idea: Mistakes are opportunities to learn.

Creating the school family

“The school family” is a Conscious Discipline® concept that shifts classroom management and discipline from fear and external rewards to intrinsic motivation, problem-solving, and connection. It is built on a healthy-family model, where a willingness to learn, self-regulation skills, and attention are the elements of creating optimal development for all members involved—children, educators, and parents. The school family is created through routines, rituals, and structures.

The last step to achieving successful social-emotional learning and classroom management is through the seven skills of Conscious Discipline®, which we’ll explore in the next section.

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Seven skills of Conscious Discipline®

The seven skills of Conscious Discipline® stem from the seven powers for conscious adults. When you have an increased awareness of your reactions during a conflict, by using powers of perception, attention, intention, etc., you can control how you respond to challenging behavior in young children. The seven skills teach you how to respond in a way that demonstrates those positive behaviors to the children in your childcare program. 

Listed below are the seven skills of Conscious Discipline® and their associated skills:

• Composure: Anger management, delay of gratification
• Encouragement: Pro-social skills, kindness, helpfulness
• Assertiveness: Bully prevention, setting healthy boundaries
• Choices: Impulse control, goal achievement
• Empathy: Emotional regulation, perspective-taking
• Positive intent: Cooperation, problem-solving
• Consequences: Learning from mistakes

Times of conflict give you the opportunity to model these skills and teach your children positive social-emotional and communication skills. When you can stay in control and in charge of your children using the skills you want to teach, you are instilling lifelong skills that will last beyond their early childhood education.

Conscious Discipline® strategies

When we think of the word “discipline,” some of us might immediately associate it with punishment, based on our childhood experiences. However, as you attempt to implement Conscious Discipline® into your early childhood education instruction, forget about “punishments” and replace them with “consequences.” 

If using punishments, you might cause a child to fear making a mistake, rely on your judgment, or focus on what not to do. Conversely, if practicing Conscious Discipline®, you’d demonstrate and guide the children through the consequences. You’d show them how they can transform a mistake into an opportunity to learn. Instead of relying on your judgment, you’d guide them to turn inward and reflect. Conscious Discipline® would lead you to focus on showing them what to do instead of what not to do.

For example, imagine a child is running with a pair of scissors in their hand. For some educators, this might trigger their survival state, where in their options to fight, flight, or surrender, they choose to fight. They might yell, “Don’t do that!” and scold the child for their behavior. Conscious Discipline® calls for a different approach. Instead of making the child afraid of their mistake, you would teach them that it's okay to make mistakes because they can learn from them. 

Instead of framing yourself as the voice of logic and judgment, help them reflect so they can come to the realization that running with scissors isn’t safe. And while telling them that they shouldn’t run with scissors is necessary, that is not the focus in this approach. Focus on the child learning how to safely use scissors. Guide them through putting the scissors down before moving, or show them how to safely transport them.

As you work to implement Conscious Discipline® for the children in your early childhood education program, remember the following:

Be intentional 

Your goal isn’t to make children feel bad about themselves or shrink away from responsibility. As you guide children through their development and education, your intent should be to motivate them to reflect on their feelings and the impact of their choices. This will allow them to take responsibility for their actions. Always implement the first skill of Conscious Discipline® when addressing a child: composure. Gain your composure, don’t take the situation personally, and begin problem-solving.

Build connections 

Healthy connections are crucial to the Conscious Discipline® approach. In early childhood education, communication—with the children, administrators, and families—is central to building connections. A tool like brightwheel’s communication feature helps improve overall communication and strengthens connections by allowing you to send real-time messages, alerts, and newsletters, all from one central platform.

When children don’t feel connected to their teachers, their classmates, or their family, they are less likely to care about punishment or consequences. They are more likely to use destructive or defensive means to feel safe. Children who have positive connections with their teachers, friends, and family can gain social-emotional skills that allow them to be empathetic. It turns their view outwards and helps them understand that their actions affect other people.

Conscious Discipline® offers the acronym REJECT to help children build connections:

• Rituals for connection
• Encouragement for any success, however small
• Jobs and opportunities to be of service to others
• Empathy when experiencing upset
• Choices to provide focus in overwhelming situations (offer two positive choices)
• The School Family—and coaching to help them become an integral part of this family

Teach reflection

Effective behavior management comes from within. Instead of having your children focus on external factors, focus on building intrinsic motivation. As previously stated, the executive state of Conscious Discipline® asks, “What can I learn?” Help your children reflect on their choices and outcomes and use that to direct their future behavior. 

It is also important to model motivational intent as you teach reflection. Children aren’t strangers to judging themselves. Guide them away from this mentality to where they can accept their mistakes and reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors without judgment.

Practice responsibility 

Responsibility is a fundamental element of Conscious Discipline® and classroom management. When children are unable to take responsibility for their behavior, they will likely repeat it. Imagine one child pushing another. When asked “the why,” the child says that the second child didn’t want to share their toys. In this explanation, the child feels that their actions are justified. They are pushing the responsibility onto the second child. If the situation were to repeat itself, it’s not unlikely to think that the child would resort to pushing again. As long as children deflect blame and shift the responsibility to others, their behavior will continue.

To practice taking responsibility with your children, help them identify and understand their emotions. Once they are aware of their emotions, they can progress toward regulating them and problem-solving. Your goal is to show them that it is okay to feel the emotions that led to them pushing their classmate, but they must find another way to express those emotions.

Pros and cons of Conscious Discipline®

First introduced in 1996, Conscious Discipline® is still a relatively new technique in the field of child psychology and early childhood development and education. While the practice is new, the pros and cons of implementing its methodology are still evident. 

The pros of Conscious Discipline® include:

• An increase in social-emotional learning. Conscious Discipline® provides children with the opportunity to practice resolving conflicts while exercising positive skills, such as encouragement, positive intent, and empathy, which directly strengthens their social management and emotional autonomy. 
• A positive classroom climate. Safety and connection are at the foundation of Conscious Discipline®, allowing educators and children the ability to build positive classroom climates that are built on support, empathy, and responsibility.
• A decrease in problematic behavior. Conscious Discipline® is not a technique that is meant to “make children behave.” Rather, it is a system designed to teach you how to help children be successful, resulting in a decrease in problematic behavior. 

The most obvious con of Conscious Discipline® is the newness of the technique. Although it was introduced over 20 years ago, empirical data on the practice is limited. While there have been some earlier studies conducted in the classroom, there is little to no information that demonstrates the lasting effects of using Conscious Discipline® in an early childhood education setting. 

Conscious Discipline® training

For educators to learn Conscious Discipline®, they must go to the source. The website offers a series of free and paid resources to help master the practice and implement it in the classroom. Conscious Discipline® outlines four steps you can use as you educate yourself.

• Read the book. Conscious Discipline by Dr. Becky A. Bailey is the starting point for this approach. The book provides skills, strategies, and structures you can use in social-emotional learning and classroom management.

• Take the online course. The “Building Resilient Schools and Homes” is a 10-session online course that guides you through the core methodology—brain state model, safety, connection, and problem-solving—of Conscious Discipline®. The course includes social-emotional learning for adults, setting foundations and building resiliency in infants and toddlers, and handling upset.
• Attend the Conscious Discipline® Institute. This traveling seven-day event provides strategies for how educators, as well as social workers, parents, and child advocates, can master Conscious Discipline®.  
• Take a two-day workshop. Master and certified instructors host workshops where you can learn various skills related to the practice. Examples of workshops include “Creating the School Family,” “Anger and Rage: Understanding and Responding to Reactive Violence,” and “Brain Smart Beginnings for Ages 0-5”.

For additional information, Conscious Discipline® offers free and premium memberships that provide general and exclusive access to digital resources.

Be mindful

To fully implement Conscious Discipline®, you must be aware and mindful. The social-emotional learning and classroom management technique requires you to teach yourself how to understand your emotions, practice self-control and self-regulation, and use these concepts to model positive behaviors to young children. Children require safety and connection to thrive in an early childhood setting, and by strengthening these connections and teaching reflection and responsibility, you can give them the tools to succeed now and in the future.

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