When correcting your child’s behavior, it is important to use a firm voice, or voice of authority. Below are Supernanny’s suggestions:
- Avoid shouting across the room; instead, go to where the child is.
- Remember to make eye contact with your child by getting down on their level. Do not intimidate him or her with your height. You are not issuing “commands from above,” that they can pretend to ignore.
- Hold your child by the arm so that they can’t run away from you and tell them to “Look at me, please” while giving correction.
- Have a low, firm, authoritative tone, but not an angry or threatening tone.
- Tell him/her calmly and sternly what he/she has done wrong and what you expect out of them: “We do not hit people; please do not do it again or there will be a time out.”