Alternative Approaches to Discipline - Essay Example

In a world fraught with strife and violence, Non Violent Communication (NVC) comes as a welcome change. NVC is a unique communication process as it is based on the principle of giving and receiving with compassion. It comprises four essential components such as: observations, feelings, needs and requests. In order to communicate non-violently or rather compassionately, one has to incorporate the aforementioned components while speaking to others. For instance, if one feels hurt about some incident and wants to talk about it, he or she must first state the incident, then talk about how he or she felt about it, followed by what particular need in him or her triggered such a feeling and also, follow it up with a request so that the person feels he or she is understood.

NVC is an effective communication process as it draws the listener to an individual’s feelings, needs and expectations in such a way that the former feels compassion and tries to empathize with the speaker. Alternatively, if someone is in trouble, a person who practices NVC can go a long way in redressing grievances by lending a patient ear and supporting with an empathetic heart. Rosenberg mentions an incident wherein he was called a ‘murderer’ and in a short while, was honored by the accuser, through an invitation as a guest for Ramadan dinner.

The reason for this is that incident clearly manifests he had listened to him compassionately and had a heart-to-heart conversation with him (Rosenberg & Gandhi, p. 13, 2003). This shows that NVC is an effective and reliable mode of communication. On the other hand Polland’s discipline approach is extensive in nature where he gives an overview of the behaviors that children and adolescents exhibit at various stages of their development. Therefore, formulating a disciplinary action involves considering the age of the child or adolescent, the particular situation he or she is in and also arriving at a decision based on logical grounds.

For example, according to Polland, it is not a suitable punishment when a parent prevents a child from watching TV for dirtying the ceiling because such a punishment has no link with the misdeed. Instead, suggests a punishment of making the child clean up the ceiling so that he or she realizes how tedious a job it is and refrains from repeating it. A lot of insight goes into choosing a disciplinary action. It is made very clear in this discipline approach that there is no right way of disciplining.

Parents by way of reasoning are expected to choose the right disciplinary action. The NVC approach and the discipline approach for children and adolescents share commonalities as well as differences. Both the approaches encourage open communication through questioning, listening and acknowledging the feelings of others. For example, in NVC one doesn’t not assume reasons for the other person being unhappy , but constantly questions and patiently listens to all that the person has to say and then arrives at a conclusion as to what needs and feelings made the person think or feel so.

Similarly, in the discipline approach adopted by Poland, parents are always instructed to listen to everything the children have to say, even though they might lie. Therefore, the underlying principle on which both the approaches are based is the same: acknowledging individual’s feelings and then responding. The NVC process can