Every parent knows the difficulties in trying to discipline their children and the feeling it's not working properly. Clinical therapist Anna Martin's new book Listen to me! Taking the conflict out of child discipline aims to provide parents with some effective strategies that put the listening and wellbeing of children before lecturing.

Every parent knows the difficulties of trying to discipline their children and the feeling it's not working properly.

Clinical therapist Anna Martin's new book Listen to me! Taking the conflict out of child discipline aims to provide parents with effective strategies that put listening and the wellbeing of children before lecturing.

She says parents often default to the more punitive discipline they experienced growing up, and in New Zealand in particular, that can lead to a range of disorders later in life.

Listen to the full interview

Parents are often unaware of how much they're influenced by other factors, not just what's happening in front of them.

"We're influenced by our own childhoods, our social-cultural pressures, how we're expected to parent, how we're feeling at the time. Are we stressed or distracted? And then we've also got the patterned behaviour that's been established between parent and child since their birth."

All of these things have an impact on how parents respond to a discipline situation and often mean their response is misguided, she says.

International research is in agreement that there four key things that parents need to incorporate into their parenting.

Following these four rules helps children absorb the lessons their parents are trying to impart, Martin says.

Remain calm

"When I interviewed children as part of my PhD thesis they said it's actually okay for mum and dad to tell me off, I expect them to do that because they're my parents, I just wish they would do it in a calm way. So it's not threatening for them."

Acknowledge the child's feelings

"They want to feel like they're seen and heard is very important to their development.

Listen to the child

"They want parents to listen to their perspective and that puts fear into parents because they think if they give the child too much of a voice, then they're going to lose control, but that's actually a fallacy."

Make the child part of the solution

"Children really need to be incorporated into the solution, how do we resolve this? So they then buy into that process," Martin says.

New Zealand parents tend towards a punitive approach, Martin says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details