Using Positive Discipline as a consistent tool, HMS provides adult caregivers – guides, administrators, and parents – with a common language and a common framework to use with children.
Children don't arrive in parent's lives with a handbook or an owner's manual. Throughout a child's life, parents have to find resources to help them become the best parents they can be. With the help of Positive Discipline methodology, HMS staff and faculty help parents craft positive, productive responses to their child or children throughout all stages of development.
Popular Positive Discipline classes, which are offered throughout the year and address a variety of stages of childhood development, give parents a better understanding of the classroom language at HMS, provide tools for effective messaging, and build strong patterns of communication within families.
All Positive Discipline coursework at HMS has been led by experienced and certified Positive Discipline facilitators, Kathleen McClay and Barbara Thomas.
WHAT IS POSITIVE DISCIPLINE? Like Montessori education, Positive Discipline is based on respect and trust in the child. Positive Discipline equips parents with practical parenting tools, including using limited choices, encouragement and positive reinforcement of appropriate behaviors, use of natural consequences to teach lessons, and the search for solutions through community or family meetings. This discipline philosophy is based largely on the principles developed by Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikers, which have been explained thoroughly in a series of books by Jane Nelsen, Ed.D. Positive Discipline is part of the fabric of daily life at HMS, and is carried out by all staff members through very practical means.