Parents who use responsive discipline consider their children's feelings and needs. Self-respect, hope, courage, and compassion are important goals for responsive discipline. The Relationship Bank Responsive discipline nurtures responsibility in children. By setting and enforcing reasonable limits, we help children learn self-control. Limits contribute to the child's understanding of right and wrong and the development of values that emphasize the feelings and needs of others.
Responsive discipline emphasizes freedom within reasonable boundaries.
The ultimate goal of discipline is an adult with a personal sense of responsibility. Learning self-control and personal responsibility means acquiring what psychologists call an internal locus of control. In contrast, an external locus of control means that the individual depends on external rewards or punishments to behave as the authority wishes. In the absence of these external forces, the individual is free to act impulsively. Very young children begin with an external locus of control.