Positive discipline for preschoolers almost always involves the tool of redirection: the child is directed away from an activity where rules are being broken (or are about to be) and into a more suitable activity.

Two- to five-year-olds are generally considered to be too young to be disciplined in any other way. But from the Nurtured Heart "energy" standpoint, using this tactic is tantamount to starting these preschoolers on the $100-for-poor-choices gravy train.

Let's say your preschooler is playing with his friend while you're engaged in some paperwork at your desk in the next room. Your son decides to see what happens if he smacks his buddy. The friend's screeching draws you to the scene. You find out what happened and take your child aside, speaking to him gently about how he mustn't hit and how it's wrong and not nice to the friend. Or perhaps you offer a few stern, highly energized words about how he must not hit. Then you take him to a cool new activity and stay until he's engaged in it. Your child plays peacefully for a bit but then starts to get bored. He is now once again craving that attention and energy from his "favorite toy." He gets it by…smacking his buddy again.

Preschoolers are just as good at seeing the relationship between rule-breaking and adult relationship as older children are. Children under five need lots of adult attention and have less internal self-control. From the perspective this approach, redirection is yet another wheelbarrow full of relationship at the wrong moment in time: when a rule has been broken.

The good news: Young children respond beautifully as soon as energy is directed at them in response to rules not being broken and other messages of positivity.

With preschoolers, a 10- to 15-second time-out, followed immediately by a rich time-in, works much better than redirection for encouraging good choices. Young children respond especially well to "reset" as a substitute for time-out. Another option is to use the terms "red light" and "green light" or "pause" and "play" for time-out and time-in. These are different names for the same concept and the same intervention.

Tucson Head Start and the Nurtured Heart Approach: An Amazing Success Story
Several years ago, I gave a presentation on my approach to a group of parents and teachers in Tucson, Arizona. Afterward, several attendees approached and told me they worked for the Head Start program.

Head Start is a preschool program for underprivileged, at-risk families whose children are more likely to face behavioral issues, psychiatric diagnoses and medication. In Tucson at that time, Head Start had an entire mental health department just for all the behavioral health issues (such as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder) so common in those classrooms. Many additional referrals were being made by Head Start to outside mental health providers for evaluation, diagnosis and treatment.

Head Start staff's interest in the Nurtured Heart Approach rested primarily on its potential to help their most difficult students. I was willing to try to help, but only if they were willing to use the approach with all students, not just the most intense students. They agreed.

In preparation for my observing and working in the classrooms, Head Start teachers gave me packets full of research materials used as foundations for their current disciplinary approaches. Reading through those materials, I was hardly surprised that they were dealing with out-of-control classrooms. Redirection was their main disciplinary technique. They had tried the "minute per year" approach to time-out, and it hadn't worked. Combined with other discouraging experiences with traditional approaches, they had dismissed the time-out as ineffective.

I began by doing a whole-class intervention using the Nurtured Heart Approach while Head Start staff watched and studied what I was doing. They read my book Transforming the Difficult Child to learn more about the approach. Within a week, in each of 10 problematic classrooms, things had turned around. Often, staff found that the children with the worst behavior had turned around the most and were displaying the best behavior -- a change I could have predicted, knowing what those worst-behaved kids were looking for and knowing that intensity can be the driving force of greatness as easily as it can manifest in difficulty. Many observers watched this whole process, and there was agreement that the "non-challenging" children were flourishing, too.

The benefits were so clear that Tucson Head Start arranged a one-day session in which I trained teachers from 80 classrooms. Supervisors of Tucson Head Start became experts in the approach and helped implement it throughout all the centers.

In the first year the Nurtured Heart Approach was applied at Tucson Head Start, there was not a single ADHD-related diagnosis. In the seven years that followed, the success record held: not a single child had been placed on medications for behavioral problems. Huge amounts of money were saved on mental health services, and with that extra money, the system was able to increase enrollment from about 2,000 to 3,000 children.

I attribute this great story to Head Start's willingness to revamp their practices. They not only changed the trajectory of the messages of success they were sending the children, but they made a commitment to not energizing negativity and to having a new and simpler form of reset that served them and ultimately the children more perfectly.

The New Time-Out and the Intention of Clarity

I used to believe that it was crucial for a child to actually move to a time-out location, such as a chair. I used to recommend an elaborate plan in case the child refused to go to time-out when told. I honestly no longer feel that is crucial in the home setting. What follows is an explanation that will help you see what it took me some time to recognize.

Think about the video game example that I described earlier. In those games, a child is sitting at a console or monitor, focused on the primary goal of getting higher and higher scores and levels of attainment. Occasionally the child breaks a rule of the game, and when he does, the game unfailingly delivers a consequence. I want to point out a few interesting things about this process.

Adults look at those consequences and think, "Oh my gosh, how drastic and disgusting -- blood spurting, heads rolling!" But ask any child: he'll tell you that the consequence is really nothing. He's back in the game in a matter of seconds. Even if the last penalty ended the game, he just starts up a new round.

So, first and foremost, the consequence is really a matter of the child's perception of having had a reset. Ask anyone who plays these games -- they want only to be back in the game. They really feel the brief consequence as meaningful -- but not scary or punitive.

And somehow, because the game so highly energizes successes and has such clear limits and consequences, all the child can think about is trying to be the world's best player. HE GETS GREAT AT NOT BREAKING THE RULES. It becomes a skill in and of itself and he chooses to not break rules, of his own volition. No one is forcing him or standing over him. No one is telling him he has to be good at this. He has the illusion of having accepted and completed the consequence because the game allows him right back in. And -- here's the kicker -- he doesn't ever have to leave his seat to have this perception and for it to be superbly effective at inspiring success.

The time-out recommended in these pages is the simplest road I could find to creating a parallel process in which the child is led to believe the consequence is successfully over and that he is back in the game.

If the child "appears" to have refused the consequence, simply turn away for a bit. When the moment feels right, turn back and announce that the consequence is over; then, stay vigilant for the next opportunity to praise good choices. The very best way to declare that the child is back in the game is to show your energy for his success as soon as possible in relation to not breaking the very rule that had earned the time-out and for good choices in general.

In the early days of developing this approach, I also felt that bigger infractions deserved a time-out plus some level of community service when the initial reset was over. I no longer feel that this is crucial because, as in the video game analogy, the goal is not to measure off the perfect punishment that will awaken the child to not wanting to break rules ever again. What really wins the day is to move the child into a whole new way of living. My experience is that this is best accomplished by relentlessly moving the child into deeper versions of success. The child who transforms is really awakening to her greatness; she then wants to manifest that in every way possible. That's the sweet outcome I have seen over and over again.

I daresay, based on my own parenting experience and my work with thousands of other parents, what parents really want is a child who wants to be the best in the world because it feels good to him to exercise his greatness…a child who, of his own volition, wants to NOT break the rules.

I don't think we want future generations of fear-based children who are forever terrified of mistakes and transgressions. The latter can only live a shadow of a fulfilled life, always walking on eggshells and unable to fully experience the joy of living.