"How close is too close?  What a confusing mess!"

Amanda was a mother who had read my books and was considering implementing the Nurtured Heart Approach with her children but was on the fence about it. Her children weren't particularly difficult; they certainly weren't candidates for a behavioral diagnosis. Traditional disciplinary methods had worked decently, but Amanda wanted to go to that next level of consciously cultivating the greatness she could see blossoming in her children.

She was tired of threatening, bargaining and lecturing; she felt overwrought and wanted a happier, more positive environment at home. But she was still stuck in her old programming and unable to release it enough to plunge fully into the new approach.

We communicated, and she told me a story that I've heard, in various permutations, dozens of times over the years. "My son goes to preschool," she told me, "and he had been having trouble in a few areas -- specifically, not sitting still during group time, refusing to do lessons with the teacher, and pouring his juice out on the ground outside instead of drinking it. So the teacher recommended that I start what she called a 'star system' -- a credit system to help motivate him to do better.

"I did implement a basic system: I told him he had to sit still and be quiet during circle time; he had to do a lesson with the teacher; and he could not dump his juice or yogurt on the ground. If he didn't follow those rules, he would not get a sticker on the calendar that day. I tried to make the rules negative, and didn't succeed too well in that at first. I tried to give him not only stickers (which he could accrue to earn a trip to the toy store for an inexpensive toy) but also lots of positive reinforcement for all he was doing right.

"It was working well. He got stickers for a couple of days, and then didn't get one, and so he got to have that experience too -- and it motivated him to reach those goals the next day. Then, a few days after I'd started the sticker program, his teacher approached me at the end of the school day. She was waffling about whether it was a 'star day' -- he had followed the rules we had already set up, albeit with some boundary pushing, but had not broken any of the rules. That was a real eye opener to me," Amanda noted, "that she didn't know whether it was a star day or not. Clearly, the line between rules broken and rules followed was unclear in her mind.

"I told her we'd start adding rules and if he didn't break them he'd get his sticker. I told her I would be adding 'no pushing' to the list. She said, 'Oh, no, no, no! That's so negative. Try something positive, like 'when you feel like pushing, use your words instead,' but her version was about twice that long.

"That's when it really hit me," Amanda told me, "the incredible vagueness and verboseness of so-called 'positive discipline.' What does a child make of rules like 'use your words?' I totally got why it doesn't work. A child faced with a rule like that really doesn't know where the line is, and he can see that the teacher doesn't know, either!

"I hate to admit it, but I got a little snappish with this teacher. She just seemed so sure of her approach. And I had seen what went on in that school -- by and large those kids were not being disciplined very effectively.

"I answered, 'First of all, that seems like too many words. Why not keep it simple and straightforward? No pushing. Ever. It's never okay to push. What's wrong with making a negative rule for a negative behavior?'

"She continued to argue for a 'positive' rule, but I couldn't be swayed. I had this vivid mental picture of my son literally standing near a big, fuzzy line drawn on the ground, inching ever closer, looking around…and of this teacher hovering nearby, exhorting him not to get too close. How close is too close? What a confusing mess!

"Finally, she told me that I knew my son best and should do what I felt was best for him. And when I walked away from that conversation, I finally understood in my bones why the Nurtured Heart Approach is best for him and for my daughter as well."

So-called positive discipline and the Nurtured Heart Approach are both effective, in the way that both fast-food burgers and a healthful salad are both food. They may both be enough to sustain us. They can both taste good. But the nutrition they provide is hardly comparable. And over the course of a lifetime, which do you think is going to enable one to thrive instead of just survive?