First Two Steps in Addressing All Heart/4 D Behaviors of Tweens
(1) First—for all—ask forgiveness and admit your mistakes/lack of strong parenting in the area
(2) Look at each situation and ask yourself how you can take this behavior/situation from GRAY to BLACK & WHITE
Donna Reish, of Raising Kids With Character, Homeschooling With Character, and Character Ink publishing, answers questions readers have been posing about handling 4 D types of behaviors (heart behaviors) in children ages eight to fourteen or so (primarily tweens). Donna emphasizes the need for parents to take responsibility for their parenting mistakes first. Then focus on taking the behaviors from gray to black & white so that misbehaviors are clear and can be handled. She gives an important order/protocol to make things very black and white with this age group for three typical misbehaviors, disrespect, disobedience, and fighting. Additionally, she gives suggested signaling words and phrases to use when these behaviors come up so that things are crystal clear as to the family expectations and handling of these things. (Listen to the prequel to this podcast episode, “Understanding The Four D’s of Behavior.”) 
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FOUR D’s OF BEHAVIOR: Heart-motivated behaviors that should not be grouped with childish behaviors but should be tended to in a consistent and heart-affecting manner.
D-1: Disrespect
D-2: Disobedience
D-3: Deceit
D-4: Destruction
Donna Reish, from Character Ink (home of Raising Kids With Character, Homeschooling With Character, and Language Lady), answers listeners’ questions about the Four D’s of children’s behavior: (1) Disrespect; (2) Disobedience; (3) Deceit; (4) Destruction (purposeful breaking or harming). This episode lays the ground work for next week’s episode about punishing and disciplining tweens (especially ten to twelve year olds). Donna expounds on the Four D’s as foolishness and heart-motivated (which necessitate punishment and serious handling), contrasting these with childishness/character issues (which require training, rewards, and consequences).
A couple of days ago I wrote about how to teach your kids NOT to apologize based on The View’s apology to the beauty pageant nurse. In going through the steps to teach your kids what to do and not do in apologizing, it was uncanny how many things the co-hosts on that program did in the “what not to do when you apologize” list.
There are many formulae out there for teaching the apology, and most of them are correct as they focus on the basics:
(Download this poster here)
