Mission StatementTo create a peaceful world by teaching Adlerian social and emotional life skills for respectful relationships.
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Positive Discipline in Families
Positive Discipline empowers families by teaching essential social and life skills in a respectful manner for both adults and children. Children raised in Positive Discipline environments develop a sense of connection with their community (at home and school), feel their voices matter, and are less likely to engage in misbehavior. Key family skills include; - Building responsibility, respect, and resilience in children
- Teaching social skills through Family Meetings, which foster problem-solving and communication
- Cultivating a home environment that nurtures children’s positive involvement in their communities
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Positive Discipline in Schools
Positive Discipline in schools helps teachers and staff create classrooms where students feel valued and respected, reducing disruptions and enhancing teaching time. Core components include:
- Teaching communication and problem-solving skills through regular Class Meetings
- Reducing misbehavior with inclusive, respectful approaches
- Providing specific lessons for students from preschool through high school, fostering self-discipline and cooperation
Teachers report that Positive Discipline improves student behavior, increases teaching time, and enhances their own teaching experience.
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Positive Discipline in Child Care Centers and Community Programs
Child Care Centers, After School Programs and other community agencies also benefit from the use of the same Positive Discipline approaches. A wide range of books and manuals addressing child development, Positive Discipline principles and special family situations is available. Typical book titles include Positive Discipline for Preschoolers, Positive Discipline for Teenagers, Positive Discipline in the Classroom, and Positive Discipline: A Teacher’s A to Z Guide.
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ABOUT PDA The Positive Discipline Association is a non-profit organization that strengthen families, schools, and communities with training for trainers who educate parents (including foster parents and house parents for residential settings), teachers, administrators and other helping professionals. It provides training materials and follow-up services. All the work is based upon Adlerian/Dreikursian principles for issues relating to parenting, guidance, discipline, relationships, communication skills, and team building. Specific target groups for workshops or trainings include, but are not limited to:
Parents, grandparents, foster parents and other family caregivers Families
Parent educators Teachers and school administrators for preschool through grade12 Child-care providers Therapists, counselors, social workers Community organizations Communities of faith Corporate trainers
Trainings or workshops are offered by Certified Trainers, primarily in a two-day, experiential, format in various locations around the world. Rigorous training, continuous networking, and an annual Think Tank assures a high level of competency among associates. Training is also provided upon request to an entire school or agency staff. A fourteen hour program format is available specifically for educating parents and/or teachers. Provisions are in place to offer scholarships and a reduced fee schedule for individuals of low to moderate income who might find the fee prohibitive for workshops and trainings. The Corporation is organized exclusively for charitable, scientific, and educational purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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How It All Began
Positive Discipline is a program based on the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs. The principles can be found in the best selling Positive Discipline books by Dr. Jane Nelsen and her many co-authors. Lynn Lott and Jane Nelsen developed the training programs Teaching Parenting the Positive Discipline Way and Positive Discipline in the Classroom.
About the Founders of Positive Discipline
Dr. Jane Nelsen
"In 1969 I felt like a failure as a mother. I would be authoritarian until I couldn't stand myself. Then I would be permissive until I couldn't stand my kids. I was a senior in college majoring in Child Development and felt discouraged as I became aware of ideals for children and parents. Unfortunately, the books that explained these ideals did not give much help on how to accomplish them.
In my last semester of college, I enrolled in a class where the instructor, Dr. Hugh Allred, explained that we would not be learning a bunch of theories but only one theory (Adlerian Psychology), which included practical methods to help children learn self-discipline, responsibility, cooperation, and problem-solving skills. I was hopeful about this possibility, but even more gratified to find that the Dreikurs/Adler methods were effective in spite of my yes, but attitude.
I became so excited about my own success that I wanted to share these methods with others. I started as a parent study group leader with friends in my neighborhood and then with parents of educationally and emotionally handicapped children (my MA thesis project) and later became the Director of Project ACCEPT (Adlerian Counseling Concepts for Encouraging Parents and Teachers) in the Elk Grove School District. This was a federally funded, Title IV-C project. Our purpose was to show that children would improve their behavior when parents and teachers attended study groups to learn more effective ways of working with children in homes and classrooms. The results showing improved behavior were statistically significant at the .001 level, so we were awarded funding for three more years to teach other interested school districts how to adopt this program.
The book we were using in this project went out of print, so in 1981 I sat down and quickly wrote another one based on what I had been teaching and learning from other parents and teachers. The book was written in two months and self-published in a format with so many mistakes it would make you laugh today. Thus, Positive Discipline was born. Who would know that what people now think of as Positive Discipline would evolve from such an innocent decision?"
Lynn and Jane Combine Forces
In 1990, Lynn Lott and Jane Nelsen joined forces to revise and expand the Teaching Parenting Manual Lynn and her students put together in 1987. They made the manual more user-friendly, revised the problem solving steps, and added a lot of new activities and promotional ideas. Over the next eight years, they updated the manual with many new materials. In 2007, with the help of a group of Certified Positive Discipline Associates, Lynn and Jane created the sixth edition of Teaching Parenting. They also authored several books together, Positive Discipline for Teenagers, Positive Discipline A-Z, and Positive Discipline in the Classroom.
When it came to creating a national organization of parent educators, Jane and Lynn met their biggest challenge. In spite of many struggles and differences as to how to bring this about, in 2004, the Positive Discipline Association was born, and the end result is exactly what Jane and Lynn both wished for: a non-profit organization that can carry on their work without them having to be involved on a day-to-day basis. The work is extremely important, and each of them is grateful for the efforts of others help keep it going. Adlerian ideas changed both of their lives, and with the work of the PDA, others’ lives will change in positive ways.
Lynn and Jane are learners, teachers, and creators and are willing to make mistakes along the way. They encourage others to be learners and follow Rudolf Dreikurs’ profound guidance to “have the courage to be imperfect.” Don’t wait for perfection before you teach. Teach as you learn and learn as you teach and you will make a huge difference in the world.
 Lynn Lott
In 1969 when my first child was six months old, I picked up a book called Children: The Challenge by Rudolf Dreikurs and it changed my life. At that time, there was a group of volunteers leading parenting classes to study the ideas in that book. I took one of these classes, became a volunteer leader, and have been teaching parenting and relationship skills ever since. Though I came to Positive Discipline as a parent, it wasn’t long before I was using the ideas in multiple settings, including my private practice as a therapist.
In 1973, I founded an Adlerian organization in northern California. That organization evolved into the Family Education Center where I ran a weekly parent education/family-in-focus program for thirteen years. As parents in the program became more involved and skilled, I created an internship program to teach them how to be parent educators and counselors. The interns learned how to teach experientially, based on what I had learned from John Taylor, so that their parenting groups would be more interesting and effective than the first one I took back in 1969. I created the Parents Helping Parents Problem Solving Steps so that new students would have a map to use when they counseled parents using the open forum model introduced by Adler, Dreikurs, Christensen, Walton, Platt and others. The open forum included working with volunteer parents, teachers, and/or families in front of an audience. Watching this magical method closely, I could see what these master Adlerians did and turned the magic into steps that others could follow. In the summer of 1987, my students and I created the first Teaching Parenting Manual for others to use."
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