My Thoughts on Punishment

When you control your children you lose influence over them. 

Every time people hear me speak about authentic parenting and what I do they immediately ask what’s my take on discipline as if that was the only most important question in parenting. And when I say that I advocate against all punishments they raise their eyebrows and the suspicious looks on their faces tell me that they don’t buy what I offer. How can you parent without using punishments? Then what do you offer? What other techniques? But the alternative, to me, is not another method it’s a whole new perspective and a change in attitudes. But do parents really want to explore that or do they need quick-fix solutions to their challenges? Parenting provides us with new challenges all the time and we can’t just  google and get answers to our inquiries.
Parenting is not and shouldn’t be in-case-of this-do-this type of approach. That’s not authentic. It’s about being responsive. It’s about creating a different dynamic between child and parent. Everybody parents differently but we can certainly gain new thinking and change our methods if we are willing to or if we are ready. 

Then what do you do when a child “misbehaves”? Well, first of all I want to know what qualifies “misbehavior”. I want you to think about misbehavior acts, maybe write them down and think about them. And why do we always use that term when we speak about children (does your friend or your husband misbehave sometimes?). To me the term misbehavior is a made up term to justify parents authoritarian responses to children's acts. There is only behavior that is need driven and learned. Children are not born to misbehave. They are born to explore and learn about their world. They have needs- physical and emotional and all the things that they do are geared towards meeting their needs just like adults, actually. Only children have no life experience, are more sensitive and vulnerable. Yet we adults, big and strong, deliberately make them suffer by punishing them, with a goal of teaching them valuable life lessons. But what lessons do they actually learn? And when I speak of punishments I don’t just mean corporal punishments, spanking, or a slap. I use the word punishment in it’s broader meaning. While spanking/hitting and using time-outs, threats, bribes, blackmailing are not equally the same, they are equally damaging to a child. But we shouldn’t choose the less severe punishment over the harsh ones and feel good about ourselves, and appear more humane in our eyes. We shouldn’t sugar-coat are approaches either by relabeling our acts as “consequences”. There are natural consequences to things of course but when consequences are imposed by parents they are not natural any more. 

While thinking about this article I asked my 4 year old a few questions. Here are her responses. She gave me very short answers. 


1. When a child hits another child, what should an adult do?

-Stop!

2. When a child breaks a window, what should an adult do?

-Fix it!

3. When a child spills/empties an entire  container of juice/milk, what should an adult do?

-Clean it!

4. When a child doesn’t listen to an adult in the supermarket, what should an adult do?

-Not hit! 

Parenting is not about power struggles, assertion of power and showing that we are the parent. That’s lame, that’s pathetic, that’s insecure parenting. It’s about gentle guidance and aware teaching. It’s about being on children's side and helping them to learn about life. It’s about allowing them to fail and giving them a chance to correct themselves and think for themselves and learn self-discipline. And we won’t achieve this by coercion and control. It’s about us taking care of their needs and nurturing them. When a child has a certain need and acts in a way that lets the parent know (undesirable behavior) and when a parent stops that behavior temporarily (by using some kind of punishment), the need simply doesn’t disappear. We need new information and awareness. With that our actions will change as well. 

What punishment does besides not teaching the lesson we intend on teaching:

-creates fear

-creates pain, unpleasantness, anxiety

-encourages sneaky behavior

-damages self-esteem, self-worth

-breaks the bond between parent and child

-illustrates how problems should be solved (hitting, yelling, spanking, threatening, blackmailing, bribing, withholding love, using power to get things done, etc.)

-breach of trust

-makes kids powerless and mad

Here are some suggestions that will enhance your relationship with your child and make things easy. 

• Play with your child more often. Let your child lead the game. Reframe from changing the rules she sets and just go along. This type of play busts her confidence
• Spend more quality time with your child. Connect with her. And by spending more time I don’t mean put her in a shopping cart and go shopping
• Show more affection and shower her with hugs and kisses just because you love her
• Listen attentively without judging/evaluating and show that you take them seriously. The way you would do with a friend or a partner
• Give them power to make decisions about their life-it’s their life after all 
• Ask them for help. They feel important when you do
• Show real respect for their thoughts, choices, feelings and for their personality
• Refrain from using coercion, bribes, blackmailing, threats, rewards, and punishments. Try to insert and maintain REAL influence over them because if those things are removed you got nothing
• Remember that you are the adult and the parent and by default you have more power and you don’t need to assert that to remind either yourself or your children who is in control. Parent confidently. Be a leader. Know that no one is there to judge you except you. Know that we all make mistakes and new challenges rise daily. Just because we feel clueless sometimes doesn’t mean we are weak
• Communicate honestly with your kids. Show them you are human too, that you have feelings and you make mistakes and apologize sincerely to your children if need be

Happy Parenting!