Parenting Blog

My Aha Parenting moment this week came during a dinner party.  A conversation about the recent furor in the New York TImes and on NPR about Alfie Kohn and timeouts led to a discussion of discipline methods, including spankings. I felt compelled to point out that both timeouts and spanking are punishments, not discipline.  Discipline means “to guide” and there are more effective ways to guide kids than punishment.  As always in these social conversations where no one has hired me as their parenting expert, I tried to walk the line between saying what I think --  punishment gets in the way of raising cooperative kids -- and making other parents wrong.  I do understand, after all, how a parent can feel at the end of her rope and use a timeout.

“But how do you get them to behave, then?” asked a friend of mine – a doctor and the father of two teenage girls.  I suggested that building a good relationship with your child makes most discipline unnecessary. A good relationship with us is what makes kids want to behave.  After all, kids behave to please us, and because making the choice to behave gives them more satisfaction than misbehaving, at least as they get older.  Much the same reasons that adults choose to behave!

My doctor friend grinned impishly.  “Relating to kids is a lot of work,” he said. “And life is busy.  So you could think of punishment as a labor-saving device.”

We all had to laugh.  But that was my Aha Moment.   Because I realized that on some level he’s right.

I think the dirty secret of parenting is that we punish because it’s the easy way out.  When our child does something she knows is off-limits, our immediate impulse is fury.  We want to teach her a lesson she won't forget.  And as her parents, that's our job, right?

But cracking down at the moment when you and your child are both upset always backfires. When humans are in the flush of anger or fear, the learning centers of our brain actually turn off, so kids simply can’t learn when they’re being punished, even if they wanted to – which they don’t! So punishment is never an effective way to teach kids. A teachable moment is only teachable if the student is actually ready to learn.

So why do we continue to punish?  Because it’s a labor-saving device.  Not only is it easier than talking with our kids, being patient, and working to build a truly close relationship.   It’s also much easier than taking responsibility for our own anger.  

Anger is a defensive stance against emotions we don’t want to feel:  fear, sadness, hurt.  When we get mad at our kids, there is always something under it.  Did he wet the bed again? That triggers our fear that we’ll never solve this problem, he’ll be wetting the bed in high school.  Did she clobber her little brother and then lie to us about it?  She’s a pathological criminal in the making, or worse yet, she takes after her no-good father who ran off and left us. Was she rude?  That hurts! After all we’ve done for her?  Or it reminds us how our own mother smacked US if we were rude – so we feel like our kid’s got it coming.  

In all of these cases, we COULD be brave enough to notice our own emotional baggage that’s coming to light, and use the opportunity to heal it.  But that’s a lot of emotional work.  So instead, we get angry.  The best defense is a good offense.  We direct that energy outward at the obvious target, the kid who's triggering the anger. Punishment is indeed a labor-saving device.

I can hear some listeners thinking, “But sometimes the child needs correction!  It’s not all our own baggage.”  And yes, that’s absolutely true.  But the correction that works with kids is always most effective when it comes from love, not anger.  In our calm moments, every parent knows that.

We all get frustrated at having to give our child the same reminders, day after day.  Some of that is unavoidable:  We help our kids create positive life habits by ensuring, over and over, that they brush their teeth, hang up their jacket, and put the homework in their backpack.  That's just part of the parents’ job description, best accepted with a smile.

But the bigger challenges, like rudeness or hitting, aren't taught by "reminders."  Those are solvable only by going to the core of the feelings driving your child's behavior. When kids choose not to behave as we’d like, there’s a reason. It may not be what you would consider a good reason, but there’s always a reason.

If you can see the situation from your kid’s point of view, you’ll see the deeper issue behind his behavior, whether he’s exhausted and hungry, or swamped with desolation because the new baby is always on the lap that was once his.

Once those deeper issues are attended to, you can remind your child that his behavior isn't how your family treats each other, and brainstorm how he'll handle such a situation in the future.  Parents who love unconditionally guide their kids and set limits, but they stay emotionally connected while they do it -- both through the upset, and through the teaching that follows later, once everyone is calm -- sometimes hours later.

Showing up this way teaches your child emotional intelligence.  It’s truly healing for both of you.  You might even say that this is the real work of parenting.

That means, though, that we don't have the luxury – or the right -- to discharge our anger at our child by punishing.  Will you get angry?  Sure, as long as you're human.  Can you learn now to take a deep breath and a few minutes for yourself, instead of unloading your anger on this small person entrusted to your care and guidance? Then you'll be able to show up as a real teacher for your child, and help him process his upset constructively.  In the end, relating this way IS a labor-saving device, because it actually changes your child’s behavior. Research shows that punishment doesn’t.

If you make your teachable moments into learnable moments, your teaching will stick. And your child will get something even better than the lesson about behavior. The skills for emotional self-management -- and the unshakable conviction that he is wholly and unconditionally loved exactly as he is, including all those messy, passionate emotions that make us human.

Is it more work?  Maybe, in the moment.  But in the end your kid thrives, and you’re a happier parent.  So my Aha Moment?  The real labor-saving device is Love.