Interview call out!
From all the hundreds of people who responded to surveys asking the basic question, ‘What’s the worst parenting advice you received?’, only 2 people said that being told NOT to spank their child was bad advice.
On the other hand, 132 people said that the worst advice they received was to spank, hit, bite, or otherwise physically hurt their child when they needed to be punished. Another 175 cited advice along the lines of timeouts, withdrawal of affection, locking them in their room, and ignoring their child for misbehaviour as the worst advice they received.
Despite the evidence against corporal punishment and timeouts growing, many parents are still being told to use these methods to discipline their children. I want to understand this better.
I’m interested in talking to a couple of parents who have thoughts on discipline. You might have experienced harsh discipline as a child, and now be working towards gentle parenting. Or maybe your parents were strict with you, but it worked, so you plan on being strict with your own child. Or maybe you started off strict, and something changed your mind. Whatever thoughts you have, I want to hear them!
So, if you can make time for a quick chat with me, leave me a note in the comments or hit reply to this email!
As a big thank you to anyone who makes the time for a chat, you will be receiving access to all my bonus content for a year (which will include the outcomes of what I learn from the interviews I have with parents on topics just like this one).
Now on to the main article!
Responding to misbehaviour
I recently read Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, as anyone who knows me in person could probably tell you. I highly recommend reading it, it has the most convincing take down of punishment, rewards, and praise that I’ve ever come across, replete with hundreds of studies on the topic, while still being incredibly engaging and even entertaining.
Today, I want to share an excerpt from this book, break it down, and delve into why I found it so impactful and some of the science surrounding the topic.
“Here is another exercise that teachers and parents often find valuable, which I invite you to do now. Close your eyes (when you finish this paragraph), return to your childhood, and think of a time when you were accused of doing something bad. Recall the alleged misbehavior as specifically as you can, as well as what the adult in question did or said to you and how it made you feel. What constantly impresses me when I ask people to remember such incidents is how vivid the recollections are—as if the event had happened last week instead of many years ago. Some tales are shocking in the cruelty inflicted on children. Some are stories of a brief but harsh rebuke, a refusal to believe the child’s account, a minor humiliation that the adult had probably forgotten a few days later but the child carried forever. Some of these children never again trusted or respected that authority figure; some refused to participate in class for a very long time; some still carry with them a smoldering resentment fed by fantasies of revenge. I have heard people say they were more compliant for a while after the incident in question; I have never heard anyone say that a punitive response helped make him or her a better person. The only people who tell of being positively affected are those whose stories concern a parent or teacher who didn’t punish, who responded instead with unexpected gentleness and understanding. This is really an exercise in perspective taking—imagining the point of view of someone else—except that here the other person is oneself as a child. Once we can recapture that perspective, it is easier to put ourselves in the place of the children we raise or teach today. The idea here is to imagine on a regular basis how our reactions to their behavior may affect them more deeply than we realize, how today’s careless exercise of power on our part may become tomorrow’s bitter memory for them.”
Before you keep reading, I really do hope that you’ve done the exercise. And that you’ve ordered an Alfie Kohn book.
Now, I’m first going to share my response to the exercise, and then highlight some quotes and delve into them a bit deeper. It’s probably not as good as reading Punished by Rewards in its entirety, but it won’t take you as long, so I hope you can still find my thoughts valuable.
The moment of misbehaviour that I recalled was from my earliest days in primary school, when I was told off for crawling around during a time when we were all expected to be sitting still, criss-cross applesauce. I don’t believe I was scolded harshly, but it still felt unfair. I was only going to pick up a pencil sharpener that I had noticed was on the floor. I was trying to be helpful, not disruptive.
I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that my teacher remembers that moment.
But here I am, 24 years later, still remembering the embarrassment I felt for being called out in front of the class.
I think the rebuke did make me more compliant. I certainly didn’t crawl around anymore when we were sitting on the floor together. But did it make me a better person? I don’t think so.
I think it led into and reinforced my people pleasing behaviour. Something I’m trying to grow out of as an adult.
I don’t think that one moment was pivotal, and that without it I would be an entirely different person. But I also don’t think I would remember the moment so clearly, or even at all, if I had been responded to with understanding and kindness.
It doesn’t matter what experience you remembered when doing this exercise, I can guarantee that if you recalled being rebuked, told off, or punished, that the lessons you learnt from the experience were not those that the adult was trying to make you learn.
Now for a deeper dive on some of my favourite parts:
“that the adult had probably forgotten a few days later but the child carried forever”.
So much of the way we parent happens on autopilot. With so many daily interactions, it’s practically impossible to be intentional every time that we need to provide direction, respond to misbehaviour, or intervene in our children’s interactions with each other. While these automatic reactions are inevitable, the result is that we can react in ways that deeply affect our child without even realising that we’ve made an impact.
Trying to be intentional and calm in every interaction is a noble goal, but one that is doomed for failure.
It’s far better to be realistic and acknowledge that we all make mistakes. There will be plenty of times that we react without thinking – letting our frustration at an unrelated situation spill out onto our child, saying harsh words, dismissing them because we are preoccupied with other things, even yelling and exploding in anger. Yes, we’re aiming to avoid these things, but it’s just not going to happen 100% of the time.
I think the difference between an interaction that will stay with our child forever and one that will be quickly forgotten isn’t the strength of the rebuke. It’s the strength of the repair.
Ruptures are inevitable, and not necessarily damaging to the parent-child relationship. In fact, a 2010 study examining mother-child interactions and child maltreatment risk found that there was no significant difference in the amount of ruptures that occurred between families at high-risk for child maltreatment and those at low-risk of child maltreatment. Every family is going to experience ruptures – moments where we criticise, verbally attack each other, or ignore pleas for connection. The difference between the high-risk and low-risk families was in the frequency of repairs. Those who were at low-risk for child maltreatment successfully repaired the majority of the time following a rupture.
Repairing after a rupture tells our child “I was also affected by this”, “I didn’t forget”, “I notice you”, and “I acknowledge that I also behaved badly”. It gives us a chance to model apologies, strengthen our relationships, and remind our child that we love them no matter what.
As some researchers have noted, repair turns despair into joy.
“I have never heard anyone say that a punitive response helped make him or her a better person.”
We don’t make people behave better by making them feel worse. Yet the idea that misbehaviour needs a punishment or a consequence, that the child needs to “learn their lesson”, is rife.
The truth is that punishments and punitive responses don’t make our children into better people. They don’t “learn their lesson”, at least not the lesson we’d like to be imparting.
Here’s what they do learn from punitive responses:
-to focus on their own experience of the punishment rather than on the way their misbehaviour impacted others
-that punishments happen when they get caught, so they’d better be sneaky and dishonest
-that bigger people get to push little people around
-that parental regard is conditional on behaviour
For a detailed article breaking down why time-outs (and other forms of punitive discipline) don’t work, see this excellent article by Dr Justin Coulson. And for what we should replace punitive discipline with, read on!
“…People who tell of being positively affected are those whose stories concern a parent or teacher who didn’t punish, who responded instead with unexpected gentleness and understanding.”
Moving from punitive responses to gentle responses isn’t easy for two main reasons: it requires being able to regulate our own emotional response, and it can seem less effective. Let’s examine each in turn.
First, responding with gentleness and understanding isn’t going to happen if we’re experiencing heightened emotions. That’s because, as Dr Justin Coulson says, high emotions equals low intelligence, for our kids as well as for ourselves.
When our kids are screaming, fighting each other, or otherwise misbehaving, it’s easy for our own fight or flight response to kick in. The chaos causes our brains to go on the alert, and cortisol floods our bodies, preparing our body to react. In a real emergency situation, this quick hormonal response is lifesaving, as the cortisol triggers a range of downstream responses in almost every organ of the body, providing us with a quick burst of energy to respond to perceived dangers. We are primed to react quickly.
The issue arises when the perceived threat is our child. Unless there is imminent danger, our child’s behaviour doesn’t necessitate a quick reaction. Reacting quickly typically means yelling, speaking harshly, and otherwise parenting from a place where our rational, prefrontal cortex is offline.
To respond intentionally, with gentleness and understanding, it requires us to regulate our emotions. It means toning down our stress response so that we can get our rational prefrontal cortex back into the driver’s seat. We do this by putting space between the trigger (our child’s misbehaviour), and our reaction. Taking a deep breath, repeating a mantra (such as this is not an emergency), and counting to 3 are all simple ways that we can create that space before responding.
Secondly, responding with gentleness and understanding can seem less effective than punitive responses. This is in part because it can seem more difficult to implement (in that there are no prescribed steps to follow in comparison to the structure of many punitive techniques such as time outs), and in part because they actually aren’t as effective in securing immediate compliance. Consequently, if your only goal for your child is immediate and exact compliance, punitive responses will get you there. However, if your goal is to develop your child’s self-regulation, emotional awareness, and problem-solving skills, then you need other tools. Take the time to understand your child and explore with them what they’re feeling and how it led them to behave the way they have, and then gently work with them to empower them to make a change.
“The idea here is to imagine on a regular basis how our reactions to their behavior may affect them more deeply than we realize”.
I could talk for hours about the scientific rationale for responding gently rather than punitively. I could argue about the moral and ethical implications of punitive responses. I could highlight studies from neuroscience and developmental psychology showing the importance of co-regulation. I could point to longitudinal studies showing the outcomes of repeated ruptures without repair.
Yet if we could just do as Alfie Kohn suggests, and engage in this perspective taking exercise, I think anything else that I could say would be superfluous. When we imagine how our reactions impact our children, through remembering how reactions from adults felt when we were children ourselves, I think we can understand how cutting our reactions can be. I think we would better aim to respond in the ways we wish adults had responded to us. With kindness. With understanding. With compassion.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! What did you think of the perspective-taking exercise? Do you think it has helped motivate you to respond compassionately? Or do you have other thoughts on discipline that you’d like to chat with me about?
Oh, and before you go
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