Punitive Techniques Are Ridiculously Old-Fashioned!
Why I do not believe in the naughty step or time out
Punishing children with the naughty step or time out or anything else which involves them being alone is not an effective long-term strategy. I believe in discipline and the main difference between discipline and punishment is that discipline teaches children a new behaviour, while punishment is teaching children a new behaviour, using fear. It may well seem like these fear-based techniques do the job in the short term but here’s why I do not recommend them:
- Punishment inflicts suffering for past behaviour hoping to change future behaviour
- It invokes the emotional brain to fear a consequence
- The effects of frequent fear on a child’s brain are:
- Emotion dysregulation
- Mental disorders
- Brain shrinkage
- Externalising behaviour
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Decrease in academic performance
- More likely to become a bully or victim of bullying
So, why is discipline my preferred method?
- You’re teaching your child to behave in accordance with rules by focussing on future behaviour
- It invokes the thinking brain to learn new behaviour
- Effective discipline strategies are:
- Model good behaviour – your children learn from this more than being told
- Use positive discipline
- Be consistent, do not lapse
- Re-evaluate age-appropriateness
The word, discipline, comes from Latin ‘disciplina’ (teaching, learning, or instruction), punishment is not required in order to teach. Children’s brains are not mature enough to respond effectively to punishment – it impacts the emotional brain. Cortisol (the stress hormone) is released so a child will go into fight-or-flight mode. This is valuable for human survival but this unnecessary fear can condition humans to change their behaviour.
The problem is; that this type of fear-conditioned memory is what underlies mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) later in life.
Because the creation of this memory (and the recall of it) does not need permission from the thinking brain, it is hard to avoid the harmful mental effects. To parents, being harshly punished may not appear to be a life-and-death situation that can result in intense fear. As adults, if we’re hit or yelled at, we may be able to recover quickly, we’d vent to friends or avoid that person – we have options. However, for children and especially younger ones, parents are their entire world. Parents are the main or sole providers of food, safety, and all other necessities. Children have no choice when it comes to choosing their own caregiver.
It’s about survival. It is life-or-death.
And let’s not forget, from a child’s perspective, adults are huge physically, almost like giants. To kids, harsh treatment by caregivers can and often does feel like a life-threatening experience.
So, this is why I believe it’s important to teach and model for our young children in an age-appropriate way, which yes, can be very challenging at times. A blog post around healthy ways to avoid or overcome common behavioural problems such as: difficult mealtimes, toddler hitting/throwing and resistant bedtimes is coming soon!
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