I don't know who needs to hear this, but:
Punishment doesn't work.
Like every type, for every age of person. No exceptions. We have over a century of research proving this.
And the younger a kid is, the more devastating the long-term impacts on their mental health will be.
Punishment doesn't work.
Like every type, for every age of person. No exceptions. We have over a century of research proving this.
And the younger a kid is, the more devastating the long-term impacts on their mental health will be.
Prompted by hearing about someone who gives their 2yo time-outs multiple times a day for developmentally appropriate behaviors. 😡
Allow natural consequences to occur. Talk to your kids about why you don't want them to do X behavior. Redirect them from destructive and unsafe behaviors. If they're too young to talk to, sorry, you just have to wait until they grow up.
Way too many parents are poisoned by a carceral mindset. This is why your kids hate you once they become adolescents and can think for themselves. It's not inevitable or developmentally normal to loathe your parents. It's just so damn common because so many parents are assholes.
If you feel like you're locked in battle with your kid, you need to take several deep breaths and ask yourself what tf you're doing. Parenting should be joyful. You only get to keep them with you for a little while. Abolish the cop in your head.
When it comes to teenagers, you cannot control what they think or feel. All attempts to gaslight, punish, guilt trip, and emotionally abuse them will PERMANENTLY damage your relationship. And in a few years, they'll be legally free of you, and might just never call you again.
And--speaking from a place of terrible trauma and experience here-- when teens are constantly shamed and coerced and punished by parents, that's a recipe for self-harm and worse. Gain some fking perspective before you drive your kid into dangerous depression and anxiety.
If you’ve been parenting from punishment & this is your a-ha moment, know it’s gonna take time. You’ve done a lot of damage, and it’s hard to break out of a punishment cycle. Stick with it. Every day you treat your kid like a person is good for both of y’all’s mental health.
And don’t be too hard on yourself, because we’re all indoctrinated into a brutal, carceral, cruel, capitalist society. But it doesn’t have to be that way! And I truly believe that abolitionist parenting is a powerful & necessary form of resistance to injustice.
All this goes for teachers and school administrators too. And yes, I’ve been both. They’d give me the “tough” classes every year, but I’d get the best scores, and the longer I taught, the more I did it all with positive relationships & positive behavioral reinforcement.
I think a lot of privileged folks have completely forgotten the experience of punishment. Imagine if the last time you had some minor screw-up at work, your boss took something you liked away from you, or they said, “Sit in this room and think about what you’ve done.”
Think about how infuriating and humiliating that would be! What would you feel towards your boss? Would you “learn your lesson” or just learn your boss was an asshole? Guess what—that’s exactly how kids feel when they’re being punished too!
And yeah, there’s consequences in life. Show up late to work every day? Lose your job. And it’s fine for kids to experience natural consequences—throwing toys? Now they’re broken. No you don’t get a new one. But punishment is different—it’s about adding insult to injury.
And trust me, life will be brutal enough. There’s no shortage of suffering here. Inflicting extra pain on your kids—physical or emotional—doesn’t help them grow up, it just hurts.
To everyone saying, “without punishment, kids grow up wild.” No. I don’t punish my kids, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t rules, boundaries, redirections and natural consequences. In fact, my influence over my kids’ behavior is much more powerful because I DON’T punish them. /
Kids are hard-wired to seek guardians’ approval. But every time you heap a punishment on top of saying, “Please don’t do that, because…,” you cheapen the power of your words. You communicate that you don’t trust that your kids care about your disapproval. Over time, they won’t.
Try taking ALL that energy you’re spending enforcing punishments, and turn it towards seeing all the good in your kids, praising them, playing with them and having positive interactions. When you have that vibe going at least 90% of the time, but then you need to get serious for/
/a second and correct a behavior—because it’s destructive or dangerous or wasteful or unkind. Trust me, just your voice getting serious for a minute and telling them why you don’t want them to do that is enough. Your disapproval alone will be powerful!
Honestly it works best if the vibes are good 99.99% of the time. But shoot for 90. Do you praise your kid at least 9 times for every time you correct them? Check on it—count it up! Put way more energy into seeing the positive than the negative. I promise you’ll see a big change.
Almost everyone who's commented pro-spanking here has mentioned prison, which is so telling. "I got spanked and never went to prison." Or "Your kids are gonna wind up in prison." Your mindset is so carceral that the highest bar you set for raising kids is "not in prison" /
/ nevermind that a lot of the people saying this appear to be white, and in the US, race and class are going to have far more impact on whether you go to prison than how you were parented. HOWEVER, kids who are spanked are more likely to commit crimes. sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/…
And in terms of the biggest punishment that schools dole out--holding kids back a grade--that punishment is also correlated with a higher likelihood of going to prison, developing mental illness, and suicide. (And yes, it's a punishment). wrightslaw.com/info/fape.grad…
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