As parents, one of our primary tasks is to be teachers for our children—and we don’t just want to teach them how to act and how to get along in the word; we want to teach them core values and character qualities. However, have you ever thought about how children learn these things, and for that matter, how we as parents have learned how to teach them?

As a culture, we have a body of beliefs which, though they are heavily ingrained in us from early on, may not actually be true or in line with our conscious beliefs. I once read a book, “Ishmael,” that caused me to look at parts of language I’d never paid attention to before; to see how language demonstrated certain underlying cultural beliefs. Since I’ve become a student of discipline philosophies, I’ve started doing the same thing with language toward and about children.  The most common example I find in my own thoughts and language is, “He just needs to learn….!!”. For example, “He needs to learn that talking that way is not OK!” or “He needs to learn to clean up his own toys!”

These statements, on first glance, are true. But when I say this, what I’m really thinking is, “If I don’t act now, he will not learn …”, “My job is to make him learn …”, “If I let him ‘get away’ with this, he’ll be spoiled.” Then, my next level of conclusion, i.e., the way I will teach him this right now, is that he needs a negative consequence.

This conclusion is rooted in three beliefs.  The first is an underlying cultural assumption that children are designed to get away with as much as they can; that they are inherently bad and we need to teach them to be good.  Even though many parents don’t believe this, this unconscious cultural thought often drives our parenting.  I believe the opposite – that children want to do the right thing, and our job is to guide them.

The second belief comes from behavioral psychology. It is deeply imbedded in our beliefs that children learn through positive and negative stimulus – punishment and reward. This works well for dogs – but does it really work for children? Other psychologists, such as Alfred Adler, believe that it is not the best way for children to learn.  Punishment works only to teach very limited concepts – don’t do A, because B might happen (and both A and B must be very specific; children don’t generalize).  It cannot teach values, morals, or character traits such as responsibility and kindness.  Those are learned through demonstration and modeling.

The third belief is that the learning must occur now or the chance will be lost.  Our culture tries to rush children to learn skills that are really developmental.  A one-year-old doesn’t need to be “taught” independence – as we well know, she’ll start to figure it out all on her own at about age 2!   Although it is very hard to remember in a tense moment, empathy, respect, responsibility, etc are all skills that require certain levels of development to be learned, and are learned through modeling and encouragement.

What we are teaching in an interaction may not be what we think.  The book, “Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline”, had a very powerful example which helped me understand this.  Suppose I am trying to get a child to clean up her toys.  I tell her to do it; she refuses.  I get angry, raise my voice, and threaten.  The toys get cleaned up.  What learning occurred here?  Did the child learn the value of cleaning up the toys? Probably not.   She learned that one way to get a need met (my need for order and cleanliness) is to become angry, and yell.  She most likely models that behavior. 

Positive Discipline is based on the belief that “all human beings have equal rights to dignity and respect. Positive Discipline methods are non-punitive and non-permissive.”  (from www.positivediscipline.com). But what exactly does “punitive” mean? My definition of “punitive” is when our behavior toward our children is intended to either cause them to feel fear on some level (of isolation, precious things being taken away, etc), or to feel remorse/shame for their actions (sit here until you feel badly about this and are ready to apologize).  Of course, these are normal feelings, and a child will feel them as a normal part of developing empathy (which will happen in it’s own good time when it is modeled). However, it’s punitive if I am trying to cause these feelings.

There are a lot of tools which can be used instead of punishment and rewards. We can simply disallow behavior that is not appropriate, and show the child the appropriate behavior, without tacking on a punishment. We can refuse to be responsible for their emotions, and on the flip side, own our own emotions.  We can honestly share how our child’s actions affect us, without blame. We can empower and encourage children to find their own solutions to problems.  But most of all, we can be patient, and model the values that we want to pass on.

I’ve found that changing from punitive to positive discipline is about like trying to find enlightenment – it’s a goal to which I can get ever closer and closer but never reach entirely.  When I hear “he just needs to learn….!” going through my head, sometimes all I can do is apologize for screaming at him and threatening to take away the TV for a week, and resolve to do better the next day. There are no perfect parents, and just as I don’t believe we should shame and punish our children when they make mistakes, we shouldn’t do shame or punish ourselves either. 

Lisa Stroyan