Is there any literature which recommends punishment based parenting?

[unlikelychump]

Dh thinks we need to remove more privileges and be harsher to our children to get them to argue, shout and fight with each other less.

I have asked him to point me at a credible source which recommends this sort of approach. I am just wondering if there is one. (Yes there is a backstory, so you have kick me for a dripfeed later, if anyone has replied)

It is his mental health talking. He is trying to wade through the chaos. He hasn't really got anywhere with the parenting courses he has been on, and his inability to parent successfully is a major part of the issue which is just coming to a head now. I am trying to help him, and yes I am getting therapy, and I am trying to hold the whole thing together.

Presumably your DH is also on the spectrum.

Posting on MN in order to back up your opinion (eg calling it "punishment based parenting") is unlikely to be conducive to finding a effective solution

^^ it was his words. I am not going to say anything about posting on mumsnet. I was just wondering if there were lots of books out there about this kind of approach and I just hadn't selected them or whether as some others have suggested it is an older style approach.

You can find plenty of books that will advocate things like not sauce on the tongue. If you use them with an ASD child you will not have good results.

your children need routine and predictability. They need natural consequences when they don’t comply with requirements. Rules should be explained and not arbitrary.

asd people in general tend to like rules and procedures. We just want them to be logical. If you run your household with that in mind, your children will likely be much better behaved.

Totally agree @Ponderingwindow thanks.

It is reasonable to assume dh has some ND but his executive function, ability to stick to a plan or routine is not one of his strengths. Makes it very difficult for the children and therefore me.

@unlikelychump I have no advice but to go with your gut feeling. You know he's wrong here. This sounds like a really difficult situation to be in and I hope you can get some time and help for yourself here.

Here's a way to explain natural consequences:
If you enforce compliance in your children by yelling at and frightening them, the consequence will be children who don't like you very much but are obedient in your presence and behave atrociously when they think they won't be found outn
If you teach children to think properly about the impact of their actions and don't let them do things that are likely to have negative consequences for other people it will certainly be more tedious and time consuming for you, it won't work immediately and there will be a lot of missed treats, but the eventual result shoukd be considerate and caring people who do the right thing by choice.

Obviously if you aren't doing natural consequences and let the children do what they like without any consequences then they will grow up to be utter shits.

The easy way to sort this out is to go away for 24 hours and let him crack on with his approach.

It won't sign but I expect he'll find a new excuse

It won't work, sorry

@MarketValveForks thanks, don't worry though. I get it.

I'm not leaving him to try it out. I can't put my kids through that, they are barely coping themselves as it is.

OK so your situation is complicated, but I like a theoretical question so I will go with a theoretical answer. Take this in the spirit it is meant

(No I'm not NT either )

The current research evidence that we have suggests that punishment has an extremely minor role in discipline/behaviour change. It's interesting because you'd assume that it is THE most effective thing. But apparently it's not - punishment on its own does not cause a long term change in behaviour.

What most people mistake for the effects of punishment are most often two things - one is threat. If somebody is afraid of you, and it's not very difficult as an adult to wield power over a child and make them afraid of you, then this triggers self-protective mechanisms and they will probably do what you tell them to do - so you get compliance in the moment. Or at least, you get an appearance of compliance in the moment. But this is compliance - so your child is doing what you say, and if you do that enough then they might begin to automatically do that and form a habit, but they aren't necessarily internalising this as a value or thinking/learning about why to do this/not to do this, or what to do instead. Also, when they think you won't find out, they are may well go and do the behaviour anyway. Children (especially older children) can also learn to lie and sneak very well in order to avoid being caught doing the behaviour.

There is a reason that basically the only people seriously advocating for this kind of parenting today (where the aim is to make the child genuinely fear/dread the punishment, and punishment is the main form of control) are strongly religious, because if you believe in a punitive, omniscient God, then it's a way for that threat to continue, both out of direct sight of the parents, but also into adult life. Otherwise it stops being effective once the parent is no longer a credible threat. Laws basically work like this as well - there is a difference between crimes which are backed up with social norms where you're likely to get caught (stealing, violence) vs crimes which people feel are arbitrary - downloading films, speeding. Most people don't feel bad doing those things if they think there is no harm caused and they won't get caught.

The other thing that usually is responsible for behaviour change when people cite punishment as the catalyst is that most parents aren't only relying on threat of punishment - they do all kinds of positive things as well, for example you might punish children for fighting, but you also praise them for sharing, plan activities which are more structured and less scope for fighting, model and prompt problem solving and apologising, talk about examples of good conflict management and so on - the vast majority of the behaviour change is supported by all the non-punishment stuff, and punishment is not actually necessary, although it can serve to emphasise the message and speed up behaviour change, so it's not entirely true that it does nothing at all. It does something. However, also surprising about this - it doesn't matter how severe the punishment is. You would assume that effectiveness scales with severity, but it doesn't. In fact, there are two things with this - first of all, if you get too severe/physical/intimidating, then you start going into threat territory, and this has some quite serious consequences if the threat is persistent, in that children can develop disorganised attachment and/or trauma if their parent is both attachment figure and the source of regular threat, especially if it's unpredictable and attached more to the parent's moods than any particular behaviour expectation. You know all the research they have been citing for decades now about not hitting children? It turns out that the harm from smacking is now thought to be more likely to be related to the unpredictability/chaos/physical threat rather than the action itself (which doesn't mean smacking is OK FWIW).

Then the other issue with punishments being too severe is about length/duration - for example a screen ban - if you make it too long, then it totally loses efficacy because the child essentially ends up in a scenario where they never get screen time in the first place so they have nothing to lose.

So ideally, in order to maximise effectiveness and minimise any negative effects, you should only be using very minor, short-lasting consequences, and you have to balance them with plenty of positive input. Also, the parent should be calm and in control, which usually means drawing up a behaviour plan in advance and using punishment (alongside all the positive stuff which will actually be the driving force of behaviour change) in a targeted way to change specific behaviours, rather than just sort of having it in your back pocket as a way to get children to comply in the moment. (Recognising BTW, that almost everyone does this and it's not necessarily a problem to do this as long as it's not causing undue distress and you understand it's not a long term way to change behaviour).

Interestingly the idea that is currently very popular about natural/logical/related consequences is not really evidence based and is usually counterproductive because most people misunderstand the point of what natural consequences are. That is a tangent so I won't go into it in detail but suffice to say, if you've decided in advance what merits a punishment and you want the most minor/token thing, then something generic is usually easier and more predictable, rather than having to figure out a related consequence in the moment. In the moment is a bad time to decide on a punishment because you'll generally be at least irritated, at worst furious, adrenaline-fuelled and exhausted - and the evidence shows that people come up with more severe punishments when they are even slightly irritated. So it can help you to stay calm and controlled and fair, if you know in advance what the punishment for certain behaviour is.

Oh - there likely is a third role of punishment as well which is communicating social disapproval - that taps into our inherent desire to be accepted/follow social norms. That tends to work the best when the person on the receiving end is getting the same disapproval from multiple sources so for example if a child at school is told off by a teacher for some behaviour but all of their peers think the behaviour is very cool and approve of it, the punishment is unlikely to deter. But if e.g. a younger child gets the message that stealing is wrong, and this is reinforced by several sources e.g. teacher, parents, peers (e.g. in play) then they are likely to absorb this message.

In terms of books - there are lots of books but not all books contain good advice if you're genuinely interested in the theory of how punishment works there are three resources I'd suggest:

Alan Kazdin - American professor of psychiatry and child psychology - he explains things really well and he is very very big on the positive opposite side. He has a free course on Coursera which is run through Yale university called "The ABCs of Everyday Parenting" which is sort of behaviourism explained in a practical way for parents. This is actually really good and I would recommend it to everyone even (especially!) if you're sceptical about behaviourism.

123 Magic - a book which is older, but basically explains the same principles. I don't like this one personally, because I think it's much too focused on compliance and it has a really large focus on time out, but it is evidence based and is probably the best-known modern(ish) parenting book which does include punishment. Also, I found it unnecessarily graphic/upsetting that the book included descriptions of the ways that parents had previously abused their children before finding this "magic" method. I think that was included in order that you realise whatever you're feeling guilty about, it's not as bad as that, but I just found it disturbing to read and couldn't get the images out of my head. I say modern-ish because it was published in 1995 and it shows. The info by Kazdin is more up to date, and you may notice one aspect which is that 123 Magic starts with how to punish unwanted behaviour, moves into how to incentivise preferred behaviour and has connection as a sort of afterthought - whereas Kazdin's method starts with how to identify and encourage a preferred behaviour using a combination of incentives and connection, and the section on punishment is almost the afterthought, and he keeps hugely emphasising the effectiveness of the positive aspects. The focus on punishment is why I included 123 Magic here, but it's interesting to contrast how two applications of the same theory approach this in different orders and what that means in terms of what parents get from it.

Who's In Charge - book and course by Eddie Gallagher who is a psychologist and therapist from Australia. The courses are run by several UK local authorities, focusing on parents whose children are violent towards them. Honestly the book is in desperate need of an editor. It's far too long and most of it is his very meandering and not always well-informed opinion, which seems to boil down to "Kids today have no respect and parents make too many excuses!" There are a few interesting observations, but not enough to slog through 500+ pages. The valuable part starts at the chapter called "Acceptable and Unacceptable Behaviour" and from then on it goes through using the author's extensive experience with families to explain what is helpful and what traps parents can fall into and how to avoid them. This one has much more granular details like exactly how to use things like pocket money fines and how to respond in the moment when the behaviour is occurring. I think it can be quite helpful but I definitely wouldn't see this as a general parenting guidebook.

The autism/neurodivergence aspect - doing this as a separate reply to make it easier to read.

As you likely know autism makes it harder to use a lot of standard parenting methods.

Three main reasons for this - the first being that autistic children tend to be much more sensitive to environmental threat, which includes the nonverbal cues and body language of others (more on this in a bit), sensory input which they often find overwhelming or stressful, and unpredictability will also be stressful to most autistic children, which is why they tend to do better with routine, systems etc. This can also all lead to a lot of stress behaviour or attempts to control others in an attempt to regain control over the environment in general (ie, get back to felt safety). When a behaviour is motivated by stress/threat, then it's not very easy for a parent to change the motivation from the outside because the threat that they are feeling internally is already much larger. In fact, adding more threat on top in the form of punishment or disapproval (which may be interpreted as threat) is like fighting fire with fire - you're just going to get more fire/explosions.

Secondly, reward/punishment is based on an idea that the child could do what you want if they chose to. With autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions it is more likely that they may need more targeted support, direct instruction and scaffolding with that skill specifically. Just punishing them doesn't help them build the skills they need to be successful in that situation in the future.

Lastly, people on the autistic spectrum tend to be much less motivated than their NT peers by social approval. It is basically pointless to try to change behaviour in an autistic child by appealing to their sense of social approval. At best they won't understand/care, at worst they will interpret it as a threat. If we go back to the previous post which is about how punishment works, I identified three ways that it works which are basically:

Presenting a threat
As a supplement to positive/supportive techniques
Social disapproval

Two of those are out, and the positive/supportive one relies on successful use of positive and supportive techniques, for example:

Modelling - what behaviours are the children seeing from the adults in the house?They will model what they see. So if DH is being shouty and argumentative, then they will copy this.

Catching positive behaviour and praising/rewarding - if your DH is only reacting to behaviour he doesn't like, then he's not doing this - and this needs to be happening something like a minimum of 4:1 with punishment/criticism. Some say the ratio should be more like 10:1. And neurodivergent children typically experience so much criticism/punishment/correction and will have to work harder to get the praise and recognition. So there is an argument that you need to increase the ratio much, much, more to help balance out the extra criticism they get from their environment in general.

Scaffolding - working out concrete (and tiny) steps from their behaviour now to the preferred behaviour and only expecting one step of change at a time. This is especially important with neurodivergent children who may find it difficult to intuit expected behaviour from their environment.

Without those things (or other positive/supportive methods - that isn't an exhaustive list) punishment in the sense of being a supplement or balance won't work. And with autism or other ND you need these to be a lot more skill-based and bottom up rather than motivational (bribery, praise, approval).

If your DH is inconsistent and reactive on top of this, then add even more unpredictability and as we know, unpredictability plus threat is a problem even for neurotypical children with typical threat response detection systems. AND punishment as a credible threat is not recommended by any modern parenting experts anyway - because it doesn't work to change behaviour long term and it can cause all of these issues. For example, this is a pattern which is highly likely to result in development of ODD - because the child becomes even more highly sensitised to adult attempts to control and they immediately dig their heels in at the slightest hint of it. Your description of your DH sounded more ADHD to me - and ADHD in a parent is predictive of these patterns of parenting and they are considered unhealthy and a risk factor for ODD as well as other things such as physical abuse of the child.

I said I'd come back to the non-verbal communication bit. People with ASD are often said to be insensitive to NVC - because ASD often causes difficulty reading the kinds of nonverbal cues or social context, which we value as part of social norms and communication - they tend to take things in a much more straightforward or literal way, and look for a more logical reason rather than something being a rule because somebody in power has decided that it is the rule. This is also what tends to fuel a lot of the difficulty between children when at least one of them is autistic, because they find it difficult to predict the behaviour of others because they aren't able to use social nonverbal cues and body language in this way, or perform the expected social rituals of others (which non-autistic people may interpret as rude or arrogant). This is why scaffolding can be so helpful.

But what they are sensitive to, or at least their nervous system is, is the cues that tell us when a person is in a higher state of arousal/threat detection. They most likely won't be consciously aware of this but it will reflect in their own level of arousal, and result in more stress behaviours or attempts to gain control.

One commonality between all of the three resources I suggested in my previous post is that ALL of them, as well as advocating for mild, minor/token sanctions rather than scary or severe ones, is that the parent is supposed to be calm, in control, and consistent when they give a sanction. They also all use systems where the child knows what is expected of them (I think 123 is actually the worst at explaining this) which I think is even more important for an autistic child, who is likely going to explode if you suddenly appear out of nowhere and declare a punishment for something that you haven't warned them about in advance, at a time when they're not already escalated. And at least for my son, he really struggles if a punishment conflicts with something that an adult has previously promised e.g. you can play on Minecraft after dinner, which is then overwritten with a Minecraft ban due to behaviour before/during dinner. He finds that very difficult to process and will get "stuck" on that contradiction and it ends up totally overriding any message that the Minecraft ban was supposed to convey.

Lastly, you probably know this already but it is worth looking at approaches which focus on reducing the actual causes of stress behaviour in the first place as well - recommended reading on this one would be anything by Mona Delahooke, The Explosive Child by Ross Greene (though recommend getting a good sense of his ethos before diving into the book, by watching videos/listening to podcasts), Self-Reg by Stuart Shanker, The Out of Sync Child and Big Baffling Behaviours by Robyn Gobbel.

Wow Bertiebotts, I hope the OP found your post as useful as I did. You have articulated what I've intuitively learned about my ASD/ADHD dd and dh. Raising the stakes with either reward or punishment does very little but heighten the drama and conflict and you really need to find a way to deescalate and appeal to her better instincts. That's not to say I'm a soft touch with dd, just that it's a marathon with her, and at 13 she's a total love in many ways but still experiencing conflict with some teachers, especially if they resort to authoritarian styles. I also admit to suffering from irritation (understatement) and chaos sometimes, but we have a better understanding of each other these days and I have explained why my own stress that's built up over battling can lead to an overreaction to the 'final straw" trigger.

In fact dd currently only has a diagnosis of adhd though camhs have referred her for ASD as well. Do you think ADHD alone would result in a lot of the above as well?

I noticed over the 13 years I've been on this site a gradual shift towards posters telling other posters they are too soft and need to give harsher "consequences " and stick to them, citing declining behaviour in the classroom and society generally. I have queried with these posters whether the thinking around punishment has changed recently as I'd always understood it to be considered ineffective, but there definitely seems to be a general shift towards favouring these again.

I was going to mention 123 Magic which BertieBotts has explained really well. I read it and decided that it wasnt for us in terms of what I wanted for our family long term. But I think Emily Oster could have a point here where she says that sometimes these approaches (she mentions several books, such as Incredible Years, Triple P Positive parenting)- can be better than the alternative and may help to stabilise a household which is usually chaos.

https://parentdata.org/covid-break-ish-discipline/

It sounds like in your case it is your DH who needs to seek help rather than anything else.

Thanks@BertieBotts , that was fascinating

Is he engaged with a MH team? Are they aware of these issues?

I am in on Ireland Aware are an organisation that help people with MH but also offer support to the family. Hopefully there is something similar near you.

My ex had severe MH issues and his reactions to typical child appropriate behaviour was completely inappropriate. I made the call to end the marriage and engage with legal support to keep his access to a minimum and supervised for my children's well being and frankly safety.

You don't have to stay, you don't have to take on anothers MH. Given his failure at parenting classes before, how realistic is any research likely to make him change?

Thanks again for so much help, and especially to @BertieBotts I've remembered 123 magic now, I didn't warm to it too much and we never did time out. I've never had issues with my kids' behaviors per se, I have always been a teacher / discussed not a punisher. It was very helpful for you to talk about some the approaches and set it out in that way and it really resonated with me

The second post is a real eye opener and in another time I'd have sent it to dh. Sadly he has never been able to grasp this stuff.

I am starting to think he has ADHD not asd, a couple have suggested it. And the issue is inconsistent/ reactive/ angry, has been for the last 10 years but now for the last 6 months moving into angry. Ds8 is physical with fight or flight, dd12 verbal, dd11 is nt and just cries and feels in the middle.

One of the worst things that dh does you have just put your finger on - is contradict something already in place. So I say tv off after this episode and dh goes in a minute later and says now. Or ds has a late supper (because the tension here means he can't eat family meals) and dh witholds it because he isn't quick enough getting into pj's. And then says i don't back him up if I reinstate it. (Your Minecraft example)

I've read explosive child too, I'd mostly figured it out by the time I read it, but I am happy to keep reading things. I'd given up recommending stuff to dh by then so he hasnt. I've just read Steve biddulph raising boys, but mostly learnt that boys (children) need a stable father figure so that's not much use to me (well actually it is as i am resolved to build some of the networks we have to focus on male role models for my son)

I've got another thread running too with some cross overs to this one which has also been immensely helpful. The upshot being dh has accepted all is not well and is planning to take a few days away.

I agree that with two diagnosed ASD children and that level of rigidity he seems to have, your DH could have ASD too. My father was, when I was a child, undiagnosed autistic and you are describing his parenting style. Shouty, dysregulated, aggressive, entirely focused on his own emotions and needs, no ability to empathise, no mirroring skills, just isolating and lonely and draining to be around. As a child we walked on eggshells to manage him. Actually I’ve seen it written that undiagnosed ASD could present very like narcissism and further to the child on the receiving end there is basically no difference. That is certainly my experience. Your husband will not make a good parent if he goes down that route and likely he will kill his relationships with his children.

No one recommends the parenting style of a narcissist.

Fascinating thread. Following.

@longestlurkerever ADHD affects social skills differently, children with ADHD are usually very aware of social norms, in fact they often desperately want to be accepted socially, but poor impulse control gets in the way, as well as the emotional volatility, so they can struggle to make friends because other children find them too much, they may seem to dominate play due to enthusiasm, or become easily upset and fly into a rage which can make other children wary of them or some will find this highly amusing in a sort of "wind up the bear" way, especially if it gets that child into trouble.

Sensory differences again tend to be different from an ASD profile, much more sensory/novelty seeking and they often thrive on unpredictability or elements of sort of gambling (though this is tricky, because of walking that line with chaos, which will totally exacerbate an ADHD child since they struggle to self-regulate and often need external structure/pressure) but IME and from what I've read, ADHD nervous systems rather than being oversensitive to threat like an autistic one, it's more that the arousal level is sort of more volatile, is how I tend to think of it. So it can shoot up suddenly and they'll have a big reaction to something which, yes, you'd expect a reaction but maybe something more in proportion, whereas the ASD child will be more likely to have been hovering at a heightened arousal level and then something "minor" tips them over and it looks like they've exploded out of nowhere, because they're reading a different set of social and danger cues to everyone else. That's where you get the idea that autistic children are "inflexible" but everything I'm learning suggests that the world can actually feel incredibly chaotic and out of control to them basically all of the time.

I think there can be a lot of overlap in the behaviour you see, my eldest has ADHD and no question of him being autistic ever. My middle one I'm sure is autistic but he hasn't been assessed yet, and there is a lot of overlap with the ADHD like behaviour. Of course I know it's also not that uncommon to have both. So that could be going on and it's a question I hope I'll be able to ask at the assessment.

Yes, he isn't a narcissist. He is actually a very kind man. But he comes across as one for all the reasons you describe. Seems to have no interest in anyone.

Steve Biddulph is no good IME - most of what he says isn't evidence based. It's probably observational, and if I could remember it more clearly then I'd look into what he's probably picking up on, but yeah I wouldn't worry too much about that one. Especially don't waste any time feeling guilty about anything he says.

Thinking about it my DS2 (6) does do well with male teachers for example, even though he's very reactive to authority. I've been trying to put my finger on what this is because I don't know that it's anything mystical about gender. At a guess, I'm thinking it's likely something to do with social norms of how each gender speaks to children about behaviour. I wonder if women are more likely to appeal to the social approval kind of angle - how do you think that makes him feel/how would you like it if he did that to you? Whereas men may be more likely to approach more like - mate, I know he's winding you up but you can't go around hitting people, because it's against the rules. Or they perhaps remain a lot calmer while taking control because they likely feel absolutely certain that their position in the power hierarchy is not threatened by a child, whereas I know for myself I can definitely be reactive in my own nervous system to a child who is escalated. (This is a very quick take and not fully thought through at all. Just a general sort of sense that the male teachers DS has had have been much more straightforward in communication.)

Chopping and changing things minute to minute is very ADHD. I do this (I have ADHD) and I realise it's unhelpful. I do it more when I'm stressed out or don't feel in control of a situation, because I'm good at reacting to a constantly changing environment, but not very good at formulating a cohesive plan or remembering what the plan was if I had formed it before. It has to be really clear, e.g. I need to be able to access a reminder in the moment or I need to hyperfocus on the method and learn it inside out, which happily is what I enjoy doing anyway. Otherwise I just can't easily keep a sense of what the important things are so I'm flipping around because I am trying to prioritise about six different things at once and they all conflict. Or sometimes I literally forget what has previously been said. It's something I've had to really learn to do, along with giving anything time to work rather than expecting instant results. Even with medication it's hard dealing with multiple children especially when at least one of them is constantly dysregulated. I think my youngest might be NT though it's hard to tell, but he is still three!

In terms of discipline approaches, I very rarely ever use punishment, because I am really aware that I'm prone to getting drawn into a power struggle and once I'm in it I won't play fair, and that's not good for anybody. So I tend to avoid a power struggle unless it's a case of needing to keep everyone safe, and then I tend to take DC into a room and hold the door closed (with me in there too).

The Robyn Gobbel book is the one I'm leaning on most at the moment. It's brilliant, memorable (or I lock myself in the bathroom and check the Kindle version) and works well with the explosive child type framework IME. From your description of the three DC I think you'd like this one, though I appreciate it's probably not you who needs to read it. She has a podcast but unfortunately a really annoying way of over enunciating every single syllable in a way that sounds like half the word is in caps and I can't stand it 😆 it was only published this year so if you haven't come across it before, that's probably why. Naomi Fisher's new book looks good too but I know this one is just genuinely helpful to me and filled in a lot of blanks.

@BertieBotts - the oracle! How about a book on co-parenting with someone with ADHD then? Or even just living with?

Still grateful for all the advice

Sorry, I don't really have any good books to recommend on ADHD, as honestly most of them are dire. People seem to cite the Ned Hallowell one a lot for relationships, but he gives me this really creepy vibe (I think it's just an old fashioned benign sexism thing, nothing worse than that). But I've found some good info from Russell Barkley's lectures and youtube channel which I think are useful both for people with ADHD but also people who live with them.

How To ADHD on youtube also has a good line on this talking to but also about, and has done loads of relationship videos recently but her only child is a very young baby :D so although she does briefly discuss parenting she is upfront that they are really only just getting started and haven't got into issues like this yet.

TBH since I am the one with ADHD in my relationship, I don't know what is really helpful from the other side. And what doesn't help is when you get gender roles interacting and overlapping - because it's the other way around for us, I kind of get to skip some of that. I do think often when it's the man with ADHD, you get stuck a bit between advice that essentially expects you to be your partner's carer and do loads of stuff for him because he couldn't possibly manage it himself, or advice that insists any time a man avoids washing up it's because he secretly hates all women and thinks they are beneath him - in reality there must be some middle ground where you can respect each other as people AND communicate/work out an effective way forward.

I have lots of thoughts about how ADHD affects parenting so maybe I will write the book myself :D I have thought about it sometimes.

You seem to be conflating a lot of different things, shouting is a total no, as is withholding meals. But kids need consequences. I agree that reward and punishment is not a great way to manage autistic kids. But sometimes you just need them to get in the car, or go upstairs for a bath, or stop punching each other. And then a well developed consequence system is invaluable.

“dont make me count to 3 DS”
”do I need to count to 3?”
”1 … oh thank you DS”
our family (2 autistic kids) would not function without this.