Can anyone tell me about discipline methods which don't involve punishment?

[CherryChoc]

What the thread title says, basically!

DS is only 6 months old so any discipline dilemmas are a while off yet, but I'm really interested and intrigued by the idea that there can be discipline methods which don't use punishment, as I always thought it was necessary. However I only seem to encounter vague mentions of it on threads so can anybody tell me more?

canella, try turning it around to make it a positive instruction.

'IF you get in the car now, we can stay longer at the park. do you want to go on the swings or the slide first?'

'stay with me in the shop so you don't get lost'

i don't know if it's just being scared of seeing kids upset, I think it's often not knowing what to do if the kid doesn't listen. it is infuriating. and i guess being a teacher i have a ton of strategies for behaviour up my sleeve but it still winds me up. I don't do naughty step or punishment as such. And dd is (mostly) lovely!!

IMO the best thing you can do is engage with your kids positively. It means all the 'discipline' comes naturally in conversation rather than ignoring them then trying to firefight... prevention rather than cure etc

I have not read any of these books so am not entirely clear what is meant by "punishment". If it means that there is a conequence to an action and I won't remove that consequence then I punish the dcs a lot. If it means imposing an additional sanction on top of that consequence, then I don't do that too much.

I'll try and give an example:

ds and dd are fighting. dd gets hurt but has provoked ds.

I will count up to 20 slowly and tell them that they have to resolve the issue themselves within that time. If they do, no problem and everyone carries on,if they do not, as they clearly are not happy playing together, they will have to go up to their rooms and play on their own. They will stay there until I have had a cup of tea and calmed down as their squabbling upsets me.

To me this is just telling them the logical consequences of their actions and giving them a chance to work it out and avoid them.

A punishment would be telling them that if they don't sort it out, they won't get ice cream for tea. There is no connection between this and what they were doing.

Goosey - you have just said exactly what I was thinking. Children do need to learn that actions have consequences, and that sometimes those consequences aren't nice - but that they can make choices that will avoid the unpleasant consequence.

I think that my job as a parent is to equip my children to live independantly as adults - and in the adult world, if you are caught doing something wrong, there may well be unpleasant consequences - a fine, points on your license etc, and we do need to teach our children that.

I don't think this is incompatible with positive parenting, though - I think it's a balance, and that balance will be different for each parent and child.

yes, I think of punishment as 'the imposition of additional sanctions' as goosey says

the natural consequences of some behaviours are usually punishment enough

i'd rather bring up my children to do the right thing because it is the right thing, not for fear of a punishment. i think too much in the way of punishment and reward just makes a child, or in fact an adult, lose sight of what is right.

and fwiw, most of the brattish children i know are handled with naughty steps. it doesn't work.

while this thread is active, dies anyone have any suggestions as how to deal with DS2 (4.5) winding up DS2 (2.5) - mostly by name calling. I'm having to resort to removing him and putting him on the bottom of the stairs. i give him a chat as well that 'nobody likes to play with a boy who uses rude words. We like kind words'.

He's v good with everything else. Polite, follows my instructions v well (no hassle telling him to get dressed, get shoes on, time for bed etc etc, v good at switching off TV and coming to dinner table). Mixes well with others when playing. Nursery sdays he name calls at the lunch table as he picks at his food and is bored.

I am still confused

I half knew this would start a bit of a debate. I agree there is a difference between positive parenting (or whatever label) done properly and permissive parenting where the parent stands there and goes "Oh, please don't do that, darling, come here, stop that, oh dear, flap flap pathetically " there was a woman like that with her son last time I was at A&E and he was not helping!

I have been trying to work out what I mean by punishment as well. I think this is it: punishment serves no purpose except to make the person feel regret. Whereas consequences help heal the wrong that has been done. So a punishment for making a mess might be to be grounded, but a consequence for making a mess would be to clean it up... Right? It's all so confusing!

I don't refer to the bottom of the stairs as the naughty step, BTW. I just tell him he's being moved away from us.

the consequence of dropping your paint is that a mess is made. the mess is the consequence.

the consequence of not wearing shoes outside is you might get sore/cold/wet feet.

the consequence, in my mind, is what actually happens. but then some people add onto that their own often slightly random punishment and call that 'teaching them consequences.'

The consequence of making a mess, besides the mess, is that someone has to clear it. You can choose to be a martyr and send the child to its room while you clean, but why do that when you can enforce logical consequences and teach them how to clear/ clean (which they're going to need to learn to do at some point anyway) at the same time? In my model, the messer clears up- that is the consequence. Nothing "random" about it whatsoever.

well it my kids make a mess they sure do regret it - as I make them tidy it all up

that doesn't tend to work though if the child can't actually clean it up.

ruddy - I've yet to encounter a mess from children that they can't at least make some sort of decent effort to tidy up

but then an adult will still tend to go and clean it up properly.

I quite agree that if possible "natural" consequences are preferable, but what, in your example, if the child refuses to make an effort to clear up? Or, in the previous example, one child hits a younger child unprovoked? How do you introduce "natural" consequences then?

yes they'd finish the job off - but even 2/3yr olds can clean up a big amount of mess pretty weel - and hate doing it especially when the parent refuses to let them stop "because it's hard" (ro something like that).

In this house - natural consequence of one child hitting another is usually a reciprocal hit (not condoned by me I hasten to add ) followed by tears - followed by a "well there you go - you whack ds3 - he's going to find something to hit you back with twice as hard"

With the mess, I will assist clear up (mine are 4 and 5) only if I understand why they were not able to do it themselves. I do accept randomly shoving things in cupboards as satisfactory at the moment. If I think that there is no reason why it is not cleared up, I tell the dcs so and either:

they then explain why and I agree and clear it up,

I disagree and they clear it up,

I disagree, they don't clear it up so I throw it out. I don't clear up their mess if they can and I don't have loads of stuff lying around so the only other option is the bin.

I have only thrown things out once for each child (and tbh I was careful which battle I picked as there are things I would never touch!) - they now always clear up when asked. Is this punishment? I would have said not, but I am not quite sure.

I thought that Alfie Kohn was very against 'natural consequences' approach, because he saw it as usually just an excuse for just imposing a different kind of punishment.

And remember if you go the whole hog with AK's ideas you can never praise, either, that is just as bad as punishment (he seems to argue).

But I admit, I read UP thoroughly, and in spite of university education and a high IQ I still don't understand how in the world it is supposed to work in practise.

you don't introduce natural consequences, they are what they are. they hit their sibling. the sibling cries or hits back or won't play with them anymore. as for the mess well it depends what you choose to do about it. you might leave it and see how they get on having to play in the mess or eat in the mess or whatever. that's how dd learned anyway. she realised she didn't like to sit around mess or have her toys getting dirty etc. i really didn't have to do a right lot. plus i give her messy play to do so she isn't quite so inclined to make mess i'd prefer she didn't.

"she realised she didn't like to sit around mess or have her toys getting dirty etc. "

oooo can I borrow her please??? My DS's would play in squalor and not care >>>>

Hope- the natural consequence of deliberately winding Mummy up is that Mummy puts you in your room for a bit because you are not a nice person to have around when you're behaving like that.

you say 'would' though. have you done it? or do you just clean up?

Am finding this debate really interesting as I am struggling to discipline DS1 (2.9) without constantly resorting to bribes rewards etc.

Just wanted to ask a couple of questions to ruddy's last post.

You say that the natural consequence if they hit a sibling is that they maybe cry...not sure how that is going to teach the older one not to do it - ime, they might not care that the sibling is crying and it certainly wouldn't be sufficient for them not to do it again.

Also, re the cleaning up, again my DS1 has a habit of spilling his milk all over the floor (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not) and I always give him a cloth to clean it up....learning the natural consequence of spilling his milk has not stopped him doing it, if anything he finds spilling it and then mopping it up a game.