Take one of the examples that I used: A teenager gets a couple of speeding tickets, and his parents decide that they are not comfortable letting him use the car.
This could be done in a punish-y way if the parents' goal is to make him feel bad so that he will remember the lesson. The point of taking away the car is to teach the kid a lesson, through a painful stimulus, and make it more likely that he will remember to drive slowly.
The parents haven't decided what they will do about their own behavior; they have decided what the kid will do.
The parents could take away the car in a non-punishy way, as well. They could decide that they do not feel comfortable letting the child drive without them, as he has proven that he won't be safe. But they are happy to drive with him because they want him to have practice driving carefully and have a chance to show them that they can trust him to be safe. They aren't trying to make him feel bad for his speeding by applying a negative stimulus; they are making a decision about what they feel comfortable doing, in the context of the kid's speeding. Instead of deciding what they will do to the kid, they are deciding what to do themselves with their own behavior.
The outcome of both of these situations is the same as regards the car. It's not being used right now by the kid. But as far as future learning is concerned, the situations are different. In the first one, the parents create an adversarial relationship with the child, letting him know that they will hurt him for his own good and that they will impose arbitrary time limits to punish him. They don't give him a way out, a way to earn back trust. He learns to hide his driving and car use from them, or he learns to do what they say and slow down because they say it.
In the second example, the parents show the kid they are on his team. Though they don't want him driving alone, they are willing to drive with him so that he has a chance to prove that he can slow down. The kid learns that, though his parents set a limit when they see danger for him, he can count on them to help him remove the need for the limit as soon as possible. They want him to enjoy driving, and they don't like to prevent something he enjoys; they just want him to do it safely.
I guess my main point is that "deciding what you will do" should focus on the parent's behavior, the behavior that he can control. When it becomes "decide what you will do to the kid to teach him a lesson," you've veered into the realm of punishment.
(A note for readers: I am not completely happy with this post, mostly because trying to identify exactly what is different about limit setting vs. punishment can be kind of hard. I know that punishment adds an extra bit of oomph on top of the limit setting. For info on this, read Jenn's post Discipline Without Punishment. What I am finding hard is understanding and expressing the difference in mindset between a parent deciding what he will do and a parent punishing. I'd love to hear your comments on this.)
3 comments:
It is a difficult distinction to identify. The best I've done is call punishment a "negative something-else" (and a reward system is a "positive something-else").
One of the parenting principles I think I forgot (!) to put in my big post about parenting principles is this: The Limit's The Thing. Enforcement of the limit is sufficient for the child to learn whatever lesson he needs to learn. There is no need for positive or negative reinforcement as A.) the child is smart enough to figure it out (especially if you explain it to him) and B.) with positive/negative reinforcement, you run a serious risk of distracting the kid away from the limit and refocusing his attention on the punishment or reward.
So we need to add that in. I think I've written a post or two (and maybe you have too?) describing situations where, from the outside, what we do might look just like what a punishing/rewarding parent might do. The difference is in parental focus and intent. I like your formulation of if the parent has strayed into "decide what you will do in order to teach the kid a lesson" as a way of thinking about parental intent and focus. Especially when the decision about the limit is the same for PD or for punishing/rewarding. Yes?
Here's a corollary I've been thinking about lately, which spills into the education realm, too: Not everything that needs to be learned needs to be taught.
Thoughts? Maybe we can expand on this more in a podcast.
I like your formulation. It totally works for me when thinking about punishment from the perspective of the kid. He can learn what he needs to learn without it, so why apply it when all you have to do is set the limit and when the consequences of the punishment are yucky?
What I can't quite articulate is how to differentiate between punishment and deciding what you will do from the parent's perspective. It's definitely something to do with who the parent is trying to control, the kid or himself.
I'd love to talk about this more in a podcast, and before that, with you to figure it out a bit more.
And I really like your thought that everything that needs to be learned does not need to be taught. I would say that getting taught by someone else is only one way of learning, and anything can be learned in multiple ways, the ideal way determined by the learner and his context.
For me, I can tell when I'm straying into punishment when I'm thinking something like "I'm going to make him do this." or "He needs to learn...." or "I'm really mad and I want to make him mad, too." :(
It is about control and for me, it's also a little bit of vengeance. :/ I only stray into punishment territory in the heat of the moment. I think it's wrong--but perhaps understandable for those of us who were punished as children--to want to make a transgressor feel as strongly negative about what happened as we do.
Sometimes I guess I do stray toward punishment in less heated moments--and when that happens I'm usually thinking "he needs to learn this for his own good and if X happens then maybe he'll learn it BETTER." But I can usually remember that The Limit's the Thing and pull back.
In the heated punishy moments--well, that's when I get good practice in the 3 Rs of Recovery and Yippee Mistakes!
Definitely need to think on this some more, but tried to do a bit of quick introspection about my own reasons behind my intent when I am punishy.
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