Growing Together: Punishments, Rewards and the Criterion for Effective Discipline

Children are no different. They do not develop positive characteristics from feelings created by excessive control, punishment or shame.

I have now spoken to about 40 mothers during my calls as a parent educator and a frequent theme is the reluctance to let go of excessive control because they feel the alternative is permissiveness.
Fair enough.
I am no fan of Permissive Parenting either.
Children raised without boundaries often become very skilled at one thing: using their intelligence to negotiate their way out of responsibility rather than developing their independence and capabilities. They start to feel the world owes them a living. And that’s a heavy thing to carry into adulthood - for them and for everyone around them.

But the alternative to permissiveness does not have to be ‘Do it because I said so’ or ‘Do it or else…’
There’s a middle path where we work with our children to collaborate and strike a balance. Where we shift the focus from how do I make my child comply to how do I help my child want to do the right thing. We are aiming for self-discipline, responsibility, cooperation, problem-solving - built from the inside out, not enforced from the outside in.

Note: For simplicity and easier reading, I’ll be using the term '“excessive control” in place of “authoritarian parenting”. If you’d like a refresher on the three core parenting styles, please give a read to this post.

It requires you to think long-term, often in the very moments that tempt you into choosing short-term relief. Because short-term relief is often what we need in our day-to-day parenting struggles; to just get things done, to move on to the next task, to keep up with schedules. When dinner is burning, someone is crying about a sock, and you’re already running fifteen minutes behind on everything, it is genuinely hard to take a zoomed-out lens to ask yourself: hmmm what message am I sending to my child right now? How is this affecting my connection with my child? What precedent is being set here?

Those are not easy questions to hold in the middle of chaos. But they matter because parenting decisions compound. The small ones, the ones that feel like nothing, pile up into a pattern. And children are reading that pattern long before they can name it.

If we were to rate parenting styles on a ‘short-term relief’ or ‘quick-fix’ meter, both permissive and authoritarian styles would score high. Tasks get done fast, meltdowns are diffused quickly, problems are “solved” quick and everybody moves on with their lives.

On the contrary, effective discipline techniques would score low on the quick-fix bar. At least when they are first applied.
In homes where excessive control and punishments have been the norm, shifting to a more balanced approach can feel like things are getting worse before they get better. Because children are incredibly perceptive. When they don’t get the response they’re used to, they don’t just shrug it off and say ‘oh well!’ before they cooperate. They push harder. They exaggerate their behavior to test boundaries and figure out their options. They’re essentially running a diagnostic — this is new. Is it real? Does it hold?

This is often the point where parents who’re new to being authoritative tap out and say: See, this ‘gentle parenting’ thing doesn’t work (gentle parenting being used as the catch-all phrase for anything other than traditional authoritarian parenting).

And they’re not entirely wrong. “Gentle parenting” does not work when it is used like a technique you pull out when you have the energy and abandon when you don’t. It is not a magic show trick where you pull a bunny out of your hat. It only works when it is practiced consistently enough to become the new normal for the child. Predictable enough that your child stops testing it because they already know the answer.

Authoritarian parenting is quick. And, dare I say, effective.
Depending on what your long-terms goals are. It’s tempting because it is instant - instant compliance, instant silence. The behavior stops and we move on.
I would never argue that strictness and punishments do not work.
In the short term, they absolutely do.

But at what cost?

The cost is the 4 Rs of punishment.

1. Resentment - this is unfair, I can’t trust the adults in my life.

2. Revenge - I’ll find a way to get even with the adults.

3. Rebellion - I’ll do the opposite just to prove I can.

4. Retreat:

   1. Sneakiness - I won’t get caught next time.

   2. Reduced self-esteem - I am a bad person because I did something I had to be punished for.

Children don’t consciously choose these responses. They’re not sitting in their rooms deciding how they want the punishments to shape their personality. Their future behaviors are based on subconscious decisions. These are conclusions drawn slowly, across hundreds of small moments all through their life.

One child starts believing they’re inherently bad and begins to act accordingly - because at some point, it’s easier to own the label than to keep fighting it. Another becomes a people-pleaser, scanning the room to figure out the adult’s mood to gain the love they don’t think they otherwise deserve. Another may learn that honesty leads to punishment and so, quietly, they learn to lie and sneak around. I’m sure most of us, if not all, have come across children or young adults who behave one way in front of their parents and are completely unrecognisable when they’re away from their parents’ eye.
That’s not discipline. That’s performance.

So the real question is: do we want to raise children who behave well, or children who behave well when someone is watching?

That's the diagnosis. The rest of this post talks about the the two mindsets that decide everything and the checklist for effective discipline

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