Discipline and Punishment

Disciplining a child and choosing the right form of punishment can be an easy or difficultdecision to make depending on your level of anger management. Why does this depend upon the caregiver or parent’s anger management skills? Well, have you ever hit your child? How did it make you feel? Were you in the calmest of states, happily bringing pain to your child? I think not.

The better you are at controlling your anger, the better you will be at disciplining your child. After all, one of the most important skills we need to teach our children is how to manage emotions and respond to frustrating situations with an appropriate attitude.

Let’s create an example; perhaps your toddler or preschooler bites another child that made him/her angry. Your initial emotions are embarrassment and anger that your child would do something that he/she knows is wrong. How should you handle it? A parent that believes spanking is effective will take their child to a private area (I hope) and punish them physically in hopes that the pain will scare them into submission and cause them to apologize. A parent who believes a child learns through the example set before them and uses a stern tone to make it very clear to the child that their behavior was unacceptable, will privately or publicly (depending on the nature of the child’s personality and how they best receive discipline) look their child in the eye and let them know how they feel about what happened and guide them to express themselves in a healthier way.

The most important thing to remember is that children learn by example. If they see adults or other children for that matter, respond to anger, frustration, or disappointment with yelling and physically causing pain on the person who they choose to lash out on, then the child will react to his/her emotions in the same fashion. Why? Because growing hearts and minds need guidance and patience as they become accustomed to all the emotions that arise throughout life.

It is overwhelming for a child to experience unpleasant emotions without an “out”. Most of the time the only response they feel can relieve some of the distress is to physically hit or bite something. Sometimes this can even include hurting themselves. Our job as the role models and caretakers are to show them healthier ways to release these distressful emotions.

We guide our children’s emotional responses in a healthy way by disciplining how they express themselves, never for expressing themselves. Let them know it’s all right to be angry when another child hurts their feelings or when they really don’t want to finish their dinner. We all have our own methods for dealing with our emotions; children do as well. Help your child find theirs. One thing that has been successful in my experiences is simply sitting with or holding the child until they calm down and then talking about it, this only works for older children though and they must understand that there are consequences for expressing themselves inappropriately, usually this entails time alone or losing something they love for a short period of time. For younger children, or toddlers, they need constant supervision for the most part and this makes it easier to guide them and react immediately, such as short timeouts. Take note that toddlers forget things quickly and need immediate intervention when they are frustrated. Also, it isn’t unusual for a child to cry even more when the discipline is enforced. Once again, do not make them feel bad for crying.

Just remember that when your child is “misbehaving” it’s because they need your guidance. Stay calm, reassure them that what they are feeling is normal, explain or show them the consequences of their actions (without inflicting pain), and explain or show them how they are to react to their emotions from now on. You will be raising an emotionally intelligent individual!