For all the friends of characters

[Goofyernmost]

I do not recall my dad ever doing any physical form of discipline. But he used the "voice". It was a manner of speaking that would literally stop your heart. ;) It was a combination of volume and tone and it absolutely let you know that you were in deep doo doo and whatever you were doing had better stop this instant. I cannot describe it any clearer than that really.

My mom, on the other hand, possessed a "board of education" and she was not afraid to use it. Thankfully we never felt it's wrath very often.

Apparently, according to my two girls, I came equipped with that same "voice". I do recall that by merely speaking I could stop any situation quickly. Even though I'm sure I occasionally issued an idle threat, they didn't seem to realize it and it wasn't far enough out of the range of possibility to not be taken seriously. If we had been in a theme park such as Disney, they knew, and it was absolutely true that if we had a problem, we would be leaving the park immediately. We would then go back to the hotel and the pool and TV would have been completely forbidden. That was not an idle threat and they knew it. Never had to carry it out.

[felinefan]

I do recall some times Dad would go overboard on the corporal punishment thing. As long as the punishment fit the crime, and most importantly the child's personality, it can be very effective. Different strokes for different folks.

[shilohmm]

Different strokes for different folks.

Yep, which is why I think it's important for parents to understand how to use different forms of discipline. My parents talk about how they "tried everything" to get me to behave, with this whole list of "what we tried," but since my parents believed that discipline equals punishment, not only was their parenting toolbox pretty limited, but they didn't realize that! They thought they had a whole list of techniques, but all they really had was different methods of punishment.

I think it's parents with a "limited toolbox" like that who end up overusing spanking (or some other obviously ineffective technique) -- even though the definition of insanity is to keep using something you know doesn't work, they don't know what else to do, and they feel that, as caring parents, they gotta do something.

Fortunately for my parents, parents teach the most through example, and their example was pretty good. :)

[Goofyernmost]

I think it's parents with a "limited toolbox" like that who end up overusing spanking (or some other obviously ineffective technique) -- even though the definition of insanity is to keep using something you know doesn't work, they don't know what else to do, and they feel that, as caring parents, they gotta do something.

What makes you so all fired sure that it's ineffective? As long as not overused and cruel...it works pretty well.

[shilohmm]

What makes you so all fired sure that it's ineffective? As long as not overused and cruel...it works pretty well.

I'm sure it's ineffective because I've seen it fail. Didn't work on me, to my parent's great annoyance. Worked fine on my two siblings. Didn't work on two of my five kids (for two entirely different reasons). Presumably my parents and I were "doing spanking right," since it worked just fine on some of our kids; so even "doing spanking right" doesn't always work.

I've also known parents who didn't think they overused spanking who discover that, once the kid gets "too big to spank," they have no influence over him. So even when spanking is effective, it seems some parents develop an unhealthy dependence on it, and don't have anything to fall back on but other forms of punishment when spanking quits working. I haven't seen that happen with any parenting method but direct punishment -- probably because you can continue to use all the other methods I know of on your adult children... as well as on your spouse, adult students, etc. ;)

[GaTechGal]

I definitly believe that you have to use different punishments.

We used to negotiate how many veggies the kids had to eat before they would get dessert. My stubborn DS used to go for WEEKS without dessert just to get out of the veggies. So we invented "THE DOCTOR" (ok it was really a suggestion from John Rosemond - parenting guru extrodinaire) who said that if you didn't eat your veggies, then you would be too tired and so you would have to go right to bed after dinner. Only took 3 or 4 early nights and he learned to eat. And we wised up and stopped negotiating and just put the amount on their plates that we required of them to eat. They could get seconds on anything, but only after the first plate was empty.

Another entertaining one (for me that is) was when the rugrats were misbehaving at the grocery store, I used to make them hold hands as we went around the store. That was really embarrassing when they were older, so they learned pretty fast that it was better to wait until they got home and go somewhere Mom didn't have to hear them to fight.

My DH's stories about punishment were that his mom wore a lot of flippy sandals (not the thong kind but nice ones) that she could whip out in a nanosecond and hit you with it from across the room.

[Darksin]

My DH's stories about punishment were that his mom wore a lot of flippy sandals (not the thong kind but nice ones) that she could whip out in a nanosecond and hit you with it from across the room.

Oh heaven, NOT the Flip-flip!
That's almost worse then "Go Go Mother Super Power Stretchy Elastic Arms"!

[shilohmm]

My stubborn DS used to go for WEEKS without dessert just to get out of the veggies. So we invented "THE DOCTOR" (ok it was really a suggestion from John Rosemond - parenting guru extrodinaire) who said that if you didn't eat your veggies, then you would be too tired and so you would have to go right to bed after dinner.

But that's not just changing the punishment; that's changing the whole rationale. Few kids could be stubborner than me if I thought my parents were just trying to get their own way. I considered that bullying, and I do not give in to bullies. But if they convinced me they had a legitimate reason to want me to do something, I was less likely to refuse on general principles, and more likely to consider their perspective.

So I would have viewed, "No dessert unless you eat your vegetables" a power play, and would have refused to play that game. But if my parents convinced me that they believed vegetables were connected to good health, and were just trying to demonstrate the consequences of going without vegetables with the "too weary, have to go to bed" routine, I would have been much more likely to eat them. Not that vegetables were ever an issue; I like more vegetables than my parents do. :p: But the principle holds.

Same with some of my kids. "Do it, or else!" backfires. "Do it, because..." works, even when they don't necessarily agree with my reasons. They're willing to humor me when we're on the same team. ;)