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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
RAISING GOOD CHILDREN 2002-07-11 Two toddlers were playing side by side on the playground. The older of the two was swinging on a swing when he decided he wanted to play elsewhere. His mother got him out of the swing and the younger child decided to take a turn. When the young toddler's mother put him into the swing, the older toddler returned, went up to the young toddler and tried to pull him out of the swing. The older toddler's mother, seeing this, told her child very calmly that he had given up the swing and now it was someone else's turn. So far so good. Then the older toddler, ignoring his mother's reasoned approach, hit the young toddler. The older toddler's mother did nothing but repeat herself about the consequences of giving up the swing, but said nothing to her child about hitting the younger child. The mother of the younger toddler was appalled but, reluctant to discipline someone else's child and unwilling to get into an argument with a woman she did not know, removed her child from the swing and left the park. This is not an unusual occurrence. At restaurants, play groups, classrooms and various other public places it is common to see some parents allow their children to act with rudeness, aggression or even violence and say nothing to them about the unacceptability of this behavior. Instead, these mostly well-meaning parents try a variety of tactics they have learned through behavioral "experts" such as therapists, authors of parenting books and consultants on television. These experts have, over the years, recommended approaches to discipline that are better alternatives to physical discipline but that are not always effective in teaching good behavior. Sometimes this is because parents are not applying the techniques correctly. It is difficult to thoroughly explain an approach to discipline in a ten minute television segment or a single chapter in a book. Other times, the technique is simply not an appropriate response to the misbehavior. A little history lesson is in order here. One hundred years ago, corporal punishment was common. When a child misbehaved, a spanking (beating, whooping, etc.) was in order. Most parents did not believe spanking caused damage to a child, but instead taught him right from wrong. Since most authority figures agreed that spanking was an effective form of discipline and supported parents, children often did learn to behave, or at least be sneakier about their misbehavior. There were always a few parents, however, who managed to raise their children without spanking and as studies were published showing the negative effects, as well as ineffectiveness, of corporal punishment and as new "parenting experts" emerged to teach alternate methods, a large number of parents began to adopt more humanistic methods of parenting. These included Dreikurs' "logical consequences," Gordon's "Parent Effectiveness Training" and numerous behavioral approaches which included such practices as positive reinforcement and time-out. Three of these techniques that are adopted by many parents today and, unfortunately, commonly misapplied are ignoring; time-out; and logical consequences. Ignoring comes from the behavioral theory that any behavior needs reinforcement in order to continue. Bad behavior, the behaviorists say, will be reinforced and firmly established if a parent continually or intermittently reinforces it with attention. On the other hand, if a parent completely ignores a misbehavior, it will, according to the theory, eventually be extinguished. For ignoring to work, a parent must give no attention at all to the behavior. Even occasional attention (which behaviorists call "intermittent reinforcement") will strengthen the behavior. As most parents know, completely ignoring behavior is extremely hard to do. However, I have seen many parents make gallant attempts, usually in places where it is inappropriate. For instance, ignoring a screaming child in a movie theater is not a good tactic. First of all, the parent will be unable to do it long enough. A disgruntled viewer or the manager of the theater is liable to insist that the parent remove the child. The best place to ignore bad behavior is at home, and the best type of behavior to ignore is non-violent, nonaggressive annoying behavior. For instance, ignoring a child who is interrupting a conversation might work if the parent is absolutely consistent in ignoring her. Ignoring a child who is misbehaving in a restaurant, on the other hand, will get the angry attention of patrons and management and, furthermore, will not teach the child anything about courtesy. Time-out is also a behavioral concept, a shorthand way of saying "time-out from positive reinforcement." Parents who use time-out by sending children to their rooms are actually, according to the behaviorists, supposed to be removing the child from any attention and fun (positive reinforcement). As any modern parent knows, however, the child with the room full of toys is not actually deprived of fun. And any parent who has tried time-out knows that continual calls for reprieve from the sequestered child usually garners him some parental attention, even if it's in the form of the one word answer "NO." Time-out is a concept largely overused in America today. I see parents at the grocery store threatening children with time-out "when we get home." Of course, the threat is meaningless because it's a rare mother or father who remembers the threat when they get home. For time-out to be effective it must be immediate and certain to occur. Other parents put the child in time-out for too long a duration, or give in and let their whining, pleading child come out before the time-out is supposed to be over. Some parents use time-out when a simple reprimand would do or when an investigation into the child's behavior pattern would be more appropriate. Time-out has become as overused today - and often as ineffective - as spanking was a century ago. Finally, there is the popular use of "consequences" for misbehavior. The idea here is to raise children to learn that their behavior will either elicit consequences from the environment (natural consequences) or will elicit consequences from the actions and decisions of authority figures (logical consequences). An example of a child learning from the natural consequences of his actions would be leaving a soccer ball in the front yard overnight and waking up the next morning to find that it has been stolen. This loss, according to the proponents of natural consequences, would teach the child to be more careful next time. A parent using this approach would have to be willing to allow the child to be unhappy for a while until he/she earned enough money to buy a new soccer ball. Insisting that a child use his own money to repair a door he damages by kicking it during an angry outburst would be an example of applying logical consequences. With natural consequences, all a parent has to do is note what has happened and allow the child to feel bad. With logical consequences, the parent requires the child to perform some action. The action required must be logically related to the misbehavior. Most children see logical consequences as the same as punishment and so parents who use consequences try to use natural ones whenever possible. That way, the parent can shrug their shoulders in a sort of "oh well" or "I told you so" gesture and not be seen as applying a punishment. This works well with many of today's parents who don't want to be bad guys and try to foster a buddy style of parenting rather than an authoritarian one. That is fact is what the mother in our vignette was doing. She was telling her child that the consequence of his getting off of the swing was that someone else was now going to use it. She was calm and non-punitive and definitely not a disciplinarian. Now there are several problems with this woman's application of the consequences strategy. First of all, getting off of a swing is not a misbehavior, unless the mother is trying to teach her child to hold onto everything he gets and never share. Secondly, the mother never attended to the child pulling on and then hitting the other child. Surely these were behaviors that needed more than ignoring, the other technique she appeared to be using. As noted earlier, a parent cannot just ignore aggressive behavior. We all know that toddlers, children, teens and even adults who are bullies generally keep bullying until someone stops them. That kind of behavior cannot be ignored, even in small children. And waiting for natural consequences to occur, in the form of a bigger and stronger bully, is simply too dangerous. Surely this mother would not be content to let her child be socked in the eye by a five year old who wanted to use her child's toy. There is an even bigger problem with these three techniques of discipline, however, especially with aggressive, loud or obnoxious behavior. None of them guarantee that a child will learn values like kindness, courtesy, patience, sharing and compassion. If the mother of the older toddler really wanted to teach her child something she would have gotten up, taken him by the hand and said "When you hit another child, you hurt them. You are not allowed to hurt other people. Sit here with me for a little while and when one of the swings is empty you may swing again." If another hitting incident occurred after that, the mother should take the child home and say "You cannot play in the park when you hit other children. If you want to play with other children and get along with them you must not hurt them. " This is an example of using logical consequences in an effective way. If you are the type of parent who uses consequences as a main discipline tool, you must use logical rather than natural consequences with aggression. As with any technique of discipline, the use of consequences alone is not enough to teach the child all of the civilized behaviors she must learn. I often remind parents that children are by their very nature uncivilized. They're not born with a code of laws in their heads or even with any real sense of knowing right from wrong. It is up to parents to civilize them, that is prepare them to live peacefully and cooperatively with other people. Yet parents are often outraged when their children behave as the little toddler in the park. Actually, his behavior is pretty normal for a two year old. But by the time he's four, if his parents are doing a good job of teaching him how to interact with other children, that behavior should be less frequent. The mother of the toddler will have to repeat her words and her response to her toddler many times before he really understands how to behave and learns how to manage his jealousy and disappointment. And the mother must be willing to sound like a broken record. If she only ignores his aggression, he will not learn until he gets hit, and that is no guarantee that he will learn about kindness and civility. When it comes right down to it, you don't raise children with techniques of discipline. Time-out, ignoring and the application of consequences don't produce ethical people. Parents who teach, talk, listen, love, understand and act consistently in expecting good behavior from their children are the ones who create good children and ethical people. |