(hip hop music)
- The Parenting Junkie.
Hey guys and welcome back to The Parenting Junkie,
the place to go to love parenting
and for parenting from love.
Today I wanna talk about a really really important topic
for peaceful parents
and that is the difference between punishment
and natural consequences.
In mainstream parenting advice we're usually given methods
to control our kids.
How to use power basically to control their behaviors
or to modify their behaviors.
Things like praise and punishments and rewards,
things like sticker charts, time outs,
all sorts of discipline methods
that are supposed to always reinforce positive behavior
and ignore or punish negative behavior.
So here's the thing
about why peaceful parenting doesn't use punishment.
Punishment is often effective only temporarily
but in the long run it doesn't usually create the effect
that we were hoping it would.
Think back to when you might have been punished as a child
or even as an adult
and think about the things that went through your head.
So it usually falls into two camps
when someone's being punished.
They either think, "That's not fair,
"I don't deserve this.
"I'm gonna get them back," right?
So they're externalizing the punishment,
they are sending it back to the punisher,
they're saying, "When I grow up I'll show them,
or "When I get out of here I'll show them,"
or, "Next time I'll do it so they don't catch me."
And they're just sitting there thinking how unfair it is
and how they've been mistreated in fact.
So the idea
that the punishment might be teaching them a lesson
and might be giving them time to reflect
on what they've done
and how they'll do it differently next time
usually falls short.
Usually a child who is sent to a time-out
or to stand in the corner
or to do a chore
as a punishment
or having their privilege taken away as a punishment
is seething, is sitting there thinking how unfair this is,
how I don't deserve it.
How next time I'll show them.
And then even worse,
there are the children who internalize the punishment
who sit there thinking, "I deserve this.
"I'm a terrible person.
"I must not be lovable if they've sent me off,
"if they've cast me away,
"if they've sent me into time-out.
"I must be a really bad kid if they've taken away my iPad,"
or "made me wash the dishes," right?
And they're the ones who are internalizing the message
that they aren't okay, that they are not lovable,
most particularly when they've made a mistake
and when they've made a bad choice.
So when you punish someone
the idea is you dislike something that they've done
and now you're going to inflict some kind of pain on them
so they don't do it again
and that pain can be emotional, such as in a time-out
when you say I'm going to remove myself from you,
I'm going to distance myself from you,
I can't be with you when you've behaved this way
or made this mistake.
Or it can be physical such as in spanking
and either way the idea is just whoever has more power
gets the last word
because whoever has more power can inflict more pain.
And so generally that can modify a behavior
for a short amount of time.
The child can say, "Wow, that was really painful.
"I'm not gonna do that again right now."
But then, like I've said,
they either externalize the message
and they're sending it back on you saying,
"I so don't deserve this."
Or they've internalized it feeling like a failure.
And sometimes different forms of punishment
are dressed up as consequences, right?
Or consequences is a more gentle word for us
for our modern day ears,
we prefer to hear the word consequences than punishment,
but if the consequences are unrelated to the action,
ya know aren't a consequence of that action
but it's arbitrarily brought onto the child
because of the action they've taken
and artificially created
then that is not a consequence.
That is just a punishment, right?
So if you say, "The consequence
"of you hitting your little brother
"is that you don't get TV time today,"
that's not a consequence, that's a punishment.
So that's how you can differentiate
between natural consequences and punishment.
Punishment is something that the parent decides will happen
that the parent decides to do.
That's not a direct consequence of the child's actions.
The direct consequence of hitting your brother
is that your brother will be hurt and he'll cry.
That's a natural consequence.
But getting TV time removed is not a natural consequence.
So let's look at what a natural consequence is.
A natural consequence happens, it occurs
when a parent does nothing.
When a parent does not step in
and it will happen whether or not the parent intervenes.
So for example,
a natural consequence of leaving your jacket at home
is that you'll get cold outside, right?
A natural consequence of eating too much candy
is that you'll get a tummy ache, right?
These are not things that the parent can affect.
Now that doesn't mean that we can't sometimes
create a response that is artificial, right?
Like if you are hitting your brother
I will remove your brother from the room
or I will remove you from the room
or I will have to hold your hands
and block you from hitting him.
That is an intervention that a parent has to have
to maintain everybody's safety.
You can watch more about that in my video called
"Your Child Hit You?" Or in my video about time in
versus time out.
So it doesn't mean that we don't intervene in situations
to make sure everybody's safe
and to make sure everybody is participating
in the family chores
or whatever needs to get done, that's fine.
But punishment is a very different thing.
Punishment is about inflicting pain
in order to modify a behavior.
Even natural consequences
are something that maybe as peaceful parents
sometimes we wanna step in a help, right?
Now I really believe in building children's resiliency
and that we should trust our children
and that they should learn from their own life
and their own choices.
So yeah, if your child goes out without a jacket
and they're cold, then maybe sometimes
you're gonna feel like, okay, that's okay.
You're gonna learn from this
and next time you'll remember your jacket.
But maybe you're gonna say,
"Hey baby, you made a mistake, no worries.
"I'll bring you your jacket," right?
So there's a very fine line between coddling
and between not caring.
Ya know, if our partner forgot their jacket,
if an adult forgot their jacket would we help them?
Would we go back and get it for them?
We have to think about it like that, you know.
What is reasonable for a person to be forgetting
or to be doing and what is reasonable
within our relationship for us to help them with
versus okay, happens, you forgot it,
you'll be a bit cold, no big deal, right?
Sometimes we let our children learn
from natural consequences
and sometimes even with natural consequences
we wanna step in and help them.
When you punish someone
you are always going to feel disconnected from them.
You are not gonna feel warm and loving towards them
in that moment.
You are going to feel it come from a place of anger
or entitlement or one-upmanship, or "I'm gonna show them,
"I'm gonna teach them a lesson."
You know, if you have that mantra playing in your head,
"I'm gonna teach them a lesson,"
or "That child needs to learn a lesson,"
then it's a really good red flag
to stop and ask yourself,
"Okay, what lesson?"
Is the action that I'm taking going to teach that lesson?
Is it going to promote a connection between us
that helps them learn that lesson
or is it going to be a disconnecting factor
so they will tune me out
and they won't want to understand the lesson.
What often happens when we punish children
is that they become much more self centered.
So if we punish a child for hitting, for example,
then they learn they shouldn't hit
because it will hurt them in the long run
and that is a self-centered approach.
Rather than saying, "Don't hit because it hurts other people
"I can't do anything to you, I'm not gonna hurt you,
"but don't do it because it hurts someone else
"not because you'll get hurt," right?
Or, "Help out around the house
"because we're a family and we all need to help each other
"and that's just how life goes,
"not because if you don't you won't get screen time."
Again, that will promote self interest, right?
It's surprising to learn
that punishments are very similar to rewards
and they're both a form of manipulation
rather than a form of authentic relationship, right?
And one of the best ways I think
to decipher whether or not you're being authentic
and respectful in your relationship with your children
is to ask yourself, "Would I do this with an adult?"
Now of course adults and children are different.
Developmentally they have different needs,
but that usually means
that we need to come closer and be more connected
and more gentle and more patient with children
than we might need to with adults.
Because developmentally they aren't capable
of what we might expect from an adult.
So asking yourself, would I do this with my husband
if he made this mistake?
Would I do this with my friend?
Would I do this to my own parent?
Is going to answer the question
of whether or not you're manipulating, being power seeking,
being overpowering, being controlling,
or whether you're trying to seek an authentic
and honest communication between you and your child.
So with natural consequences
I think it's a good idea to allow them to occur
most of the time
unless your child's really gonna be hurt by them
and they need protecting 'cause they're still young
and they haven't mastered, ya know, life.
But anything else, anything that is parent inflicted
is usually going to be a punishment
and is going to disconnect you from your child
and it won't teach the lesson that you're trying to teach.
Did you like this video?
I really hope you did.
If you did, I would love it if you share it
with all your friends.
I would like to hear from you
whether or not you use punishments
and whether or not you allow your kids
to feel natural consequences when they occur,
when they have made mistakes
and there are natural consequences occurring.
The best place to have this conversation
is over at theparentingjunkie.com.
So head on over there now and leave me a comment.
I love to hear from you.
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Keep on loving parenting and parenting from love
because your kids need you
almost as much as you need them.
(hip hop music)
The Parenting Junkie.