Parents have been warned to avoid using these five punishments when disciplining their children, and parents may not realise they are damaging.
Children are going to misbehave again and again; it’s part of their learning and development. But it can be incredibly frustrating for parents who spend their time correcting their children to see the same behaviours over and over.
Different parents will have different strategies to correct behaviour that they don’t like, but most will give consequences in one form or another. Some parents will punish their kids when they are naughty by grounding them, sending them to their room or taking away privileges such as the TV or iPad. They’re common enough but there are some punishments that can cause ‘long-term’ damage to kids.
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Five punishments parents should avoid
Katy Goodwin, a parenting educator with an MA in Child Development, has shared five punishments on Instagram that parents shouldn’t use on their kids.
- The silent treatment – If you give your child the silent treatment after an argument, they read this as ‘conditional love’ says Goodwin. She says that the lesson they are actually learning is ‘When I’m a problem, love disappears’.
- Shaming in front of others – It’s important to call out a child’s behaviour, but not in front of other people removed from the situation. Katy says that this teaches kids that ‘humiliation is a tool people who love them are willing to use’.
- Isolation as a consequence – Sending your child to their room dysregulated is not going to help them learn to behave. ‘Forced isolation teaches a child that big emotions exile them from the family’. This is different from a ‘coregulation break with a parent nearby,’ Katy clarifies.
- Physical punishment, even the ‘light’ kind – This includes hitting, slapping a hand and yanking an arm. All it does is teach kids that ‘bigger people use force when they’re frustrated’.
- Threats about the relationship – Saying something like ‘I’ll give you to that lady’ even if said as a joke is extremely damaging for kids. ‘A child’s nervous system can’t separate joke from reality at this age,’ Katy tells parents.
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She says that these punishments ‘don’t look like abuse’ which is why they are ‘so damaging’, they are ‘normalised’ in our society. However, the research on ‘long-term outcomes’ from these types of behaviours ‘tells a different story’.
Instead of these types of punishments, parents should try to apply logical consequences. ‘A consequence is logical, related to the behaviour and calm. It teaches reality,’ Katy tells parents. Meanwhile, a punishment is about making the child ‘suffer enough to comply’.
