In the past, children have been controlled or motivated to behave primarily by the threat of punishment. When a child starts to misbehave or is uncooperative, most parents’ gut instinct is to threaten the child. We say or feel things like, “If you don’t listen, you’ll really be in trouble” or “If you don’t stop crying, I will give you something really to cry about.” With little children, we might raise our hand to spank them or give a certain look that means if they don’t cooperate they will be punished. By using punishment the threat of loss, violence, pain, or increased suffering is employed as a deterrent.
Using fear as a deterrent appears to work, but it doesn’t awaken children’s natural motivation to cooperate and to help a parent. As noted earlier, obedience and cooperation are very different. Children need to be a willing helper to be truly cooperative and breaking a child’s will with punishment is not the answer. It is difficult to let go of punishment, because it works so well in the short term. Although we don’t want to punish our children, we just don’t know another way. Punishment seems inhumane, but without it, our children become spoiled, demanding, disruptive disrespectful, or unmanageable.
Most parents don’t want to punish their children; they just don’t know another way that works.
Responding to this need for change, some experts suggest “giving children consequences” to their behavior. For example, they take away something as a consequence of misbehaving and instead of calling it a punishment, it is called a consequence. This is an attempt to take the shame out of punishing. Instead of giving the message, “You are bad so you should be punished,” the child gets a more positive message: “It’s okay that you made a mistake, but now you will learn the consequence of your behavior.” Though this technique lessens guilt and is more humane it is still based on fear. This approach is much better than punishing, but it doesn’t awaken children’s natural desire to cooperate. In a sense, it is a nicer way of saying, “you will be punished.”