Is it anger when a newborn baby screams loudly with hunger? We can’t ask her. We can only guess. I think it’s close to anger—this feeling of red-faced fury over being hungry or crying with colic. But it’s different from the anger of later childhood in that it’s not directed at anyone in particular. The recognition of another person as distinct from oneself only begins in the middle of the first year.
For most children, it’s between one and two years when temper tantrums appear. Children have become mature enough to have wishes and wills of their own, and they become angry when their mothers, fathers, or other caregivers interfere with their desires. But it’s interesting that they are still not ready to direct their anger at their parents in the sense of hitting or biting, though at the same age they may bite another child who takes their toy. It’s clear that there is still an inhibition against attacking the person who takes care of them. It’s as if they’ve heard and take seriously the old proverb “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
At the moment of a temper tantrum, they know who they are mad at all right, but they take it out on themselves by banging their heads against the floor.
I think it’s wise to try to hold temper tantrums to a minimum, as long as you don’t give in to unreasonable demands. The child’s temperament will have some influence. Some one-year-olds, though they may be good-natured in other respects, have fiery tempers when frustrated, others are unusually obstinate and just hate to give in. These types are harder to deal with during this period of primitive feelings and minimal self-control.
The first principle is not to back down just because the child is raising a rumpus. For if you do, she’ll catch on that tantrums get her what she wants and she may use them more and more deliberately.
On the other hand it’s even more important that you not provoke the child unnecessarily and that when a tantrum comes, you help the child to get over it as soon as possible.
I’ll always remember Mrs. Jenkins, the mother of one of my first pediatric patients. She called me in tears because her one-and-one-fourth-year-old son had “turned into a devil,” doing the very opposite of whatever she asked. If she insisted, he’d throw a tantrum. I made a home visit and while we were talking, Ronnie toddled into the room. His mother said in a stern tone, “Don’t touch the radio.” (There was no TV then but Ronnie loved to twirl the knobs of the radio.) He had had no idea of touching the radio when he came into the room. He stood there looking her squarely in the eye for a full minute. She repeated the warning. Then slowly, slowly he moved sideways toward the radio.
Mrs. Jenkins feared from the first signs of his independence that she would lose control. In her anxiety, she brought on the very battle of wills that she dreaded. She raised issues that didn’t need to be raised, shouldn’t be raised. Ronnie, feeling challenged, asked himself: Am I a mouse or am I a self-respecting man? It’s good that he had the impulse to ask for some rights and choices. He would have to have them to grow up. But his mother, being older and smarter, needed to be tactful, needed to be careful not to antagonize him with a lot of prohibitions, especially unnecessary ones.
If the radio was a problem, she should have set it on something high or locked it in a cabinet. In fact this is the age for “childproofing” the entire house, putting all dangerous objects, medicines, household cleaning products, and precious breakables safely out of reach. Breakables can be brought back at a later time, after the child has learned to respect requests. Jam books and current magazines so tight in bookshelves that they can’t be pried loose. Leave pots, pans, blunt kitchen utensils where they can be taken out of cabinets, played with safely, and put back. (Taking out and putting back are fascinating activities and learning experiences at this age.) Empty cartons are as good as wagons for pushing around, and they don’t nick the furniture.
If something dangerous or breakable gets left out by mistake and the child goes for it, distract him with something else. Have a music box or other machine that’s used just for distraction and nothing else. There are a few things that can’t be removed such as lamps on tables that you’ll have to make “no-nos,” perhaps by removing the child. Don’t count on no-nos alone. Remove the object or the child and add no-no for emphasis.
How to help a child out of a tantrum has to be learned separately for each child. One child will keep trying and banging his head until his mother makes a peace gesture such as a suggestion that they go shopping or to a playground. Another child will sustain the tantrum as long as the parent stays in view but quiets down when left alone.
By three years and older, a child is much more consciously aware of what’s going on between her and her parent. She has the language ability to ask for what she wants, to understand her parent who is explaining what can or can’t be done. She will have developed trust—if it’s justified—that her parent will give her what is reasonable, or have a reasonable explanation when she can’t. So child anger is now no longer a half-blind explosion but comes out of a rational or rationalized indignation over feeling unfairly treated.
Almost all the parents with whom I’ve ever discussed this issue agree that they’ve had a strong impulse to spank their children at times, whether they believed in it or not. For example, when a small child breaks a precious china ornament that he has been told not to touch, or runs into the street where a car, with screeching brakes, just misses him. Or when a somewhat older child, say six or seven years, is picking meanly on her younger sister who has done nothing to deserve this, or calls her mother a stinker because she won’t let her stay up to watch an exciting program on television. Or when an eleven-year-old has been caught stealing and then brazenly tries to lie out of it.
These are actions that the parents were taught were intolerable in their own childhoods so they promptly, automatically apply the same standards to their sons and daughters; and they tend to use the same discipline as their parents, whether it was spanking or deprivation or scolding or reasoning. In this way patterns tend to be passed down for generations.
The same persistence of beliefs occurs in other aspects of child-rearing. In some Native American tribes it is firmly believed (without proof) that baby’s bones will not grow straight and strong unless they are tightly swaddled. In Turkey they assume that children are born without appetites and will starve unless forced to eat. In many South Pacific islands parents all agree that babies and small children should be pampered in all ways. In ancient Sparta it was believed that boys would only grow up with good characters if they were deprived of comforts and made to take hard exercise and cold baths.
In America, though many parents believe in physical punishment, we also have a worldwide reputation for indulging our children with possessions and privileges, such as the deluge of gifts on birthdays, Christmas and Chanukah—even an automobile (if the parents can afford it) at the sixteenth birthday or at graduation from high school.
Men in our country are more frequently in favor of physical punishment than women, particularly for their sons. I don’t know whether this is because their hormones and genetic makeup have a different influence on their ideas. Or is it the way they were brought up to be tough, which really means to be afraid of weakness?
But can’t you, as a parent, break away from the patterns with which you were raised, if you’ve come to disagree with them? Of course. It’s being done fairly often, especially in modern times. But you have to have strong disapproval of your parents’ methods in order to overcome the usual compulsion to do what was done to you.
There are really two roots to physical punishment. There is the belief that it’s the right way to discipline for certain misbehavior. But more powerful is the wave of anger that sweeps over you when your child misbehaves; especially when there is an element of defiance in his act or in his attitude. He is challenging your authority, and there’s a spasm of panic deep inside you that if you don’t act quickly and forcefully, he might get the upper hand and you might lose some of your control permanently.
Even parents who disbelieve in physical punishment feel the anger when their child deliberately does wrong, and they feel the impulse to slap or strike. It’s different when a child breaks an object or a rule by accident; then we excuse it without anger unless we are in a very irritable mood.
Most American parents have spanked their children when provoked. A majority believe that it’s correct to spank at least occasionally; in fact they assume that you can’t raise children properly without doing it, anymore than you could raise them without calories or vitamins.
It’s interesting to learn, though, that in some parts of the world, it has never occurred to parents to slap or hit their children. I visited China to observe child care and schooling. I saw thousands of children in the care of parents or grandparents or teachers, in houses, in the street, and in schools, and I never saw a child being hit or even threatened with a blow. Yet children are generally well behaved there.
What convinced me most of all that spanking isn’t necessary was getting to know dozens and dozens of families, through my pediatric practice, in which the children were never spanked and yet were cooperative, polite, and kind. In some of these families, the parents had not been physically punished either. In others, they were reacting to a conviction that the spankings they had received had had the wrong effect.
This raises the question whether physical punishment does any harm. It’s obvious that when applied occasionally by loving parents it can’t do much harm, because so many good Americans were brought up this way. But I don’t think it’s the ideal way to influence children, even in the best of families, and when used a lot, especially by irritable or harsh parents, its unfavorable effect is multiplied.
Physical punishment teaches children that “might makes right” and turns some of them into bullies. It leaves some sensitive children with a lasting resentment against their parents for having humiliated them in this way. It encourages, in some individuals, a feeling that violence is not really that bad, in a nation that has much more violence already—including murder, rape, wife and child abuse—than any other country in the world. It encourages people to think of war as a way to settle disputes, at a stage in history when a major war would destroy us all.
When a foreman in a shop or the manager of an office is not satisfied with the work of an individual, he does not come in shouting and swat the worker across the seat of the pants. He asks the person into his office where he explains what he wants. And most workers want to please. Children do too, though they are inexperienced and need a lot of guidance.
If a good friend is visiting you, and is watching TV after dinner instead of noticing that you are doing the dishes, you would not think of slapping her in the face. A quiet request for help will be all that is needed. You can use the same approach with your child if, from the beginning, you have shown respect and appreciation for her helpfulness.
I think physical punishment is a less effective and more risky form of control. It teaches that you can avoid the punishment if you can hide your mischief. In other words, wrong doing is all right as long as you don’t get caught. Physical punishment teaches that when you’ve paid this penalty, the slate is clean; you can do wrong again if you are willing to pay again; some children are very brave in this way. They grin during the punishment.
But the most important reason of all for trying to avoid physical punishment, to my mind, is because it puts the main reason for good behavior on the fear of pain and on the fear of parent’s anger. I think it’s preferable for children to do the right thing because they love their parents and want to please them. Then, as they grow up, go to school, go to work, marry and raise a family, they’ll carry over the same attitude of getting along in life by loving people, wanting to please them, wanting to cooperate with them.
As you can imagine, I don’t believe in letting teachers or principals strike children in school. I realize that there are some out-of-control characters, especially in high school. But, I don’t think you accomplish anything valuable or permanent with physical punishment. You only make them more resentful underneath, if not on the surface.
For if the staff of a school feels that it is all right to resort freely to physical punishment, they will, to some degree or another, stop trying to understand the causes of a student’s misbehavior, stop trying to inspire him through special programs and projects that will make him feel that he is getting somewhere, like the rest of the class.
What about other forms of punishment, such as taking away a beloved bike for a day or so. To me, deprivation seems better than force and the indignity of blows. There should be advance warning about such a penalty and for which kinds of misbehavior it will be inflicted. The same applies to fines. Isolating a child (“time-out”) who has gone out of control has been used effectively by many parents and in good nursery schools and daycare centers; but isolation should be used in a calm, friendly spirit, as a way of helping the child cool off, for his good, and not with shouts and blows.
But the best course, better than any form of punishment is to show children love and respect, beginning as an infant, and to set a good example. Then children’s love of trustworthy, kind parents inspires them to look up to these parents and to want to grow up to be like them. I believe that children should behave well because they love and respect their parents, want to grow up to be like them, and want to be loved and respected by them.
When parents shout and hit, they diminish the love and respect and desire to imitate that children, by their nature, are ready to offer them. In the long run that makes the parents’job more difficult. If you complain that your children would never respond to anything as mild and quiet as a good example or a polite request, I’ll admit that if they have been used to a noisier and rougher discipline, they will seem insensitive at first to gentler methods. But they will come around gradually. If you have been frequently spanking or otherwise punishing a child from early childhood, you can’t expect him suddenly to begin behaving well just to win your love. It has been a battle for so long that both combatants have hardened their hearts. To soften hearts, the parent has to take the lead and avoid any harshness for not only weeks but months.
I’ve seen the transformation in a day-care center, for example, where a thick-skinned misbehaving child softens up and cooperates with a kind teacher after he slowly learns that he can trust her not to be hostile. One approach you can use to get the attention of a child who has learned insensitivity is to go to him immediately (rather than scold from across the room), put your arm around him and say quietly, “When you do that, it makes me unhappy. Please be kind!” By giving your child your full attention, showing affection, and speaking softly, you are proving that you want a change, are asking for cooperation, and are really hoping for a friendlier relationship. You shouldn’t repeat this whole scene many times a day, but you can repeat it once a day. And you can be very careful not to hit or shout or show anger. Just look unhappy.
It’s just as important to try to pay attention to moments when the child is cooperative and friendly, and smile lovingly. Give him a compliment when he is halfway helpful or agreeable. Catch him at being good!
Today the great problems of the family, the nation, and the world—marital strife, spiraling divorce rates, violence in families, increasing crime rates, racial injustice, terrorism, wars, and the threat of nuclear annihilation—all these social ills are due in part to hardheart-edness which develops early in life when children feel insufficiently secure, uncertain about being loved consistently, vulnerable to harshness.
If we can learn to guide our children through love and respect and kindness rather than punishment, all our problems will not disappear, but a major step toward a more peaceful and just world will have been taken.
Humiliation misses the mark as much as physical punishment I feel, and it is worse in that it lowers the child’s self-esteem. To regularly lower a child’s self-esteem really hurts his character in a permanent way. Commonly used examples are: “No one will like you if you act like that.” “You’re a lazy person and you won’t get far in the job you chose.”
Shaming a child is much the same as humiliating and has the same unfortunate effect on character. To control a child with shaming is to take away a fragment of his permanent self-esteem each time it is used. I’ve been amazed to see how sensitive a baby under a year can be to being laughed at; he may burst out crying. Ridicule is a form of shaming—or close to it—and it’s too strong a method to use deliberately.
I’ve saved for the last the form of control that was used most often by my mother with her six children—fostering a strong sense of guilt. I imagine that she used guilt with the best of intentions, feeling that physical punishment was too crude, too physical; so she turned to the plane of morality.
Everyone should have a moderate sense of guilt, a conscience, to keep behaving themselves when no one in authority is around to remind them. Before it becomes your conscience, inside of you, in very early childhood, it is simply the actual voice of the parents telling you what is right and what is wrong. But gradually you absorb their teachings and they become part of your own beliefs or point of view. When you are tempted to misbehave, your own conscience, in imitation of your parents’ teachings, reminds you that it would be wrong; you would feel uncomfortable until you put the temptation aside. But if you yield to the temptation, guilt makes you feel even more uncomfortable or anxious. A young child is afraid that if his parents discover his misdeed they will be angry and stop loving him. That fear of losing the parents’ love and care is the sharpest, the most fundamental fear of early childhood. For a child instinctively dreads that he would be in mortal danger—of being lost, of having no protection, of having no one to comfort him, to feed him, to keep him warm.
I remember in later childhood dreading my parents’ disapproval so intensely that I really wished they would substitute physical punishment, which would soon be over with, compared to guilt which would last all day or even several days.
I do believe that, even though the strong social conscience that I and my four sisters and my brother got from our mother’s teachings was really valuable, the excessive conscience, the sense of guilt, the fear of offending people that we absorbed from her exclusive dependence on instilling guilt was a handicap that impaired our effectiveness at times. I remember when I landed a well paying summer job as “tutor companion” with the use of a car and lots of time off, mother said scornfully, “I’m ashamed of you, wanting to be a nursemaid to a rich boy.” This bothered me so much that I went back to the college employment bureau and asked for the most unpleasant job they had to offer.
The basic reason why I’ve pointed out the disadvantages of several types of discipline is because of their long lasting negative effects on character and motivation. In dealing with our adult friends or our fellow workers on the job, it never occurs to us to hit them, heap scorn or ridicule on them, shout at them or make them feel deeply guilty. We ask them in a friendly way to do what we want them to do, counting on their desire to please. Children are inexperienced and impulsive but are otherwise fundamentally the same as adults and can be treated in the same spirit.