It seems like everyone has an opinion when it comes to how to discipline a child. “Timeouts are terrible!” “A good grounding teaches your kid a lesson!” “Spanking will damage your child for life!” “My mom washed my mouth out with soap, and I turned out just fine!” Wading through all the expert suggestions and research studies – not to mention the parental judgment – can leave parents at their wits’ end as they wonder, “Is it okay to punish my child?”
In Era’s podcast, “Using Consequences vs. Punishments,” we look at many of the different methods of discipline and how they each affect your child in different ways. We also share some of the negative effects associated with punishment and offer alternatives that can help you teach your child how their actions affect others and help them to take responsibility so they grow up to be conscientious and considerate adults.
What’s the Problem with Punishment?
“Punishment” means something different to everyone, but most people think of it as including everything from timeouts and groundings to taking away privileges to yelling and spanking. Here are the key problems with punishment:
- It only works temporarily to stop unwanted behavior
- It doesn’t help kids learn to control their emotions
- It fails to teach them to understand the consequences of their actions
- It puts all the responsibility on the parent to:
- Come up with penalties
- Create and enforce boundaries
- Hand out consequences
- It excludes children from the process of:
- Understanding their behavior
- Deciding on appropriate consequences
- Learning self-management
- Children learn to avoid punishment rather than manage themselves
- Parents must constantly escalate punishments to remain effective:
- Two-minute timeouts become longer
- Taking away privileges for longer periods
- Eventually leading to extreme threats like “grounded for life”
- It becomes like a game of chicken where kids become increasingly resistant
How Does Punishment Affect Kids’ Brains?
If your child is still younger than age three, they simply don’t have any impulse control. They’re better able to control themselves between ages three and four, but that ability is still very underdeveloped. As they grow, kids start to understand cause and effect and their ability to think before they act improves – but honestly, many adults still struggle with that! What you think of as misbehaving may actually be a physical or mental inability to do anything else.
When you punish your child, it triggers a whole series of reactions in their still-developing brain – and those reactions vary depending upon the punishment you use:
- Harsh punishments actually make your child’s brain feel like it’s being attacked, and that makes them become defensive
- According to Founder of Hand in Hand Parenting Patty Wipfler, timeouts can make your child feel alone, misunderstood, and emotionally abandoned
- Isolating punishments activate the amygdala (the brain’s smoke alarm), making it nearly impossible for your child to think rationally
At some point in your childhood, you probably heard the phrase, “You sit there and think about what you’ve done!” Unfortunately, leaving a child to figure it out for themselves causes reactions in their brain that make it impossible for them to do that. “Your brain and your body go into survival mode,” explains Dr. Neha Navsaria. “You access that primitive area of your brain and not the areas involved with emotion regulation.”
Can Punishment Damage My Child?
These days, many parents wonder if spanking a child will damage them for life – and physical punishment (like spanking, aggressive grabbing, or making kids eat soap or hot sauce) has in fact been connected to mental health issues like depression and anxiety in kids. Spankings and corporal punishment also can result in kids having fewer healthy coping skills, can affect their ability to pay attention or problem-solve, and may lead to poorer school performance. These risks increase the more a child is spanked or otherwise physically punished.
Not surprisingly, physical discipline isn’t the only type of punishment that has a potentially negative effect on kids. A 2011 study of American, Chinese, and Japanese schoolchildren found that kids who face physically and emotionally harsh punishment tend to be worse at managing their emotions and act out more than others. On top of that, punishments that aren’t related to the misbehavior or that are designed to shame or deprive kids can:
- Lead to depression
- Cause a lack of social awareness, making it harder to connect with others
- Interfere with how emotions are expressed and interpreted
- Affect a child’s sense of self – like if they see themselves as “good” or “bad”
Moving Beyond Punishment
Research shows that controlling or asserting power over your child is less effective than appealing to their empathy. Here’s how to move beyond punishment:
- Foster connection and independence:
- Let your child express their individuality
- Support their growing independence
- Help them develop problem-solving confidence
- Create opportunities for competence building
- Focus on collaborative problem-solving:
- Include your child in decision-making
- Work together to find solutions
- Make them feel like a valuable partner
- Encourage self-directed learning
- Model emotional regulation:
- Control your own reactions
- Resist urges to yell or punish
- Stay calm during challenges
- Take responsibility for your actions
- Build responsibility through natural consequences:
- Show how actions affect everyone
- Help them understand cause and effect
- Let them experience appropriate outcomes
- Support them in learning from mistakes
Remember: When children feel connected and valued, they’re more motivated to find solutions and stick with them. Working together builds the skills they need for lifelong success.
