Spanking

In our modern, supposedly civilised society, hitting as a means of teaching is still shockingly prevalent, despite numerous studies proving its destructiveness. Any perceived effectiveness of slapping or spanking is nothing more than short-term compliance rooted in a child’s fear of the parent. Rather than internalising any moral message or noble value by being spanked, a child grows resentful and avoidant of the parent. This, together with the inner contortions of denial and dissociation from the distressing negative feelings that a child must perform, exact a steep, enduring toll on their wellbeing. Spanked toddlers are less likely to listen, are less compliant and have more poorly developed motor skills; spanked adolescents are more likely to suffer depression, alcohol addiction and suicidal thoughts. Children who are hit are more likely as adults to hit their partners and their own children—and so it goes, the transgenerational-go-round of violence, which ripples outward from family to community to society.

Shaming

Punishment need not be physical to exact a toll on a child’s developing personality and the lifelong neural templates for how he will relate to himself, others, and the world. And indeed, a far more common form of violence routinely used in disciplining children is shaming. Shaming is more subtle than hitting, but in many ways, more insidiously damaging—because the child cannot consciously point to the hurtful moment of impact. Rather, shamed children sustain an incremental erosion of their competent, loving, “good enough” selves with each verbal rebuke.

In her 2010 TEDTalk, shame researcher Brene Brown aptly defines shame simply as the fear of disconnection: “There’s something about me that, if other people know it or see it, I won’t be worthy of connection.”

Such exclamations as “Bad boy!” or “You’re very naughty!” are clear examples of shaming, in which the message is a diminishment or accusatory diagnosis of the child.

One problem with shame is that it’s not always so obvious—and thus so readily available for reconsideration by parents seeking a more constructive mode of parenting. Experts through the years have counselled parents to focus on expressing displeasure with the behaviour and not the person doing the behaviour, but this can easily lead to shaming as well, as in, “Your whining and crying is not okay.”

Shame is like the stealth bomber of emotional zingers: it can slip into almost any verbal exchange. It all depends on what’s going on in the mind and heart of the person uttering the words. For example, “That’s so silly” can be delivered during a loving, playful exchange in a tone that cultivates warmth and connection, or it can be landed as a shame-based dismissal of a child’s earnest feelings, thoughts or actions.

And this lacing of garden-variety words with something as corrosive as shame is a process that is virtually unconscious. Few parents—or should I say, few parents who’d be inclined to read this article—open their mouths with the conscious intention, “I’m going to shame my child now.”

And it’s practically universal in our culture; the vast majority of us have been shamed as children by parents, siblings, teachers, peers. For us to become aware and sensitive to shame is like a fish becoming aware of water. But we may be aware of shame’s fallout, either in ourselves or in those close to us. Then over time, shame becomes a part of us. Those who have internalised shame tend to specialise in—and often fluctuate between—one of two polarised patterns of expression: emotional muteness, paralysis and dissociation from their own feelings and needs; or bouts of hostility and rage, which is either expressed outward toward others or internalised as depression, self-destructive behaviours and even suicide.

Shame corrupts social intelligence by inhibiting the development of empathy and the ability to take responsibility for oneself, leading to a habit of blaming. The effects of shame begin in the earliest moments of a child’s life; a comprehensive August 2010 New York Times article on depression in preschoolers zeroed in on the shame that parents [unintentionally and un-wittingly] inflicted on their young children as a causal factor.

With respect to parenting for a more peaceful, constructively interdependent society, Robin Grille points out that so many of our most problematic social behaviours are compulsive covers for inner feelings of shame. To conceal our shame, we sneer at others, we criticise, we moralise, we judge, we patronise and we condescend… Finally, the shamed tend to anticipate feeling humiliated and disapproved of by others, and this can lead to hostility, even fury. Quite often, shame makes us want to punish others. When angry, shame-prone individuals are more likely to be malevolent, indirectly aggressive or self-destructive—their anger finds no appropriate expression.

Isolation

So here you are one afternoon, at the end of your rope with your out-of-control three-year-old. You know you won’t spank her, and you have become mindful of avoiding shame-based measures, so what’s left? Is time out the answer? At the risk of incurring the frustrated wrath of parents everywhere, my answer is NO. While time out was conceived as a more humane alternative to spanking, it lands a blow to the brain and psyche rather than to the bottom.

Right at the moment when the child is overwhelmed by a flood of emotions that she cannot manage, and she most needs the regulating presence [that is, close physical presence] of her attachment figure, she’s banished to her room or her “naughty chair” or her “thinking rug” or her [fill in the blank with any of a list of prettied-up names people have devised for this particular form of exile].

What a tantruming child [or, more helpful to think of her instead as a struggling child] most needs is time in—that is, in secure, soothing arms, in the steadying, regulating sphere of your engaged presence. Time out is developmentally and neurobiologically counterproductive: it deprives a child of regulation just when she needs it most, throws her system into protection mode and erodes her trust in, and relationship with, her parent.

After all the fussing is over and order is restored, the memory trace etched in her social brain is When I’m having trouble, I’m on my own. This is not the foundation we’re striving to offer the next generation. We wish for them the suite of healthy social and relational capacities of resilience, which includes being comfortable reaching out for help when needed. Let’s not extinguish that skill with our well-meaning attempts at positive discipline!

The foregoing forms of “discipline”—punishment is not true discipline, thus the quotation marks—short-circuit Nature’s plan for the unfolding peace-loving intelligence. And they don’t happen only in my-way-or-the-highway authoritarian homes. Because of the unconscious, reflexive nature of how parenting often goes—in which we either reprise with our own children the way we were raised, or, in an effort to never do to them what they did to us, seize on predominant cultural parenting modes—these corrosive approaches also feature in homes where well-meaning parents regard themselves as progressive and enlightened. Indeed, in the course of a single generation, Time Out has become the gold standard in discipline for savvy parents. And thus the cycle of [usually unintentional, often subtle] parenting violence continues.

As Robin Grille points out: Child rearing has historically been so violent… that almost all of us are either battered children or descendants of battered children. It is no wonder that violence persists in so many forms, across all age groups, and that most of us are capable of slipping and treating our children violently on occasions, even if we strive against it.

Fostering growth while keeping peaceful boundaries

As a sound alternative to both of the above measures, consider using a time-out in the way it was originally conceived in sports: for a team [not just one struggling player] needing to take a pause to regroup, rethink its strategy, and return refreshed. Used in this us-as-a-team manner—”Let us take a time out”—it is a demonstration that while you’re not happy with the way things are going or the choices he has just made, you are on his side in this challenging moment—and always.

You can find your own name and style for this regrouping process; in psychologist Lawrence Cohen’s family it’s “A Meeting on the Couch”: Discipline is a chance to improve your connection with your children instead of forming another wall that separates you. The best way to make discipline more connecting is to think We have a problem instead of my kid is misbehaving.

Sometimes just changing the scene and making reconnection a top priority can create a dramatic difference, and the tension is gone as soon as you get to the couch, so you might end up just goofing around and being silly together.

Parenting for peace is all about providing the most fertile ground possible for the blossoming of our children’s social and cognitive intelligence.

This was first published in the September 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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This is so much easier said than done. For instance, a toddler practising his newly-discovered autonomy by defying you, can push your buttons of powerlessness like nothing else can. I vividly remember the one time I swatted our son’s behind: he was six or seven and was defiantly ignoring me right to my face. Something primitive inside me uncoiled and I whacked him. I regretted it immediately, not just for the obvious reason of having been violent with him, but also for the modicum of his respect I lost in that unbridled moment.

We lose the admiration of our children when we ‘lose it’. It’s a mammalian thing: animal behaviourists know that our ability to have authority over—and thus the ability to train—a dog or a horse erodes, if the animal sees or feels us get angry. We could learn a lesson or two from understanding mammalian similarities!

When it’s necessary to reprimand your child, strive to not do it with a raised voice or the look of disgust or cruelty in your eyes. Aside from the neurologically corrosive effects that feeling shameful brings, the child will also lose trust in you over time, and will look towards others as role models. Then when your child is in her teens and needs to be able to learn from you the most, your complaint will be, “He just doesn’t respect me”.

Children need guidance and instruction, not punishment. It is often more effective to simply use a gentle, redirecting arm around the shoulder of a young one heading towards trouble than to deploy a string of words to reason with or explain a prohibition [“…for the umpteenth time!”].

Misbehaviour or mistake

The term misbehaviour is appropriate when someone truly understands the alternatives and consciously chooses to engage in bad behaviour. For a child, this is simply not the case. She is a scientist figuring out the world, gathering data and conducting experiments. Her behaviours that don’t please us are considered as ‘mistakes‘, rather than misbehaviour. Do we punish people for mistakes? Not if we want improvement, excellence and growth.

And even the most suspiciously flagrant ‘mistake‘ of a child reflects an unmet need. Figuring out what that need is—rather than focusing on the inexperienced way the child expressed it or the ineffective strategy she used to meet her need—is central to peace in the home. So for example, ’stealing‘ a piece of your jewellery or some other precious item—yes, even your money—can be a child’s way to get close to you, to keep you with him.

Hitting or teasing another child is also sometimes an inexperienced human’s misguided strategy to connect. And yet that same behaviour—hitting, or even biting—will be used by another child [or the same child in a different circumstance] as an attempted strategy for meeting an entirely different need, such as the need to feel less fearful, embarrassed, isolated, or envious.

A central goal in parenting for peace is to cultivate an atmosphere in which our children are able to live as much as possible in the growth/flourishing mode rather than a stressed/survival mode. It ensures the correct wiring of their social and cognitive brain circuitry, as well as optimally healthy bodies. We need to help when their own emotion regulation isn’t quite yet up to the task. Like the spotter who stands ready to help lift the massive barbell if the guy on the bench can’t quite summon the strength from his weaker position, we help our child lift the load of his distressing emotions until his own neural regulatory system can manage them.

Time-out or time in

While it was conceived as a more humane alternative to spanking, a time-out lands a blow to a child’s brain and psyche. Just when the child is overwhelmed by a flood of emotions that she cannot manage, and she most needs the close physical presence of her parent, she’s banished into solitude. What a child throwing tantrums [or, more helpful to think of her instead as a struggling child] needs is ‘time-in’—in secure, soothing arms, and the steadying, regulating sphere of your engaged presence.

Creative responses

Try these ‘healing actions’ for unacceptable behaviour:

Hitting: Wrap the child’s hands in a scarf and sit next to her: “When your hands are warm and strong, they don’t hit.” [Do the same if you find the child kicking someone]

Biting: Give the child a large piece of an apple or a carrot. Make her sit next to you to eat it and say: “We bite carrots, not our friends.”

Violent play: Real work is the cure for violent play. Get her to dig holes or move stones in the garden, or to carry wood or stack bricks.

Defiance: Between ages two and four, children can be stubborn, and it’s best to simply overlook some of their negative reactions. Just go with the child and begin doing with him what you want him to do, without anger or lots of explaining. Don’t waiver or allow him to wriggle out of it. For example, rather than butting heads about him picking up his toys, just begin rhythmically picking up a toy or two and putting them into the bin. Like with a yawn, he will hardly be able to keep himself from joining in.

Gossiping or aimless chatter: Involve her in your work to let her feel the adult’s creative strength focused upon a particular activity. Washing dishes is a wonderful healing action here, as is baking. Sometimes merely listening to children’s upset or tears will ease up the problem enough so that they can respond to a suggestion as simple as, “Just go start over.”

It is always more effective to focus on what the child may do, rather than issuing a “You may not…” prohibition. This approach also reduces the risk of putting the child into a disconnected, survival-mode. And in fact, kindergarten teacher Barbara Patterson suggests that the very word “may” can have seemingly magical properties. Take for instance, “You may put the forks on the table now”—it presents no question for the child to either answer or ignore, and it implies the notion of privilege to be doing what the adult is suggesting. And indeed, a child enjoying a secure, connected relationship with her parents does find it a privilege and a joy to behave in harmony with their wishes.

Keeping these ideas in mind, remember that the single most pivotal ingredient in harmonious, joyful parenting is you—your confidence, conviction, and trust in yourself and in your child.

Dr Axness is offering Complete Wellbeing readers a free download of a unique, effective mind/body/spirit tool for parents to use in addressing behaviour and/or developmental concerns in children of all ages. To claim your free gift, visit http://marcyaxness.com/unique-7-step-parenting-tool/

This was first published in the April 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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