[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Oh - I understand that. I'm taking no offense - just sharing my philosophy. As there are many different types of parents and many different types of children, there are (and must be) many different types of parenting. Age appropriateness, personality of the child, etc.

Good. Parenting (like religion, lol) can be a tricky thing to discuss, so let me say ahead of time that I'm pretty opinionated, but my disagreement with certain parenting choices doesn't mean I think that people are bad parents.

I'm not sure I follow this - "the nature of punishment is to teach self-centeredness." How is that so? The nature of punishment is to teach that choices have consequences.

It simply means that it makes kids think mainly about themselves. What's going to happen to me if I do that. If I do this something bad will happen to me. Or after a punishment has been enforced, I think a typical response is not, "Oh, duh, I shouldn't have done that," but rather, "I can't believe they did this to me."

For example, if two small kids are playing and a struggle erupts over a toy and child A hits child B one of two things can happen. If child A's mom steps in and says, "We don't hit! Go to time out right now!" Child A might start crying and go to time out. He's most likely thinking, "I had the toy first! He took it from me! I don't like him anymore." Whereas if child A's mom goes to him and says, "Look child B is crying. That really hurt him. He took your toy and you got mad and hit him. We don't hit! Next time ask mommy for help or say, 'I was playing with that toy!' What can we do to help child B feel better?" At which point child A might suggest giving a hug, or a toy, or saying sorry. Both methods are probably effective at preventing the behavior next time, but only one gives the child the tools to deal with conflict effectively and causes him to think about how his actions affected someone else.

While natural consequences are fine, when danger is involved, I insert other forms instead. For example...

I know that many parents that don't often punish will do so if they believe that it will prevent their child from being hurt. While I disagree pretty strongly against spanking (as in I think the countries that have legislation against it rock), I can understand the logic there.

I hope you don't mind me using your example to illustrate my own personal opinion. In that case, natural consequences had already occured. They did something dangerous, someone got hurt. I suppose I would have made sure everyone was ok while showing a great deal of concern to drive the point home that they did a very scary thing. Then talked to them about why that was dangerous and really stressed that it isn't a safe thing to do. I'm sure that the 12 year old doesn't want to hurt the four year old and the four year old doesn't want to fall on her head, so it's unlikely that they would try again. If I really felt the need to impose a consequence then I suppose I would say that if they attempted anything dangerous like that again then gymnastics wouldn't be allowed until they were ready to be responsible.

I think as a society we value compliance a bit too much. It seems as though when people talk about a "good" child, what they really mean is an obedient child. Punishment is certainly effective at teaching obedience, but I think that it's effectiveness stops there. I think it impedes the thought process necessary to connect actions with their meaningful consequences. While you may get a child who doesn't engage in desirable behaviors (at least not when the punisher is looking), I don't think it gives kids the tools they need to grow into the kind of people that parents want them to grow into. I think it also teaches the lesson that might makes right.

So blah blah blah I know this is a huge derail. Feel free to continue talking about whatever this thread was originally about.