Dr. Gransee’s (Legal) Methods for Disciplining Your Children

by Jonathan M. Gransee, Psy.D. Licensed Psychologist

Many a parent has complained to me, in my years of evaluating children and adolescents for mental health problems, that there is little they can do to control their child’s behaviors, now that it is not ok to beat them. Ok, maybe that’s a bit excessive … most parents don’t want to beat their kids, but they do feel as if the elimination of physical discipline has limited their ability to control their kids.

And it’s interesting, that much of the time, it turns out that they have tried alternate approaches, but just gave up too soon! So, with that in mind, I would like to suggest some alternatives to physical discipline, and provide some guidance on how to make these alternatives effective.

First of all, let’s set the stage: You cannot reasonably expect any disciplinary action to work if there is significant environmental stress. What I mean by this is, don’t expect a child to be well behaved if he is witnessing violence over and over … and even one exposure might be enough to cause problems, depending. Kids who are exposed to domestic violence react by either becoming anxious and withdrawing, becoming anxious and fighting back, or by becoming passive-aggressive (for instance breaking your stuff, smearing their feces, etc), or by simply shutting down. None of these responses are good, and if your child is showing one of those responses, the chance that he/she is being affected by viewing violence or some other type of traumatic situation. So, simply put, stop the violence, or prepare yourself for problem kids who will not be able to be ?fixed? as long as the violence continues.

Also, you cannot expect these disciplinary approaches to work if you do not use them correctly, or if you add in violent approaches, or over-do the severity of the approaches, etc. For example, time outs are effective, but they were never designed to be used for hours on end. Grounding may be effective, but not 3 months at a time!

Another thing: In any effective parenting strategy, it is important to insure that the positive feedback you give your child far outweighs the negative. In other words, you should not be constantly criticizing your child, because you will end up with a defensive and hard-nosed, angry child with low self esteem and no goal in life other than to defeat you. Not what you want?

Also, remember this: Behaviors continue because they work! If your child’s misbehavior gained them nothing, they would stop it. If they are not stopping it, it is because it works, at least some of the time. Parents will tell me “Well, most of the time, when he has a temper tantrum, I ignore it, so I don’t think he’s doing them because they get him anything.” However, the key phrase there is ‘most of the time.’ If, 1 out of 20 times, you give in, then that is enough to keep that behavior going. And, if you give in most of the time, well, what do you expect? Kids do what works. They want to be in control just as much as you do, or more, but they don’t have to play by the rules, don’t have to be rational or logical, don’t have to be fair, don’t have to be mature … they just have to do something that works for them. Your job as a parent is to make sure that inappropriate attempts at control (temper tantrums, violence, aggression, destructiveness, sneakiness, etc) do not work. However, you should try to give you kids some control over their situation … they shouldn’t run the show, and shouldn’t be spoiled, but when there is an opportunity to give them a choice (do you want vanilla or chocolate? Do you want to wear the green socks or the blue socks? Do you want to watch Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast?), give them one. If it looks like they are beginning to expect to always have a choice, and get pissy when they cannot choose, maybe you’ve given them too much freedom. If they don’t even seem to care that they are being given choices, then you either are giving them meaningless choices, or they are so used to not having choices that they have turned off their ‘chooser.’

And another thing: Patience! No effective disciplinary technique works instantly, and the only ones that do work instantly are the abusive ones. You have to give these techniques time to work.

And about you … you are reading this book because you are interested in alternatives to your current approach. That is a good thing, and you should give yourself a pat on the back for your desire to improve your technique. And, know that you cannot be an effective disciplinarian if you are not mentally healthy. Don’t get me wrong … you don’t need to be perfect (no-one is), but if you are depressed or highly anxious or very angry or extremely insecure, etc, this will make you less effective, and parenting will be a more frustrating enterprise for you. The good news is that you can get help, improve your mental health, and in the process, improve the mental health of your children (and your discipline).

Here we go:

Parenting technique #1

Time Outs

Much has been said about time outs, but simply put, they are one of the most effective ways of getting a child to control their behavior. It’s simple:

The child gets 2 warnings to stop their behavior. Ex: 1st time: Johnny, stop tapping the table?

2nd time: Johnny, this is your last warning

3rd time: Ok, time out! (and it is one minute for each year of age they are)

If you are dealing with a particularly resistant child who is not used to going to time out, and who is not sure they can even control themselves for the entire time out, you can start with shorter time periods. In the beginning, the most important thing is to convince your child that they can indeed comply with the punishment. As they get better at this, you can increase the time to the full time. And, praise them after they take a time out, because that will make them feel good about doing the right thing, and they will be more likely to willingly do a time out next time.

Talks

I have found that one of the most beneficial parenting approaches, for kids who are capable of this, is to talk with them. Alyssa is very different from Samantha … Samantha responds well to time-outs, and they really seem to keep her in check. And, she just seems to want to be good, for the most part. Alyssa, on the other hand, is very independent, confident, and rebellious. She breaks the rules and does so in a sneaky fashion, because she knows she is misbehaving, but wants to do so so badly that she is willing to be sneaky in order to accomplish her goal. And, time outs don’t seem to be particularly effective in reducing her sneakiness … it’s too much of an inborn trait. But, she is also a perfectionist, and if you want to get her going, all you have to do is point out that she did something incorrectly, or that she was not following the rules, etc. So, that’s what we did. Whenever she did something inappropriate or sneaky, we would just let her know that she was not being correct, and that little girls were not supposed to act as she was, and that little girls were supposed to love and respect their parents, and do the right thing. I would also remind her that she, on the one hand told me frequently that she loved me, but then on the other hand, when very upset with me, she would tell me that she did not want to be around me and that I was mean father. She was embarrassed about the discrepancy between those two points, and really made an effort to not say something she could not take back. Talking to Alyssa has been MUCH more powerful than any type of punitive measure, though the punishment still needs to be given, so that she does not begin to think that she can talk her way out of any problem.

Legal Torture

Did you know that there are some perfectly legal ways of torturing your children? Yes, indeed, there are! I remember a parent, some months ago, who told me of her way of punishing her children. If her two boys would fight and argue, she would make them hold hands and look eachother in the eyes, and say “I love you” or make them sing songs to each other. If they told their mother that they hated her, she would make them stand in a corner and say very loudly “My mother is the greatest mother in the world and I LOVE HER!” While a bit unorthodox, there is really no harm in this technique (I guess one could argue that it would give them a skewed view of love or intimacy, but that’s a stretch), and the technique produces enough discomfort that the children will think twice about misbehaving again. And, it has the added feature of being fun for the parent!

More Legal Torture

Another approach we developed to deal with our children involves a form of indentured servitude. Because Alyssa is so much into Disney, and in particular one movie where the evil person in the movie had minions, we decided to incorporate this into a disciplinary technique. This one is fun, but also requires close supervision and repeated support, so use it sparingly. Basically, whenever one of the girls would do something very inappropriate (for instance taking the other girls’ items, or hitting, or being mean), they would have to be the other girl’s ‘minion’ for a day. That meant that, if Samantha was the minion, Alyssa could have her get her a cup of water, or her food for dinner, or a toy, etc (but no homework completion, etc). This was fun for Alyssa, and embarrassing/humiliating for Samantha (not devastatingly so … so not inappropriate), and pretty effective. The problem was that it was hard to get Alyssa to remember that Samantha should do her bidding, and so Samantha got of fairly lightly. But, this one could work if you are really determined and focused.

Writing

I find that writing can also be a creative way of punishing your child. Basically, whatever they do wrong, they have to write a full sentence professing not to do that again, or reiterating the rule “I should not hit my sister.” One evening, Alyssa became angry at me because I told her that she had to eat her vegetables, and she lightly swatted me and spoke to me in a disrespectful manner. So, she had to write, 20 times, “I will not disrespect my father.” The technique worked, and it also had the added benefit of improving her printing, which was something she was working on at school at that time!

Natural Consequences

I love balance, and one of my favorite approaches to discipline involves the provision of natural consequences. For instance, if Samantha wants to go outside and play, but forgot to get her shoes out of the truck earlier in the day, as I told her to, and now the truck is gone. So, her punishment is that she cannot go outside because she did not do as she was told. Or, if she forgets to do her homework, and the boy down the street wants to play with her, she cannot because first she has to do her homework.

Setting it Right

Another way of disciplining your child is to make them do whatever it is they need to do to correct the situation. For instance, if she breaks a glass, she has to clean it up (depending on her age, and certainly supervised). If she spills cereal all over the floor, she is the one to clean it. If she gets too rough with Alyssa and hurts her, she is the one to comfort her and provide her with care (with supervision, of course).

Copyright June 2008. These articles cannot be used in any fashion without the explicit permission of the author, except for individual use.

Disclaimer: This information is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, and is for the sole purpose of providing alternate perspectives. If you feel that a mental health condition exists in yourself or the person you are reading this article for, you are advised to seek out psychological or psychiatric services.