Consistent Discipline Works

Consistency in discipline is more important than what kind of discipline you use. I could quote many studies that show corporal punishment does not work, but I am not going to do that.

Instead, I am going to say that there are better methods of consistent discipline that work just as well as consistently applied corporal punishment. The good thing about other methods is that they feel better for both child and parent.

Sometimes finding appropriate discipline for an infraction is harder than getting up and spanking the child but over the long term teaching a child self-discipline works better than teaching a child fear of getting caught.

Yelling across the room “I’m going to hang you up by your toes if you do that again!” is not affective. It may scare the child into complying with your rule for a few moments but behavior like this on your part, day after day, repeatedly will teach a child not to trust what you say. They will eventually realize that mom or dad is NOT really going to cut my fingers off if I touch the electrical outlet… therefore having learned nothing about electrical outlets they may very well actually touch them again.

How do we as parents go about teaching self-discipline? It takes a lot of thought. First, you must have house rules. These are either rules that you created alone for younger children or rules that you and your teenager came up with together. Then you must have consequences for breaking a rule. For older children it is often helpful if your child helped come up with the consequences. The most important elements you must have are consistency and reality. You must consistently carry out reality-based consequences to broken rules. If a consequence is too hard to carry out, do not make it a consequence. By showing them the example of following through on your promises, you are teaching them yet another self-regulating lesson. Do not make threats that you cannot keep.