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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Hey friends, Jess here.
As you may already know, but just in case you don't, I'm a registered psychotherapist and a mom of three
And Robot Unicorn is a show that I do with my husband Scott, who is an engineer in a dad of three.
Today we wanted to revisit one of our older episodes for you because this episode honestly is
Still one of my favorites, and it's a really important foundational episode that I just thought was gonna be important to revisit.
In this episode, Scott asked me the question: when is punishment okay?
And we talk about if punishment is ever okay, what evidence-based parenting really looks like, and we dive deeper into the research on spankings, timeouts, and taking things away.
This was a really great episode if you have a skeptical partner who is unsure about this style of parenting or even a grandparent and you want to see some real life examples of how you respond to children
without punishments in those really tough moments when they're not listening to you.
So I'm really excited for you to listen to this episode.
This is one of our earliest ones that we did and it's likely you haven't heard it yet, but if you did
It's always good to listen to this one again because it is so foundational.
So here we are.
Here's our episode on when is punishment okay.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn, hosted by my parents.
Jess and Scott.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
My question today for you, Jess, is, when is it okay to punish your kids?
It's a very loaded question.
I get that.
But I feel like it's a necessary question to ask.
Why don't you just start with like the biggest question that you can ask?
Always do.
My first response is just a gut response, which is I just want to be like never.
Like it's never okay to punish your kids
That's the response that just wants to come out of me.
Mm-hmm.
But I think within saying that, there's a lot to unpack.
And that's what I'm hoping we can do in this episode.
I just want you to give me a very black and white answer.
Yeah.
What's the right way
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I feel like that's what everybody always wants from me, right?
And then it's, well, what about in this scenario?
What about in this scenario?
And the word punish in itself
is defined so differently depending on who you talk to.
Yeah.
So I feel like we almost have to start there.
And that brings me back to my days in my master's degree where they'd give you a word discipline or punishment or consequences or whatever.
And the professors would always be like, okay, well define that.
So I think my answer really depends on your definition of punishment.
Okay.
I think maybe I'm wrong, but most people would probably say that punishment is when
you take something away from a child.
Or I think an extreme form of it is spanking.
Or another example is timeouts.
Like those are punishments as I see them.
So taking stuff away, spanking, timeouts, that kind of thing.
Alright, well let's unpack them.
Because I think even within all three of those, there's a lot that we can talk about.
Okay.
Let's talk about spanking.
I know I'm not black and white on a lot of things.
Spanking is one of the only things that I will say, just don't do it.
I don't really have a great answer there.
And I know a lot of people will be like, Well, I was spanked growing up and I turned out fine.
And I'd say, Okay
And still, even if you turned out fine and your parents spanked you occasionally, still was not the most effective way to change your behavior.
And
one of the reasons I say that.
So taking out even the emotional side of spanking, what that does to a child, we can talk about that too.
But if we just talk about spanking as a
way to change behavior, which is typically why it's done, right?
Typically a parent spanks because they're like, I don't want my child to keep being rude, or I don't want my child to continue to hit their sister.
So if we're looking at spanking purely as a way to change behavior, it still misses the mark because of a few reasons.
First, we're not getting curious about
the underlying reason why that behavior is happening.
So for example, spanking a child for hitting, we're not getting curious, well why are they hitting?
Is it are they sensory overloaded?
Do they not know how to have a soft hand?
Are they seeking connection?
So we're not getting curious.
And we're also modeling to them the thing we don't want them to do.
And if we look at anything related to child development and how kids learn, we know that they learn through what they see
So for us as parents to be like, I'm gonna hit them so that they stop hitting, it's just not logical.
And also it teaches a child when someone's doing something that I don't like, I hit them.
I actually had that example come in recently from a friend who knows someone who spanks their kid and she was over at their house and the kid started spanking her kid because her kid took the child's toy and then the little girl.
started spanking my friend's son, saying, That's bad, you not take my toy, like hitting him on the bum.
And it was literally it was like the textbook example of why we don't spank.
Because now
someone else has done something that she doesn't like and she's actually just hitting it.
Right, and maybe that child got spanked for doing the same thing.
Exactly.
Right.
So if we even just take out the emotional side and you want to only purely look at it from a behavior change standpoint, it still doesn't make sense.
And what parents will then sometimes say to me, I just I'm jumping to the skepticism before you even get there.
What parents will even say to me is like, but it did Jess
Like I never did that again, right?
So they'll be like, I was spanked for hitting and I never hit my brother again because I always remember my dad spanking me and saying you can't hit
Like, okay, tell me what else about your behavior as a child.
And almost always I will hear from those parents, oh yeah, like I I was pretty aggressive or I was really rude.
Yeah, I was just a difficult kid
So it's like maybe you never hit again, but because we never got curious about the underlying need that was not being met or the underlying reason why you hit, it just came out in a different behavior.
So you learn to stop the hitting, but now you're kicking or now you're biting, now you're being rude or aggressive.
And almost always I see that pattern.
So even if it does appear on the surface level to have changed that one specific behavior
We just see the same need popping out in other behaviors.
Yeah, and I think like I might be the perfect example of that.
I was spanked and I was an incredibly aggressive child.
It didn't stop me from getting into fights at school.
It didn't stop me from constantly talking back to teachers.
Like I was incredibly difficult, if you want to use that term, difficult and aggressive.
So
It's not as though that fixed any of the problems.
It just sort of fixed the behavior in the moment, maybe.
Yeah, and I think parents do use spanking because it feels like I'm doing something.
Like I remember you telling me once about a colleague of yours who had spanked his child and it was like he was just like, I don't know what else to do.
Like my kid can't do this behavior.
It's not right
Yeah.
And I think a lot of parents spank because they were taught that that's how you respond to behavior, they're afraid of their child's behavior.
So whether it's like, ah, I don't want my child to grow up and hurt people still, or
I don't want to be seen as a parent of a aggressive child.
Like I have to stop this.
There's like a fear that motivates spanking, I think a lot of the time.
So it's more the behavior is essentially a trigger for the parent.
Yeah
For like whatever emotion they're feeling, maybe they're feeling anxious because other parents are seeing the way their child is acting and they think it's a reflection of themselves.
I think that's that's one fear.
I think the one fear is like my child's gonna be out in public and they're aggressive
Yeah.
And they're gonna hurt other kids.
And what are parents gonna think about me as their parent to have a an aggressive kid like this?
And need to stop it in the home.
And if I spank, it feels like
I have momentum and I'm doing something to stop it, right?
Or I think on the flip side it is a trigger for the parent
like a deeper trigger of like, oh well if I spoke to my parent that way, they would have spanked me and they would never let me get away with talking to them or having a tantrum like this.
They need to learn respect.
They need to respect me.
Okay.
So I think there's a couple of different things going on there.
So
We talked about three different types of punishments at the beginning.
Yes.
I understand spanking for you is off the table.
That should never be
the thing that parents do and there's alternatives that are better.
Yeah.
Can I make one last comment on spanking before we move forward?
Because I will hear from parents being like and we only talked about the behavior change piece.
Like we didn't even talk about the emotional side of it, right?
And I think you're a good example of you were spanked as a child and you learned
to fear your parents' response.
So I think it's also really important to bring that side of spanking up too.
So not only is it not effective in the long term to change behavior, like you might see one behavior stop, but you're going to see the rest pop up
And that becomes what I call the punishment cycle.
So now I've punished hitting and it stops, but now I have to punish kicking.
And then I that stops and now I'm punishing biting, right?
I call that with parents a punishment cycle where you just all you're doing is putting punishments on and you
you get stuck.
And it's using fear or pain to get your child to stop doing something.
And what we know and what we've talked about on the show before is like the most important thing for a child is to feel close in their relationship with their parent
You want that attachment, that emotional bond with them.
Yeah, you want that emotional bond.
And some children and I know this sounds sad
But some children will act out to get a spanking because it gives them connection with their parent.
Yeah, I mentioned this on another episode where I'm I've been reading Scattered Minds by Dr.
Gabor Mate and he talks about that.
It may not be logical
He's talking specifically about children with ADD.
But children, one way or another, are wired to desire a deep connection with their parents and
Whether it makes sense or not, they're going to be searching for both good, and if they can't find good attention, they're gonna try and find quote unquote bad attention.
So they're gonna look for something that will still get them attention
Even if it's spanking or yelling or whatever.
Yeah, I I've seen it a lot in families when they come to me saying that they are spanking their kids, which I've
hurt a lot as a therapist.
And as we unpack it and we're like, well what need is this hitting meeting?
Like why is your child still hitting or still biting or still kicking?
And we realize at that time when the parent will like take the child up to the bedroom and they'll explain why the behavior was wrong and then they'll spank them.
which is like one form of how spanking often happens, actually all of that preamble gets that child's need for connection somewhat met.
It's not in the way the child was
ideally like to have it met.
But now the child knows I can't get my parents' attention because they're busy or they're with my siblings or other things are happening.
If I hit, it's a sure fire away.
I'm gonna get spanked
So I'm gonna get my need for attention met, even though it's in this way.
So I think it is important to bring that up too, because sometimes our punishments are actually fueling the behavior to keep happening.
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Like that's what humans are wired to do.
So it makes sense that children who their brains are not fully developed are going to search it out, kind of regardless of the positive or negative attention they're receiving.
Yeah, and then if if we think long term, what that does to a child, that teaches a child that when I need attention from someone, I can engage in challenging behavior to get that need at
For attention met.
And we've talked about this before, but the relationship a child has with their parent is their blueprint for all the relationships throughout their life.
So it teaches them when I'm in a relationship down the road, if they hurt me, that's just part of it.
You know, that's that's what
a relationship looks like.
So we're also teaching children from an early age, if we're spanking them or using other kind of fear-based punishment like that, that that's what they can expect.
in relationships down the road.
So we need to be mindful as parents of what do we want our child to tolerate in a future relationship or friendship because the way we discipline them is going to impact that.
This is what we talked about in one of our other episodes where not everything is black and white.
I think it's possible for people to take take you saying, well, you should never spank or give timeouts or whatever, any sort of punishment, and go in the complete opposite direction.
And still basically allow their kids to do whatever they please.
And it's basically a free-for-all at that point.
Right
Not to interrupt you, but this reminds me, I'm like having a flashback literally to when our daughter was two and we s had this conversation and I feel like you were the parent who's like, I just I can't get it, Jess
So you're telling me I can't punish, I can't spank, and you're fine with that.
Yeah.
But you're like, I can't do any punishments.
And somehow I'm supposed to not raise a child that's like bratty and feels entitled and feels like they run the ship.
Like
Yeah, and I remember you and I having some pretty like intense discussions about that.
And so I'm glad you brought it up because I'm sure a lot of people are thinking the same thing.
And that's where I said I want you to define punishment
Because punishment and having a consequence or a boundary, I think, can be two different things.
And in effective
discipline, like authoritative parenting, which has a ton of research behind it.
We want to be incredibly high on warmth.
That's your unconditional love.
That's the relationship.
But children also need a leader
And they need boundaries and they need to understand cause and effect.
And that's our role as a parent.
One thing I've found quite interesting in Scattered Minds, and I think he may have taken this from Dr.
Gordon Neufeld as well
Like I think they're good friends.
What I find interesting about his approach and the way he talks about it is your child should never feel as though anything they do.
Can either gain or lose your love.
So punishments are, like I'm sort of speaking for you now a little bit.
Please
Punishments are one of those ways that kids can often feel like they're losing that love from you and the only way to win it back is by doing the right thing and
That can be damaging towards that long term emotional bond that you have with them.
And again, it's not like you send them to timeout once and you're just like
Right.
Now you've ruined the relationship for life, but it's incredibly important for us to understand that the relationship we have with our child is the foundation for everything.
And a punishment.
So we talked about spanking, but we should probably talk about timeouts because I think that's even more controversial.
Why is it controversial?
I think what's happened is most people I still get a lot of people that push back on spanking, but most people are like, okay, I can understand that.
We probably shouldn't hit our kids.
Yeah.
But timeouts, so it's like, okay, so then let's do timeouts instead.
And there is some research that shows
that timeouts can cause some behavior change, right?
So I mean it's similar to spanking.
So yes, I can maybe shift
a behavior through sending my child to timeout.
That's the way you're saying it's similar.
Like it's a behavior change tool.
Yeah, it's a behavior change tool.
Okay.
So if I'm only measuring
Can I change behavior and I'm collecting data exclusively on behavior, we might see some behavior change using timeouts.
So I'm hesitant to ever say are timeouts effective or ineffective?
I'm hesitant to ever say they're completely ineffective and we can't use them.
Yeah.
Because
Then someone will tell me, well just there's research saying timeouts are effective.
And I'll say, you're right, on behavior change.
If we're specifically targeting a
specific behavior and you use timeouts in a very specific way, sometimes we can see change in that behavior.
And it's similar to spanking, where if you look at the big picture
And we are not meeting that underlying need or reason why that behavior's happening.
We'll just see other behaviors pop up.
Right.
And my challenge, I guess, for myself
in viewing timeouts.
I know some psychologists still say, go ahead and use them.
For me and the research I've done and the work that I do and the lens that I see kids
I don't suggest timeouts to the families I support.
And that's because it takes away from the relationship
I think.
Like you're you're sending a child in a traditional timeout, go sit on the naughty corner or go sit on the stool by yourself, reflect on what you've done.
And A, I don't think a child, a young toddler especially, toddlers get a lot of timeouts
They don't have the capability to sit and reflect on what they've done.
Like first off, just their brains can't do that.
Yeah.
Maybe connect the words like, oh yeah, I did a bad thing, but not really truly internalize that.
Yeah, so if our goal is to send a kid to their room to deeply reflect on why hitting their brother was bad, it's not gonna happen because a child's brain is not developed enough to sit and reflect and think that way without their parent helping them
So first off, it's just not a developmentally appropriate thing to ask your children to do.
You're saying it's not a developmentally appropriate thing to do.
But to me that means you're saying at some point
It actually is a developmentally appropriate thing to do.
I'm saying at some point a child will be able to reflect on their actions, but I would caveat by saying they still shouldn't have to do that by themselves.
Okay.
So what you're saying is not developmentally appropriate is the expectation that a child, a toddler, preschooler, even small school-aged child, will be able to understand why
the parents is telling them not to do something, not to do a cer certain behavior or why their behavior has a negative effect on others.
Yeah.
And parents will say, well they can because they told me, yeah, I know it was wrong to hit my brother
But what they're they're just mirroring your language back to you.
They know that that satisfies you and then you all move on.
But what they can't do is really truly think to themselves
Hmm, I wonder when I hit my brother, how did that make him feel in his mind?
And how did I feel in my body?
Like they can't do that deeper work.
They're not doing it.
But what they do know is my parent has sent me away from them
That is the worst thing that can happen to me because now I'm separated from my parent and I think that they might be mad at me.
Right.
So then what happens is because closeness is the child's core need, a frantic energy starts to emerge in a child.
because they want to stay close to their caregiver at all costs.
So now we might actually see a child who's even more dysregulated.
Especially if the timeout involves ignoring or sending alone to the room.
You might see a child that's even more dysregulated because now they're worried that there's some sort of rupture in the relationship with their parent.
And what that often will look like is more challenging behavior
Because a child again can't reflect on themselves enough to be like, Daddy, like I'm really sad that you sent me to my room, but like they don't have that ability.
So
That's the tricky part, I think, about timeouts.
Why do you think that is?
Like do you think that's because as adults we forget
what it's like to be a child like because our brains have now developed to what is considered a fully developed brain.
Yeah.
And I mean it's constantly changing and growing and your brain is essentially a muscle that you can grow and
flex.
Is it just that as adults we forget that children don't have that fully developed brain and it's hard for us to comprehend what it's like
to not be able to think deeply about the way we've done things and how it affects others and we just don't have that ability to think like a child.
I think that's one thing that we've lost.
A lot of us were punished as kids.
So maybe you kind of forget what that feels like because so many of us were punished by parents who were trying their best.
I think a lot of us maybe
turned off the need to depend on a caregiver at an early age.
Like like I don't know, I I can't speak for you, but I'm just gonna do it.
Oh, I definitely lost
Because you're getting in trouble for everything.
Like don't need me so much, basically, right?
That and then
Like I had to cook my own meals and everything or cook meals for the family 'cause otherwise we wouldn't have a meal.
I mean, for you growing up in like a complex trauma situation.
Yeah.
maybe is like the one extreme end of the spectrum.
But for a lot of people that just grew up with punishments like timeouts and spanking and threats, what you learn is like it is too vulnerable to care
for my caregiver in this way.
It's too vulnerable to seek being dependent on my caregiver because they're consistently shutting me down.
So I'm just gonna turn off put my defenses up so high that I turn off that instinct to be close to my caregiver.
That's why we see a lot of ruptured relationships between grown adults and their parents now.
Right.
Because we still have those defenses up because I don't want to be hurt the way I was hurt when I was a child.
And now you're seeing your own child, and if you're not aware of those messages, like that you have your defenses up so high like that, you're gonna just think, okay, well this is what my parents did and this is how I respond to behavior, and you might not be even thinking that deeply
deeply about it or you might not know.
Like I I truly think a lot of the parents that use timeouts because people will say, oh, there's evidence behind it and a lot of very popular parenting programs still teach timeouts.
But I think because of that
we don't understand how children's brains work.
And I think a lot of people, even psychologists, even therapists, don't understand a child's need for
dependence on their adults and how timeouts or spanking can break that need for dependence.
And I think that's a big struggle.
Yeah, that's quite interesting.
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There was a third
Taking something away from your child.
So we don't let our kids use like an iPad or anything except for homework.
But let's say that might be a common thing.
Say, I'm gonna take your iPad away and then
Some parents don't, but let's say that you do take that away, or you take a toy away from a child because they're hitting their sibling with it.
And I know those are two kind of different situations I already know.
I feel like you could answer this question for me.
I probably could, but I'll let the expert do it because I'm not the expert.
So I would look at taking things away in two different lights.
First, I would look at is there a cause and effect?
So for example, a child's being rude at breakfast.
And the parent says, because you're being rude at breakfast, you may not have TV time tonight.
It's way too long after.
Like the child, by the time it's TV time after school, like later in the day, the child has completely forgotten what happened at breakfast
They're not making a connection in their brain between cause and effect.
Okay.
But just to give another example that's closer than let's imagine Saturday morning we're having breakfast.
us two on the girls and then one of them is very rude to you and says rude things and then you say you can't watch TV after breakfast because sometimes in the mornings they'll watch TV.
So that's
directly after the event that is occurring, like the breakfast, they're rude, no TV.
Right then and there.
Yeah.
So why is that not okay then?
I mean I'd say if you have to do it, that would be better.
But it still wouldn't be my go to response.
But I'd say that would be a lot better because it's immediately following the behavior.
So it's like a little bit of a little bit more.
So how is that a natural or logical consequence to them being rude?
It's not.
So that's why I that would not be my first suggestion if the child's being rude.
If the child's being rude, that to me would be a sign of something's going on for the child.
I would like to understand why.
I would set a very firm boundary.
I won't let you talk to me like that
in our home, we value talking to each other with respect.
And then I would say, maybe even, hey, let's go walk outside for a minute and let's talk about what's going on.
Because when you're talking to me like this, that doesn't represent who you are.
Like this is not how we talk to each other here.
And then I might even take one of our kids and just walk, get movement.
I think movement is so underrated.
Walk around the yard one time or walk around the block one time.
and just say, what's going on?
Like I'm noticing this morning's really hard.
And what I would probably find out is that they had a bad sleep that night, they hadn't had breakfast yet.
Their sisters were taking their toys all morning.
Like I'd probably get to the root of it.
And then I would try and collaborate with them and be like, okay, so next time you're feeling that way and you notice that feeling in your body where you want to be mean or rude, what can we do different?
Mm-hmm.
And that response is going to lead to a behavior change.
Taking away TV time and being like, you're rude, so you don't get TV time, that's not going to lead you to the behavior change that you want to see.
That's a band aid again.
Okay.
Well, 'cause the way you were kind of saying it, I first understood that you said it's not the best thing, but you can still do this.
What you are saying is it is better not to do that and actually have more of a time of connection with your child.
Exactly.
Yes.
Okay.
I think the time of connection with your child is always going to be your best bet.
Mm-hmm.
It doesn't have to be long.
I think parents are like, well, how am I going to do that?
I have three kids.
You know, get them to say, hey, like I'm noticing you're having a really hard time right now.
I would like you to help me clean up the kitchen because you're having breakfast, right?
And as you're cleaning up the kitchen together,
Ask them.
Talk to them about it.
I mean I I can see that, but also in in another sense, like our four year old, is she gonna agree to helping you clean up the kitchen?
She might even be more angry or upset and Yeah, I'm picturing that too.
That's a younger kid, right?
So we're t now we've moved from school age child to
Four year old.
Okay.
I the whole time I was thinking of the four year old in the in this.
Oh, okay.
Because she probably uh she's not usually that rude to us, but may I can force it.
Yeah.
Maybe that's the problem.
We were not talking about the same child.
Yeah.
Yeah, with their oldest one, yes, I could see that working.
But then with a four year old, what to do then?
So still, again, like you wanna always be asking yourself, what's my goal of discipline?
Is my goal to just shut down this behavior in the moment, or is my goal to teach them a new skill so that we don't keep having the same behavior over and over?
Right.
So I can foresee parents saying, yeah, I want to shut down this behavior in the moment.
So why is that wrong?
Why why shouldn't a parent shut down the behavior in the moment?
I guess two things are true.
Like you can want to shut down the behavior in the moment, but if you are constantly using in the moment strategies
It's a band-aid.
Like you're not gonna actually see change.
Okay.
So I guess you have to ask yourself, do I wanna continuously do in the moment strategies?
You don't have TV time, you can't have your toy, we're not going here or there
You don't get to go to your friend's house.
Like, do you constantly want to be doing that or do you want to have a plan that actually lets you make a change in the long term?
So what are you saying the goal
I guess kind of should be for parents then with their kids.
What is the goal?
If it's not to help them change their behavior and
kind of mold them into, I don't know what the right way to describe it is like the model child, then what is the goal?
I think the goal is to help them with their behavior, but we're just coming at it from two different lenses.
Right.
So I Is that though?
I would sort of disagree with that the goal is to model B.
It's one goal, maybe.
Like if you're actually talking truly long-term goal, then the long-term goal is for them to be
In my opinion, successful and not necessarily successful like monetarily, but successful in relationships with others and successful in that they are pretty good in their mental health
later in life and I feel like we're still too short term too narrow minded if we're just talking about yeah our goal is to talk about behavior and model their behavior.
Yes, sort of, but that's sort of a byproduct of them having
It's a beginning point to the greater goal, which is every parent wants to set their children up for a success later in life.
Yeah.
And that's what we all want
And is that done through just punishing every behavior that comes up or is that done through relationship?
And I think that's what we're we're really talking about here, right?
Is that the relationship, that foundation that you're setting with your child while you're teaching them new skills?
So to go back to your point before, I know we're kind of all over the place here, which is like, well, if we're not punishing them, what are we doing?
Just letting them get away with everything.
And the answer to that would be no.
Like our children desperately need us to help them, to coach them, to guide them, to show them what behavior will serve them and what won't
serve them.
But how we do that is not through threatening them or just taking away things like T V time that don't make sense related to the behavior or sending them to timeout every time they do something we don't like.
Like they actually need us to show them the way and show them what to do.
I think what I have learned over the past bunch of years now, especially since we've started working together more, but even with our first daughter, I think what I've learned is that you replace punishment with
Modeling and by doing so, they actually learn skills way more quickly than they would if you were just punishing them
So the other way can work and yeah, you could be fine later in life and maybe even have a decent relationship with your parents later in life.
But it almost seems as though it's like reading books.
If you read books regularly and you're trying to learn and even small changes every day, they compound over your lifetime.
I see that in a similar way for modeling for your children.
They're actually learning something and they have the ability to see what you're doing and learn from you versus they're kind of learning, I guess, if you're punishing them, but it's not nearly as logical
for them.
So it would be likely more difficult for them to understand the logic behind I did this thing wrong and now This is happening.
This has happened.
It's unrelated to behavior.
Yeah, and I know we kind of had a debate earlier this week about punishment and I said, well, to play devil's advocate, to me, I can see how people see the logic in punishing.
Because I mean, up until and I would say somewhat recently, because her oldest daughter, it's not like she's twenty years old.
She's only seven.
So for the past seven years I've been learning about this and
I have a better understanding of it, but I can see the logic behind wanting to punish, because you could argue it's similar to a child touching a hot stove and burning their hand and they pull away and they learned a lesson, like I got really hurt by doing that.
The difference is talking to other people and let's say getting into an argument with a friend or hitting your sibling and then getting a spanking, it's not like you're emotionally touching a hot stove
It's not the same cause and effect.
They're not equal in terms of, well, one is a natural consequence and we're gonna actually give a consequence to our child hitting their sibling, and it's gonna be painful, just like if they were to touch a stove
But it's not nowhere near the same in terms of how they're related.
Yeah, as people will say, well in the real world there's punishments.
And it it's like, okay, sure.
In the real world there's punishments and things don't always go well
But they usually make sense based on the behavior, right?
Like so if you speed, you might get a speeding ticket.
That's like a real world consequence
And what we're saying, what I'm saying, is even for our children, there are consequences to their actions.
But what we're not gonna do is add in a punishment that does not reflect the behavior.
So for example
your child is hitting another child with a toy.
It doesn't make sense to be like you have to go sit in your room by yourself for 15 minutes and reflect on what you just did.
They can't do that.
It doesn't make sense to hit them because they've hit a child with a toy.
Because now we're teaching them it's okay to hit once uh like don't hit, but also I'm gonna hit you.
That doesn't make any sense to a child, it's just gonna confuse them more
What does make sense is to come in as their leader, take the toy from them.
I can see that having this toy is too much for you right now.
Yeah, and they might be upset with that.
And they're they're upset and that's fine.
They can be upset with you.
That's their job.
Your job is to come in as a leader.
You're not gonna let your kid keep hitting another child with that stick or that toy, whatever it is.
I'm gonna take the toy, I can see it's too much for you.
And then your child freaks out, they have a meltdown, they're laying on the floor and they're they're hitting and kicking
That's okay.
That's their job.
Their job is to have their emotions flood their brain.
Your job is to keep them safe.
You're hitting and you're kicking out of it.
And keep the other kids safe.
And keep the other kids safe.
I would even put my body between the two kids and be like, I will not let you hurt this child.
I know you don't want to hurt.
You're just having a hard time right now.
And then as a parent, your job is to be curious.
Why is my child hitting with a stick?
For us, for our daughter who does the majority of the hitting in the house, usually it's because she's tired, she's super overstimulated, she needs a break, or she's hungry
So then let's say I'm just going to keep walking through this scenario as a parent.
I'm like, oh, you are having a really hard time.
You can't control your body.
That's why you're hitting with the stick.
I'm going to keep holding this stick or this toy because it's too much for you right now
I'm gonna put my body between you and this other kid because I'm not gonna let you hit them because I know that you're loving and you're kind and you don't wanna hurt somebody else.
I know that about you, but right now you can't control your body.
I'm gonna step in and help you do that by being your logical brain.
And then I'm getting curious.
And nine times out of ten for our daughter, she's overstimulated.
There's too much going on
So instead of this is where the timeouts come in, instead of sending her alone to a timeout where she doesn't have the capability of regulating her own emotions
I'm gonna go with her somewhere to an empty room in the house or I'll sit in the bottom of the stairs while the other kids still play and I'm just gonna sit with her and just give her a break.
Together.
And now we have time together and she can take my calm and together we can regulate our emotions in this situation, bring her back to a place of calm.
Maybe we go get a snack and reset.
in this situation, because I'm taking her out, I'm lending her my calm, we're getting curious about what's going on.
Long term, twenty years from now, I hope that if our sensitive daughter has a time when she's feeling overwhelmed or she's feeling overstimulated,
She'll know to do that about herself.
She'll be like, whoa, I'm having a lot of big feelings in my body.
I really want to yell at my coworker.
That's not a good idea.
So I'm gonna go walk outside for a minute.
I'm gonna take a break.
Maybe I'll call my mom
I can only hope and dream.
Maybe I'll call my mom or I'll call someone, I'll talk to them about how I feel, I'll get a little snack, and then I'll feel ready to come back in.
Honestly, and I know you're talking about our four-year-old.
Yeah.
I already see that happening.
Yeah.
She's already doing She's not perfect because she's four, and neither is our oldest daughter, who's seven.
But I already see that she
is doing a better job and probably a much better job than I was at that same age.
Then you were at seventeen.
Yeah, probably when yeah, exactly.
Probably when I was seventeen.
So literally.
And just so you all know, two years ago when we had our daughter
our our third baby and our middle child was two, she was struggling so much with hitting.
Yeah.
With being dysregulated.
We had meltdown after meltdown after meltdown.
And it felt
Some days like punishing was the answer.
Yeah.
Some days Scott and I like we didn't punish her, but like we had in our heads like, oh my goodness, we can see why parents do it because holy crap.
We are so overstimulated.
We have a baby, we have an older kid, and our toddler is just constantly hitting and there's constantly meltdowns.
But we had this long-term game in our heads and we knew.
If we continue to do this, and it took time.
It wasn't like we just one time, like even the hitting.
A lot of kids don't even know how to touch a baby.
She needed to learn how to touch a baby.
Oh, I mean we see that with our two-year-old.
Now we're in that stage again.
Now that's the case.
She is she loves the cat, but she cannot be soft with that cat.
So the amount of times I had to teach our middle child to use soft hands with the baby, it wasn't one time.
It wasn't two times.
It was like
So hundreds of times.
But then all of a sudden she got it and she learned how to be gentle.
The amount of times I had to set a boundary and stand in front of her and be like, I will not let you hit your sister.
It is not safe.
Like I said that so many times and then one day I heard the two girls, the two older girls, they were in the bedroom and they were both screaming and I'm like, oh my goodness, here we go.
I walk over to the bedroom
and our middle child has her hand up in the air and my other child's like underneath her like that and my middle child's like, Mom, I want to hit her and then my oldest child our oldest child's like, she wants to hit me, Mom
But she didn't.
She stopped herself.
And that was like such a huge day for us.
It was such a huge win because after modeling and modeling and practicing soft hands over and over and over, she finally
was able to control that impulse.
And those are the little wins that we're looking for.
And now two years later, we don't have those issues anymore.
She's not as impulsive.
She's already learns to like take a break herself and also go with her a lot of the time, but sometimes she can regulate on her own.
She's pretty good at that now.
And that's two years in, but it is effective.
We see it with our older child, it's effective.
And I mean this we're not just basing this on our own kids, it's based on literally decades of research, but
I just want to give parents hope that there is another way to change behavior.
Yeah, and if that's based on our long term goals for the development of our kids too.
Which again I would say I was definitely more on the punishment side of things when we f had our first child.
Yeah.
Not that you punished her, but when No, I was more like, shouldn't we be punishing her
Yeah.
When she started having tantrum, Scott was like, uh, what are we supposed to do?
Like aren't these bad aren't these bad?
Let's nip this in the bud.
Let's get this let's stop this behavior.
Yeah.
And I was like, okay, let's slow down and let's talk about child development.
And I feel like when I explained brain science to you and when I explained that she literally didn't have the ability to regulate her own emotions.
You were like telling everybody and their mother.
Yeah.
You were like, everyone needs to know this information about soldiers.
Why isn't it out there?
And that was a big reason also that I wanted to start sharing about this online.
Because
You were like my whole life I just believed that kids were bad.
I know.
I feel like I have that quite frequently.
There's something I learned and then even last night I had
trouble sleeping because I learned something that I had never known about women's washrooms before and it was bothering me that I did not know this because I have three daughters and I should know these things to help teach them.
But
We learn something new all the time.
And this stuff with Tandra.
It's his highly sensitive nature, his sense of justice.
He's like, I have to tell everybody.
Which I love that about you.
And I love that about our sensitive daughter too.
Okay.
If you could summarize, so my f original question was when is it acceptable to punish?
And then we defined punishment
Sort of.
So could you summarize just at the very end here?
When is it okay to punish and what does punishment mean?
And leave the listener with something.
Okay, let's talk about punishment.
We used punishment in this episode and we described spanking, we described timeouts, and we described taking things away.
And I would say if that's your punishment, I would avoid doing those things
I don't think that they are necessary to develop a child and help a child develop new skills and learn how to behave in ways that are
going to help them long term.
And I think the research on child development and attachment would back that up.
If you're looking purely at behavioral research, you might
see that there's some behavior change and I just want to be upfront about that.
But you have to look at what your goal is.
Is your goal to strictly change behavior or is your goal to, as Scott was saying
raise children who are well adapted, successful, have a good relationship with you.
Yeah, successful in relationships.
Successful in relationships.
So that that's what you want to look at.
But I always like to be upfront about the research because I also don't want to have a hundred emails of people sending me emails about timeouts.
That's how we are defining punishment here.
Again, people define punishment differently depending on their field.
So always ask that question.
Always ask someone the question if they're saying no punishments or whatever.
How are you defining that
What I will say is, yes, sometimes our children need boundaries, or they do need boundaries.
So boundaries and consequences you're saying are okay as long as they're
Yeah, I know we're running out of time here, but let me quickly define the consequences I'm talking about.
I think that's really important.
I would refer to two different kinds of consequences that I think can be helpful for children
I don't like using the word consequences, but I will in this context because I think they can easily be take out of context.
Like if you hear Jess say
me.
Oh, sometimes it's okay to use consequences.
I don't want that to mean, okay, sweet.
So I'm just gonna start taking things away and and handing out the occasional spanking, doing this and that.
So let me define what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about natural consequences.
So this is something that happens without a parent interfering.
For example, our four-year-old, let's say, this has happened recently, does not want to wear a coat outside.
She refuses to wear a coat and it's winter and it's cold.
Yeah.
We live in Canada.
It can get pretty cold here sometimes.
And sometimes her counter will, which we'll do a whole other episode on that, is so high that she's like, no, I refuse to wear a coat
Okay, so we go outside.
Maybe I put the coat in my bag, so she doesn't have it with her, and we go for a walk and she gets freezing cold.
And I know the walk to daycare is three minutes long and she doesn't have a coat on.
When we get there, I'll leave the coat at daycare.
But now she is freezing this entire walk.
That would be a natural consequence.
I've not done a thing to impact this consequence from happening.
And if she wanted her coat, you would give it to me.
And if she wanted her coat, I would give it to her, of course.
But she's learning, oh, when I refuse to wear a coat outside, I get freezing cold.
And that cause and effect in her mind makes sense, right?
She learns if I don't wear a coat, I get cold.
Versus I take away something, a privilege or something like that.
That's a natural consequence.
Or I I go outside without a jacket and I get wet.
Or I don't eat what's for dinner and now I'm hungry
Like those are things parent doesn't have to do anything and it just helps a child learn, obviously within very safe context here.
I mean with the idea uh we don't want anyone to take that out of context either.
Yeah, that's why I'm so mindful of my language here.
If you're saying you let your child not have dinner and they're hungry, we will still feed them.
Yeah, we'll still feed them.
But they're learning.
What I would do in that situation, like let's say I serve my kids potatoes and something else and they're
I don't like potatoes.
They refuse to eat dinner.
And we're like, this is what's for dinner.
And then a little while later they're hungry.
I'll be like, okay, so let's talk about that.
You notice how when you didn't have dinner earlier, it made your body feel really hungry
Yeah.
And that's when we were having dinner as a family, and now your body's hungry.
So I will really narrate out these things to the kids to help them identify cause and effect.
But I'm not gonna be like, now I've refused to give you food for the rest of the night.
That's not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about allowing them to experience how it feels, the natural result of their behavior.
We'll narrate it out, but we'll always meet their basic needs.
Yeah.
Always.
Okay.
So that's natural.
Logical consequences are different.
Logical consequences are something apparent maybe adds in.
These I'm a little more hesitant to use, but sometimes they can be helpful.
A logical consequence, this is
based on a psychologist named Jane Nelson, and she actually wrote this in like 1987 or something like that.
So she was like way ahead of her time.
And she basically said, if you ever want to add in a consequence for a child, it should always be related to the behavior.
It should always be reasonable.
It should always be right on time.
So basically right away.
And it should always be respectful.
And so I'll give you one example of that.
Is your child intentionally, let's say, spills her milk all over the floor.
So we're not just gonna say, okay, whatever, I'll just clean it up myself.
Like we want our children to learn, if you spill milk, you're gonna clean it up with us.
So
What would be respectful would be to say, hey, you spilt your milk all over the floor and in our home we really value keeping the house clean.
Reasonable would be like I will help you clean up the milk.
Because for like let's say a little toddler they can't do it on their own.
That would not be reasonable.
And then right on time we're gonna right away we're gonna clean up the milk together.
Sometimes they need to have a meltdown first and that's okay.
They can have their tears first and then we'll clean it up and then relate it.
So of course if you're cleaning up a milk, it's related to clean it up.
That's the kind of consequence that also makes sense, but you need to have those things in place.
And if you're thinking too hard
Sometimes I say this to parents who follow me.
I'll talk about this on Nurture First and they'll be like, oh, but I just can't think of a logical consequence.
I'll be like, if you're thinking too hard, just let it go.
Then maybe there isn't one.
And that's fine.
Does that summarize things for you?
Yeah, I think that's pretty good.
I feel like this was a crash course on discipline and consequences.
Yeah, it seemed like it Yeah.
I hope it's helpful.
I really do, 'cause I think having your skeptical perspective is really helpful on this because a lot of times all we just hear is like, oh, it's gonna damage children forever.
And that's not what we're trying to say.
We're trying to show you a way that's gonna be more effective and helpful for your child.
Yeah.
Now and when they're seventeen or when they're thirty, I guess.
The other thing is if your discipline is spanking in timeouts, it's gonna stop working as soon as your child gets a little bit bigger.
Yeah.
And you're gonna be left without a plan
So I definitely want parents to be using something that works when their kid is two all the way the whole time that they're in your house.
Right.
And the approach we're talking about
works the whole time.
Spanking, timeouts, taking things away works until your child's big enough to say, Nope, not gonna do it.
And that will happen.
Yeah.
Well thanks Scott.
No problem.
I'm just here for the questions.
You're just here for the questions.
Well thank you.
Thank you everyone for listening.
Yeah.
Thanks, friends.
Thanks for being a part of it.
Talk to you soon.
All right, friends.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you enjoyed listening to us talk about the nuance and how parenting is not black and white and how there's so much gray area and in between and how you don't have to do things perfectly to be a great parent
Would love to hear from you if you found this episode helpful and would also love if you could give a rating or review of the show.
That just means so much to us.
And I can't wait to talk to you again next week.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
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