Roughly yes, I think of punishment as intentional infliction of suffering in order to modify behavior. If there’s no behavior modification goal then of course i

Roughly yes, I think of punishment as intentional infliction of suffering in order to modify behavior. If there’s no behavior modification goal then of course it’s just abuse. I agree with you that POV matters. Telling a young kid, “You can’t have dessert tonight since you’re puking” can easily be interpreted as punishment :D Some of the things you talk about sound like what I could call “natural consequences,” like cleaning the wall. I don’t think there’s an unambiguous bright line between punishment and consequences. I’ve spent years trying to stay on one side of it, but I don’t think I’ve done it perfectly. Going late to a birthday party because a kid is “being obnoxious” — I think we could view that several ways. Some parents would call backtalk or opposition or argument “being obnoxious,” and I think that’s entirely wrong — I want him to challenge me, and stick up for what he wants. If the kid makes a clumsy mistake before the birthday party, maybe he can clean it up when we get back (e.g., spilling Lego, but not milk). If the kid deliberately makes a mess before a birthday party, I might delay and ask them to clean it up first. It’s not always possible for me to understand intent, so if he claims something was an accident I’m very likely to act as if I believe him. There’s less harm in that, I believe, than in attributing malice to an accident. FWIW I try not to reward or praise him, either; those are both inappropriate uses of power. Those have fuzzy lines, too; “you’re so smart” is praise and I avoid it. “I admire how hard you worked” is talking about my own reaction to empirical facts, so I wouldn’t call it praise. Paying him $10 for each A on a report card is reward, and I avoid it. Watching a movie on Thursday nights if we get the house cleaned in time seems like natural consequences to me, and I wouldn’t call it a reward. My own parents provided me many excellent counter-examples and anti-patterns, so before I had a kid I knew I wanted to do it very differently but I didn’t know exactly how. Alfie Kohn’s book, “Unconditional Parenting” informed my thinking about this significantly.