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I don’t mean to oversimplify your point, so I’ll phrase this as a question: Should we punish children for bad behavior? How do we discipline without punishing?

I don’t mean to oversimplify your point, so I’ll phrase this as a question: Should we punish children for bad behavior? How do we discipline without punishing? How can we discipline our kids but avoid making them feel bad? I worry that the collapse of discipline, among other things, leads to a great number of young people about to enter the world with totally misaligned expectations about surviving and thriving as an adult.

McBeige 4y ago
What type of discipline do you mean? The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life? Or external discipline that makes you behave in a way (not necessarily a good way) out of fear of punishment? Which of these are desirable? Is it possible and efficient to instill the former using punishment?
- lapcat 4y ago
  > The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life? Also, self-discipline tends to follow age. If punishing little kids helped, then why do kids often become terrors in their teens and twenties, then eventually grow up, mature, and become more responsible? Of course some people never grow up, but many of them were smacked around as kids anyway.
hn_version_0023 4y ago
> I worry that the collapse of discipline, among other things, leads to a great number of young people about to enter the world with totally misaligned expectations about surviving and thriving as an adult. Is this not already the case? I’m not entirely sure how one might measure this, but boy does my gut tell me that its already happened.
jimkleiber 4y ago
Personally I don't want to punish but rather inform: if you do this, this might/will happen. It doesn't imply that they're a bad person for doing what they did, just speaks more to the cause and effect of actions. I think this may actually work better for kids. I think so often we praise/shame them, and they can get caught in a cycle of unpredictable self-worth. I dunno, for me, I like to let people know how I will most likely react to certain actions and tell them that even if I react that way, I will still love them. Punishing (with the intent to hurt them) often hurts me, so I'd rather not try to hurt them. That being said, I do want people to know if they punch me in the face, I may punch them back, leave the bar, or strongly distance myself from them physically. I just want people to be more aware of consequences rather than feel like they're a bad person for choosing their actions.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I teach my children primarily to fix things by righting the wrong. I fully realize that not all wrongs can be righted, but it is a valuable starting point. So many times I've had the pleasure of seeing my children come up with genuinely ingenious ways to right a wrong. In disputes where I'm playing referee between two of my children, I gravitate away from deciding who is right and who is wrong. Instead direct conversation around, what happened, what people need, and how we can satisfy those needs within the creative realm of reasonable possibility. As a baseline for issues that don't have a clear needs-based line to follow, I consider the systemic issues involved and re-engineer systems to incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior. Most often this takes the form of natural consequences. Finally, I don't have angelic children. The reason it works is because we've been doing it for years, not because my children are more compliant, or I'm some saint. We all get upset, angry, and do things we regret. What we are all invested in is having a shared desire to make things better than we found them. What I am skeptical of, however, are responses which attempt to frame children as willfully non-compliant. That says more about the person describing the behavior than the behavior itself.
t-3 4y ago
No matter how many times my dad beat me or my mom yelled, it didn't instill discipline, just resentment. What worked to give me discipline was getting a job and living on my own. Simple incentive is all that's necessary to ensure people show up and do work.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Nor would I expect it to. I certainly didn’t endorse all forms of discipline or abuse of discipline, sorry if that wasn’t clear.
kgwgk 4y ago
> How do we discipline without punishing? How can we discipline our kids but avoid making them feel bad? It's not clear what those questions mean. discipline verb disciplined; disciplining transitive verb 1 : to punish or penalize for the sake of enforcing obedience and perfecting moral character

McBeige 4y ago

What type of discipline do you mean? The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life? Or external discipline that makes you behave in a way (not necessarily a good way) out of fear of punishment? Which of these are desirable? Is it possible and efficient to instill the former using punishment?

lapcat 4y ago
> The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life? Also, self-discipline tends to follow age. If punishing little kids helped, then why do kids often become terrors in their teens and twenties, then eventually grow up, mature, and become more responsible? Of course some people never grow up, but many of them were smacked around as kids anyway.

hn_version_0023 4y ago

> I worry that the collapse of discipline, among other things, leads to a great number of young people about to enter the world with totally misaligned expectations about surviving and thriving as an adult. Is this not already the case? I’m not entirely sure how one might measure this, but boy does my gut tell me that its already happened.

jimkleiber 4y ago

Personally I don't want to punish but rather inform: if you do this, this might/will happen. It doesn't imply that they're a bad person for doing what they did, just speaks more to the cause and effect of actions. I think this may actually work better for kids. I think so often we praise/shame them, and they can get caught in a cycle of unpredictable self-worth. I dunno, for me, I like to let people know how I will most likely react to certain actions and tell them that even if I react that way, I will still love them. Punishing (with the intent to hurt them) often hurts me, so I'd rather not try to hurt them. That being said, I do want people to know if they punch me in the face, I may punch them back, leave the bar, or strongly distance myself from them physically. I just want people to be more aware of consequences rather than feel like they're a bad person for choosing their actions.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

I teach my children primarily to fix things by righting the wrong. I fully realize that not all wrongs can be righted, but it is a valuable starting point. So many times I've had the pleasure of seeing my children come up with genuinely ingenious ways to right a wrong. In disputes where I'm playing referee between two of my children, I gravitate away from deciding who is right and who is wrong. Instead direct conversation around, what happened, what people need, and how we can satisfy those needs within the creative realm of reasonable possibility. As a baseline for issues that don't have a clear needs-based line to follow, I consider the systemic issues involved and re-engineer systems to incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior. Most often this takes the form of natural consequences. Finally, I don't have angelic children. The reason it works is because we've been doing it for years, not because my children are more compliant, or I'm some saint. We all get upset, angry, and do things we regret. What we are all invested in is having a shared desire to make things better than we found them. What I am skeptical of, however, are responses which attempt to frame children as willfully non-compliant. That says more about the person describing the behavior than the behavior itself.

t-3 4y ago

No matter how many times my dad beat me or my mom yelled, it didn't instill discipline, just resentment. What worked to give me discipline was getting a job and living on my own. Simple incentive is all that's necessary to ensure people show up and do work.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Nor would I expect it to. I certainly didn’t endorse all forms of discipline or abuse of discipline, sorry if that wasn’t clear.

kgwgk 4y ago

> How do we discipline without punishing? How can we discipline our kids but avoid making them feel bad? It's not clear what those questions mean. discipline verb disciplined; disciplining transitive verb 1 : to punish or penalize for the sake of enforcing obedience and perfecting moral character