3 ms·

> Punishments are absolutely necessary … No, this isn’t true at all. My teenager has never been punished once in his life, and he’s turning into an excellent h

> Punishments are absolutely necessary … No, this isn’t true at all. My teenager has never been punished once in his life, and he’s turning into an excellent human: hard-working, compassionate with self and others, honest. I would define punishment as “intentional infliction of suffering for purposes of behavior modification.” As stated, that’s flatly unethical, especially with your own family. Now, he experiences consequences of his actions all the time. Scratch the counter-top? Win an afternoon of helping me refinish it. That works because it’s directly connected to his actions, and because I treat it as a learning opportunity rather than yelling at him or banishing him. There are more possibilities than “punishment or permissiveness.” Kids need structure and to understand and experience age-appropriate consequences for their actions. But that doesn’t mean they need arbitrary suffering imposed by people they’re supposed to love.

honkdaddy 4y ago
As kindly as possible - if your anecdote about your teenager misbehaving is scratching the countertop, you may just have an unusually well behaved teenager. What would your response be if he drove drunk and crashed your car? Or if he you got in an argument and he took a swing at you? If those are outside the realm of possibility for you guys, that’s awesome, you probably have an awesome kid. But for most parents I know, their teenagers have seriously test their limits at least a few times and it seemed like a punitive approach worked well. Depending on the “crime”, grounding them at home or taking away their phone/car/screens for x amount of time is a perfectly reasonable punishment IMO. It certainly worked well enough on my four siblings and I when we did dumb crap as teenagers.
euclaise 4y ago
Punishment isn't typically defined that way though. That's a bit of a harsh definition In psychology it's often defined as any behavioral method used to decrease an undesired behavior - split into positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment is adding stimuli that they don't like (physical punishment is included here, but lecturing can be too), and negative punishment is removing things that they like. If a child asks rudely for ice cream and you don't give it to them because of the way they asked, that's a form of (negative) punishment. Your countertop example is too - from a behavioral perspective, that's just a form of (positive) punishment - you're making them do something they don't like in response to unwanted behavior. You might have an added rationale to connect things, but that's still what the behavioral effect is.

honkdaddy 4y ago

As kindly as possible - if your anecdote about your teenager misbehaving is scratching the countertop, you may just have an unusually well behaved teenager. What would your response be if he drove drunk and crashed your car? Or if he you got in an argument and he took a swing at you? If those are outside the realm of possibility for you guys, that’s awesome, you probably have an awesome kid. But for most parents I know, their teenagers have seriously test their limits at least a few times and it seemed like a punitive approach worked well. Depending on the “crime”, grounding them at home or taking away their phone/car/screens for x amount of time is a perfectly reasonable punishment IMO. It certainly worked well enough on my four siblings and I when we did dumb crap as teenagers.

euclaise 4y ago

Punishment isn't typically defined that way though. That's a bit of a harsh definition In psychology it's often defined as any behavioral method used to decrease an undesired behavior - split into positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment is adding stimuli that they don't like (physical punishment is included here, but lecturing can be too), and negative punishment is removing things that they like. If a child asks rudely for ice cream and you don't give it to them because of the way they asked, that's a form of (negative) punishment. Your countertop example is too - from a behavioral perspective, that's just a form of (positive) punishment - you're making them do something they don't like in response to unwanted behavior. You might have an added rationale to connect things, but that's still what the behavioral effect is.