If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
I'd like to expand a little on the issue of parents and children trying to negotiate mutually satisfactory solutions to problems. For truly fair negotiations to take place, three things must be true. First, both parties must be able to negotiate from positions of reasonable strength. Second, it must be accepted that there are some absolutes that are not part of the negotiation process. And third, the parties negotiating must not use extraneous issues to threaten each other. In regard to the first point, the nature of the parent-child relationship is such that the parents get to decide how much negotiating power their children will have. At one extreme, if parents say, "Do this or else," they give their children no negotiating power. At the other extreme, if parents refuse to put their foot down at all, they keep no real negotiating power for themselves. So the trick is for parents to find a place in between that gives their children enough negotiating power but not too much. In my view, the best types of negotiations are aimed at dealing with the issues the parents consider truly important while providing as much flexibility for the children as possible within that context. For example, suppose a little girl keeps running late because she can't decide what to wear to school and Mom, who is busy getting ready for work herself, keeps having to take time out of her own preparations to deal with the issue. The important thing for Mom is that the problem of running late be solved, not exactly how the problem is solved. Further, the solution doesn't necessarily have to be 100% foolproof. If Mom has to get involved and hurry her daughter up every now and then, it's probably not the end of the world. From that understanding of the problem, the mother and daughter could get together and try to find a way to solve the problem. It doesn't matter which of them proposes the solution that they ultimately decide together would work best. What matters is that the problem be solved. And if Mom has misgivings about her daughter's preferred solution, she might accept it on only a provisional basis, with the understanding that if it doesn't work, they'll have to change to something else. With a little luck that will give the daughter some extra incentive to make her preferred solution work. Regarding the second issue, it would be highly improper for a child who is caught shoplifting to be able to demand something from his or her parents in negotiations in exchange for not shoplifting anymore. When something is wrong, you don't do it, and you don't expect to get any special reward or compensation for not doing it. The lesson that some things in life are non-negotiable is a vital one for children to learn. On the other hand, if parents want to label something non-negotiable, they need to be able to defend why they view it in non-negotiable in ways that have as little as possible to do with "because I said so." And if they use reasons rooted in their religion, they would be wise to also provide the strongest reasons they can that are not rooted in their religion as additional reinforcement. If children understand why their parents hold a particular belief, and if the parents' behavior is consistent with what they say, children can respect their parents for standing up for what they believe is right even if the children disagree. (That is especially true when the parents and children have a strong relationship in general.) But if parents just say, "That's non-negotiable," without providing any real explanation, the risk of anger and resentment is vastly greater. Finally, if either side brings extraneous matters into a negotiation as a way of threatening the other, that upsets the balance in the negotiations. Such behavior is a way of trying to bully the other side into accepting a win-lose solution, and thus violates the spirit of trying to find a solution that both sides truly consider acceptable. That also means parents who are looking for win-win solutions need to try to avoid invoking their parental authority any more than they feel like they have to. Now, what does this have to do with the issue of punishment in general and of spanking in particular? If win-win solutions can be found within the context of these types of negotiations, it is often possible to avoid the need for threats and punishment entirely. That is especially true for children whose sense of honor is strong enough that just reminding them of what they agreed to is enough for them to comply with their part of an agreement. On the other hand, not all children will necessarily comply with an agreement just because they agreed to it. In those cases, the possibility of punishment may be needed as an enforcement provision in agreements, especially if a child wants to be allowed to push to the outermost limits of what the parents feel like they can accept. (For example, parents might feel safe allowing a child to stretch a 9:00 bedtime a great deal, but be unwilling to accept a 9:30 bedtime unless it will be enforced pretty strictly.) If all goes well, the child's knowledge that deliberately violating the agreement will result in the punishment coupled with parental understanding toward accidental violations could still make actual punishment unnecessary. But for the possibility of punishment to mean something, parents have to be willing to punish if a child pushes too far. Note that if a child has made an agreement and agreed to what the punishment will be if the agreement is violated, it is much harder for the child to resent being punished for violating the agreement as "unfair" and "arbitrary" than if the rule and punishment were imposed unilaterally by a parent, or especially if the child were punished without really understanding what the rule was (especially in practice) before the punishment took place. Those kinds of distinctions are extremely important in understanding how punishment affects children. Also, consider situations where negotiations fail, either because no common ground acceptable to both the parents and the child exists or because the common ground cannot be found in the amount of time available to look for it. If parents refuse to allow the child to proceed with a solution the parents view as unacceptable, the need for threats and punishment might still be averted if the child is willing to defer to the parents and live with a solution that the child does not really consider acceptable. But if the child refuses to defer to the parents' authority and judgment out of respect, the threat of punishment (and, if necessary, the actuality of punishment) are all the parents have left to prevent the child from doing something they cannot accept in good conscience. Punishment might not provide a long-term solution, but it at least has a chance of solving the problem in the short term. And in the longer term, parents can hope that as the child gets older, he or she will come to recognize that the parents were right after all, at least enough to make a solution that both sides can agree on possible. (Or, in some cases, the problem might solve itself as the child becomes mature enough to be allowed to do things the parents did not consider it safe to allow earlier.) Such situations are not ideal, but considering that we live on Earth, not in Heaven, always having ideal solutions available would be a bit much to hope for. As one last interesting point regarding negotiated solutions, consider the possibility of negotiating what form of punishment should be used in situations where punishment is required. From a parent's perspective, the punishment needs to be serious enough to achieve the parent's goals (which are often short-term in nature, or "serially short-term" - that is, solvable over an extended period of time through a series of short-term solutions). In some cases, parents consider it desirable to disrupt the child's activities (for example, to keep the child away from "the wrong crowd"), but often, such disruption is considered undesirable. Parents may also feel a need to consider how punishing one child might impact others. For example, how do you ground one child from watching television without having an impact on the lives of the child's siblings? After all, the siblings might very well want to play with the child who is being punished and watch television at the same time. From a child's perspective, the important points are how unpleasant the punishment will be and how much the punishment will interfere with the child's doing things he or she enjoys. Some children may view physical pain as radically worse than other forms of unpleasantness, but many do not. Children may also consider how different forms of punishment would affect their friends, and the possible embarrassment if their friends find out about their having gotten in trouble. Of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment can concentrate a given amount of unpleasantness into the shortest amount of time. That's probably one of the reasons why some people object to it so strongly: the pain of a child crying from a spanking is a lot easier to see than the same total amount of unpleasantness spread over a week or two of being grounded. We can empathize with the pain of the spanking, but it is much harder to capture the sense of time needed to empathize with the grounding - especially for people who haven't actually experienced being grounded for an extended period of time. Yet ironically, depending on the personalities and the situation involved, the same concentration of unpleasantness into a short period of time that makes spanking so objectionable to some outside parties can sometimes make it a preferred form of punishment for both parents and children. It's over with quickly, and they can get on with their lives. Which raises an interesting problem for those who support win-win solutions but oppose spanking. If parents are going to punish a child, and the child would rather be spanked than punished in some other way, does that not make spanking the child a win-win solution to the problem of how to punish the child (or at least the closest thing to a win-win solution available)? Nathan |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
Nathan,
On the other hand, a two-year-old has few bargaining tools. He or she is physically tiny, compared to his/her parents. This little child is just beginning to understand case/effect, and only in immediate situations. When this little child begins to understand cause/effect, the spanked child learns to hit. The non spanked child learns other ways to handle anger. LaVonne Nathan A. Barclay wrote: I'd like to expand a little on the issue of parents and children trying to negotiate mutually satisfactory solutions to problems. For truly fair negotiations to take place, three things must be true. First, both parties must be able to negotiate from positions of reasonable strength. Second, it must be accepted that there are some absolutes that are not part of the negotiation process. And third, the parties negotiating must not use extraneous issues to threaten each other. In regard to the first point, the nature of the parent-child relationship is such that the parents get to decide how much negotiating power their children will have. At one extreme, if parents say, "Do this or else," they give their children no negotiating power. At the other extreme, if parents refuse to put their foot down at all, they keep no real negotiating power for themselves. So the trick is for parents to find a place in between that gives their children enough negotiating power but not too much. In my view, the best types of negotiations are aimed at dealing with the issues the parents consider truly important while providing as much flexibility for the children as possible within that context. For example, suppose a little girl keeps running late because she can't decide what to wear to school and Mom, who is busy getting ready for work herself, keeps having to take time out of her own preparations to deal with the issue. The important thing for Mom is that the problem of running late be solved, not exactly how the problem is solved. Further, the solution doesn't necessarily have to be 100% foolproof. If Mom has to get involved and hurry her daughter up every now and then, it's probably not the end of the world. From that understanding of the problem, the mother and daughter could get together and try to find a way to solve the problem. It doesn't matter which of them proposes the solution that they ultimately decide together would work best. What matters is that the problem be solved. And if Mom has misgivings about her daughter's preferred solution, she might accept it on only a provisional basis, with the understanding that if it doesn't work, they'll have to change to something else. With a little luck that will give the daughter some extra incentive to make her preferred solution work. Regarding the second issue, it would be highly improper for a child who is caught shoplifting to be able to demand something from his or her parents in negotiations in exchange for not shoplifting anymore. When something is wrong, you don't do it, and you don't expect to get any special reward or compensation for not doing it. The lesson that some things in life are non-negotiable is a vital one for children to learn. On the other hand, if parents want to label something non-negotiable, they need to be able to defend why they view it in non-negotiable in ways that have as little as possible to do with "because I said so." And if they use reasons rooted in their religion, they would be wise to also provide the strongest reasons they can that are not rooted in their religion as additional reinforcement. If children understand why their parents hold a particular belief, and if the parents' behavior is consistent with what they say, children can respect their parents for standing up for what they believe is right even if the children disagree. (That is especially true when the parents and children have a strong relationship in general.) But if parents just say, "That's non-negotiable," without providing any real explanation, the risk of anger and resentment is vastly greater. Finally, if either side brings extraneous matters into a negotiation as a way of threatening the other, that upsets the balance in the negotiations. Such behavior is a way of trying to bully the other side into accepting a win-lose solution, and thus violates the spirit of trying to find a solution that both sides truly consider acceptable. That also means parents who are looking for win-win solutions need to try to avoid invoking their parental authority any more than they feel like they have to. Now, what does this have to do with the issue of punishment in general and of spanking in particular? If win-win solutions can be found within the context of these types of negotiations, it is often possible to avoid the need for threats and punishment entirely. That is especially true for children whose sense of honor is strong enough that just reminding them of what they agreed to is enough for them to comply with their part of an agreement. On the other hand, not all children will necessarily comply with an agreement just because they agreed to it. In those cases, the possibility of punishment may be needed as an enforcement provision in agreements, especially if a child wants to be allowed to push to the outermost limits of what the parents feel like they can accept. (For example, parents might feel safe allowing a child to stretch a 9:00 bedtime a great deal, but be unwilling to accept a 9:30 bedtime unless it will be enforced pretty strictly.) If all goes well, the child's knowledge that deliberately violating the agreement will result in the punishment coupled with parental understanding toward accidental violations could still make actual punishment unnecessary. But for the possibility of punishment to mean something, parents have to be willing to punish if a child pushes too far. Note that if a child has made an agreement and agreed to what the punishment will be if the agreement is violated, it is much harder for the child to resent being punished for violating the agreement as "unfair" and "arbitrary" than if the rule and punishment were imposed unilaterally by a parent, or especially if the child were punished without really understanding what the rule was (especially in practice) before the punishment took place. Those kinds of distinctions are extremely important in understanding how punishment affects children. Also, consider situations where negotiations fail, either because no common ground acceptable to both the parents and the child exists or because the common ground cannot be found in the amount of time available to look for it. If parents refuse to allow the child to proceed with a solution the parents view as unacceptable, the need for threats and punishment might still be averted if the child is willing to defer to the parents and live with a solution that the child does not really consider acceptable. But if the child refuses to defer to the parents' authority and judgment out of respect, the threat of punishment (and, if necessary, the actuality of punishment) are all the parents have left to prevent the child from doing something they cannot accept in good conscience. Punishment might not provide a long-term solution, but it at least has a chance of solving the problem in the short term. And in the longer term, parents can hope that as the child gets older, he or she will come to recognize that the parents were right after all, at least enough to make a solution that both sides can agree on possible. (Or, in some cases, the problem might solve itself as the child becomes mature enough to be allowed to do things the parents did not consider it safe to allow earlier.) Such situations are not ideal, but considering that we live on Earth, not in Heaven, always having ideal solutions available would be a bit much to hope for. As one last interesting point regarding negotiated solutions, consider the possibility of negotiating what form of punishment should be used in situations where punishment is required. From a parent's perspective, the punishment needs to be serious enough to achieve the parent's goals (which are often short-term in nature, or "serially short-term" - that is, solvable over an extended period of time through a series of short-term solutions). In some cases, parents consider it desirable to disrupt the child's activities (for example, to keep the child away from "the wrong crowd"), but often, such disruption is considered undesirable. Parents may also feel a need to consider how punishing one child might impact others. For example, how do you ground one child from watching television without having an impact on the lives of the child's siblings? After all, the siblings might very well want to play with the child who is being punished and watch television at the same time. From a child's perspective, the important points are how unpleasant the punishment will be and how much the punishment will interfere with the child's doing things he or she enjoys. Some children may view physical pain as radically worse than other forms of unpleasantness, but many do not. Children may also consider how different forms of punishment would affect their friends, and the possible embarrassment if their friends find out about their having gotten in trouble. Of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment can concentrate a given amount of unpleasantness into the shortest amount of time. That's probably one of the reasons why some people object to it so strongly: the pain of a child crying from a spanking is a lot easier to see than the same total amount of unpleasantness spread over a week or two of being grounded. We can empathize with the pain of the spanking, but it is much harder to capture the sense of time needed to empathize with the grounding - especially for people who haven't actually experienced being grounded for an extended period of time. Yet ironically, depending on the personalities and the situation involved, the same concentration of unpleasantness into a short period of time that makes spanking so objectionable to some outside parties can sometimes make it a preferred form of punishment for both parents and children. It's over with quickly, and they can get on with their lives. Which raises an interesting problem for those who support win-win solutions but oppose spanking. If parents are going to punish a child, and the child would rather be spanked than punished in some other way, does that not make spanking the child a win-win solution to the problem of how to punish the child (or at least the closest thing to a win-win solution available)? Nathan |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
"Carlson LaVonne" wrote in message ... Nathan, On the other hand, a two-year-old has few bargaining tools. He or she is physically tiny, compared to his/her parents. This little child is just beginning to understand case/effect, and only in immediate situations. When this little child begins to understand cause/effect, the spanked child learns to hit. The non spanked child learns other ways to handle anger. Actually, there is at least one form of meaningful two-way negotiation with a two-year-old that parents can engage in: redirecting the child's attention. When a parent tries to redirect a child's attention, the parent is saying, "How about if you do this instead?" If the child rejects the parent's idea and tries to start doing something else, that is, in effect a counterproposal: "No, I don't like that idea. How about this?" Much of the communication is nonverbal, yet a form of genuine negotiation is taking place in an attempt to find a solution acceptable to both the parent and the child. But like other forms of negotiation, that form can break down if the child refuses to be redirected and keeps going back to a behavior the parents consider non-negotiable. In theory, parents could spend the rest of the day trying to redirect the child, but that is often not workable in practice. Which can bring us back to the problem that parents have to either tolerate unacceptable behavior or resort to some form of punishment. As for how spanking affects children's learning to hit, it seems to me that three factors almost have to be involved. (1) How often the child is spanked or hit. (2) How well the child understands that the spanking or hitting is associated with a particular behavior, and (3) how much the spanking or hitting as punishment looks like other forms of hitting. The first of these issues is self-evident. In regard to the second, I'm no expert on two-year-olds, but I suspect that if a parent says no a couple times and tries to redirect the child's behavior a couple times, even a two-year-old can probably start to get the idea that he or she is doing something the parent doesn't like. If I'm right, that would provide an enormous head start toward making the connection that the swat that follows was a result of unacceptable behavior, not just because the parent was angry. Regarding the third, if spankings are always on the bottom (or maybe a swat to the back of the legs for a child in diapers, as long as it's not hard enough to be dangerous), that makes spanking less of a precedent for a child's going around hitting people anywhere he or she wants to than if swats from the parent land in a wider variety of places. A ritual such as putting the child over a knee or lap first might do even more to draw a differentiation that the kind of hitting parents do when the child misbehaves is different from other kinds of hitting. Of course even under the best of circumstances, spanking would almost certainly have some potential to help a child learn to hit. On the other hand, teaching a child not to hit is something that parents are going to face sooner or later whether they spank or not. So if parents use spanking carefully and judiciously, I'm not convinced that the difference is big enough to be worth worrying about. Nathan |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
: I'd like to expand a little on the issue of parents and children trying to : negotiate mutually satisfactory solutions to problems. For truly fair : negotiations to take place, three things must be true. First, both parties : must be able to negotiate from positions of reasonable strength. Second, it : must be accepted that there are some absolutes that are not part of the : negotiation process. And third, the parties negotiating must not use : extraneous issues to threaten each other. Hi Nathan. Welcome back. Your previous message did not propagate to my site. I found it on Google and wrote a longish response this morning before work only to lose it due to a computer glitch. Sorry, but I can't promise I will rewrite it due to the pressure I am under this semester teaching 13 credits at three different schools. I am glad you are back, though, since you are a member of an increasingly rare breed: an intelligent, articulate, nonflamey prospanker with whom one may have a courteous exchange of views. With regard to your three points, I question your assumptions. You make mutual rulemaking between parents and children sound like class struggle, like labor negotiating with management, or rival warlords carving up respective spheres of influence. In a loving relationship of any kind, both parties either win more intimacy, harmony and joy with one another, or both lose. "Strength" is not the issue here. In this kind of negotiation the aim is for everyone to win not because everyone's "strength" is "reasonable" but because it is in the common interest of everyone for there to be no losers in the negotiation. In regard to your second point, yes there are certainly some things which aren't going to be negotiable. Safety issues in particular come to mind; also financially related issues. Regarding your third point about parties to the negotiation "threatening" each other with extraneous issues, you are back to your view of parent/child negotiation sounding a lot more like a parlay between adversaries than a mutually rewarding process of processing away conflicts in a loving relationship. And given the fact that your point in all of this is to defend the use of physical pain on children by parents, I find your concern about "threatening" rather ironic. Punishment and threats of punishment do nothing to enhance cooperative win/win methods of discipline and do everything to undermine it and render it unworkable. You invoke the need for "consequences" if a child doesn't keep their end of a bargain. What you seem to miss it that there is a natural consequence built in to the breaking of a promise to a loved one, regardless of the ages and nature of the relationship of the interactants. One damages the harmony of ones relationship with a special and important figure in one's life, loses some of their trust and regard, and sacrifices the harmony of one's relationship with them. Children certainly do sometimes engage in behaviors which have this effect, but when they do there is always a reason. It behooves parents to uncover the reason by means of I messages, active listening etc. and deal with the underying cause rather than mindlessly punish the surface behavior. Win/win cooperative methods of discipline are not an abstract concept not yet tried in practice, nor are they anything new. Thomas Gordon's classic, "Parent Effectiveness Training," has been in print for four decades now and many thousands of families have used this sort of approach successfully. Chris |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. When one person tries to control another, you can always expect some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the other reacting to it. This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers. They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way. "Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel, but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to adults' power and does precisely what is demanded. These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books I've collected along the way: "Be firm but fair." "Insist that your children obey." "Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking." "Discipline with love." "Demonstrate your parental right to lead." "The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership." What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an action-and-reaction event. This omission is important, for it implies that all children passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and, eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter. However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, we did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged for mercy, or promised we would never do it again. We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing, demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doing something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs. Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation. It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child "asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such statements as: * "Kids not only need punishment, they want it." * "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or bad, because justice is security." * "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love them." * "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears almost relieved when it finally comes." * "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child] understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his own impulses." * "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is an act of love; the other is an act of hostility." * "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted." * "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their relationship." * "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy relationships." Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt that controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's "Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a "benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a "dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you "do it lovingly." Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time again: * "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents, children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself." * "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight." It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful. The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is, I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions, an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping behaviors" or "coping mechanisms". The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) * Resisting, defying, being negative * Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing * Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing * Hitting, being belligerent, combative * Breaking rules and laws * Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry * Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth * Blaming others, tattling, telling on others * Bossing or bullying others * Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the adult * Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking, currying favor with adults * Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming * Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look good, making others look bad * Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off * Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away, quitting school, cutting classes * Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing the adult off, keeping one's distance * Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless * Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant approval, feeling insecure * Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments * Overeating, excessive dieting * Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet * Drinking heavily, using drugs * Cheating in school, plagiarizing As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own experience, they invariably make such comments as: "Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the behaviors it produces?" "All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn't want to see in my children [or my students]." "I don't see in the list any good effects or positive behaviors." "If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our own children certainly will, too." After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a 180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that power creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals. For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International: USA Gordon Training International 531 Stevens Avenue West Solana Beach, CA 92075 Telephone (858) 481-8121 E-mail: Website: http://www.gordontraining.com |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
From=20the thomas gordon's website: "Reviews of Research of the P.E.T. Course There have been two extensive reviews of P.E.T. course evaluation studies. The first, by Ronald Levant of Boston University, reviewed 23 different studies. The author concluded that many of the studies had methodological discrepancies. Nevertheless, out of a total of 149 comparisons between P.E.T. and control groups or alternative programs, 32% favored P.E.T., 11% favored the alternative group, and 57% found no significant differences." The point here is not blindly believe to any book or philosoply but learn and filter out what is applicable to you and what is not. Hey, even Dobson recommended Thomas Gordon. :-) Doan On 8 Jun 2004, Chris wrote: How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. When one person tries to control another, you can always expect some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the other reacting to it. This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers. They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way. "Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel, but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to adults' power and does precisely what is demanded. These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books I've collected along the way: "Be firm but fair." "Insist that your children obey." "Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking." "Discipline with love." "Demonstrate your parental right to lead." "The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental =09 leadership." What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an action-and-reaction event. This omission is important, for it implies that all children passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and= , eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter. However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, w= e did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged for mercy, or promised we would never do it again. We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing, demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doin= g something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs. Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation= =2E It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No chil= d "asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such statements as: * "Kids not only need punishment, they want it." * "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or bad, because justice is security." * "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love them." * "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears almost relieved when it finally comes." * "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child] understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his own impulses." * "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is a= n act of love; the other is an act of hostility." * "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted." * "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their relationship." * "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy relationships." Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt tha= t controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's "Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a "benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a "dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you "do it lovingly." Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time again: * "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents, children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself." * "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight." It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful. The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is= , I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions, an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping behaviors" or "coping mechanisms". The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list come= s primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varie= d these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) * Resisting, defying, being negative * Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing * Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing * Hitting, being belligerent, combative * Breaking rules and laws * Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry * Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth * Blaming others, tattling, telling on others * Bossing or bullying others * Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the adult * Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking, currying favor with adults * Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming * Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look good, making others look bad * Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off * Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away, quitting school, cutting classes * Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing the adult off, keeping one's distance * Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless * Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant approval, feeling insecure * Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments * Overeating, excessive dieting * Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet * Drinking heavily, using drugs * Cheating in school, plagiarizing As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own experience, they invariably make such comments as: "Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the behaviors it produces?" "All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn'= t want to see in my children [or my students]." "I don't see in the list any good effects or positive behaviors." "If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our own children certainly will, too." After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a 180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that powe= r creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals. For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International: USA Gordon Training International 531 Stevens Avenue West Solana Beach, CA 92075 Telephone (858) 481-8121 E-mail: Website: http://www.gordontraining.com |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
"Chris" wrote in message ... Nathan A. Barclay wrote: With regard to your three points, I question your assumptions. You make mutual rulemaking between parents and children sound like class struggle, like labor negotiating with management, or rival warlords carving up respective spheres of influence. In a loving relationship of any kind, both parties either win more intimacy, harmony and joy with one another, or both lose. "Strength" is not the issue here. In this kind of negotiation the aim is for everyone to win not because everyone's "strength" is "reasonable" but because it is in the common interest of everyone for there to be no losers in the negotiation. What you describe is certainly the best-case scenario for what can happen. It reminds me a bit of when my mother and her siblings fight over a check in a restaurant - with everyone trying to insist that they be the ones who will pay. When both sides are willing to voluntarily concede enough to find a solution that works, not only is "strength" irrelevant, but what happens isn't really something I'd normally characterize as a negotiation. But for the purposes of this newsgroup, best-case scenarios really aren't all that interesting - except, perhaps, for the value of reminding people to look for opportunities when they can be made to happen. "Carol, would you please load the dishwasher?" "Sure, Mom. I'll start on it right away." It's great when life works that smoothly, but the times when parents start thinking about using spanking are times when it doesn't. There are times when parents and children have genuine conflicts in their needs and desires, when solutions in which both sides can achieve a complete win are impossible. Actually, your labor analogy is not entirely off target - or would not be if labor and management treated each other like family instead of like enemies. The real problem in too many labor-management negotiations, and in too many parent-child negotiations as well, is that the two sides each focus on getting as much as possible for themselves without regard to the cost to the other. Negotiations are more constructive, more productive, and more mutually beneficial if both sides keep each other's needs and desires in mind and try to find ways to meet each other's needs without an unacceptable cost to themselves. The trick in both cases is to look for a solution that, while probably not ideal from either side's perspective, is acceptable to both sides and that will give both sides as much of what they need and want as is possible considering the fact that the other side has competing needs and desires. The reason why I view the balance of power as important is to help make sure that both sides will negotiate in good faith when their needs and desires compete. A good compromise is one in which each side gets as much of what they want as possible, and in which both sides give up a reasonably equal amount in return for making the compromise work. And for that to happen, the balance of power has to be such that the two sides both have more to gain from negotiating in good faith than from demanding to get things mostly their way "or else." (And while it is traditionally the parents who say "or else," it is quite possible for children to do so too - especially if parents are unwilling to exercise their authority.) Regarding your third point about parties to the negotiation "threatening" each other with extraneous issues, you are back to your view of parent/child negotiation sounding a lot more like a parlay between adversaries than a mutually rewarding process of processing away conflicts in a loving relationship. And given the fact that your point in all of this is to defend the use of physical pain on children by parents, I find your concern about "threatening" rather ironic. My "point in all of this" is a lot more complicated than you give it credit for being. Yes, I defend spanking. But I also argue that there are other tools parents can use that are better in many situations. Indeed, I'm probably actually closer to agreeing with you than I am to agreeing with a lot of people who support spanking in regard to what parenting styles work best. So why is my energy focused toward opposing you rather than opposing them? Because I think you, and people like you, are far more dangerous in the long term. People like Dr. Dobson, and even those who support spanking more strongly than he does, are not trying to close off the lines of debate. They try to persuade, but they do not attempt to use the force of law to impose their preference onto those who disagree with them. Thus, in the long term, they can be dealt with in the free market of ideas. The more people succeed using parenting techniques that are at least primarily cooperative, the harder it will be to convince people that a more confrontational appraoch to parenting is good. But when large numbers of people put on a mantle of science to make claims that go beyond what scientific methodology can justify, that seriously undermines society's ability to consider an issue objectively. Worse, if spanking would be outlawed, the debate would be all but shut down because it is hard to engage in scientific study of something that no longer exists. (I suppose studies could be done by looking at parents who spank illegally, or by giving parents special permission to spank as part of a scientific study. But in either of those cases, the fact that the parents involved would not be normal parents operating under normal conditions would raise serious questions about the validity of the results.) If we continue to allow spanking, and non-spanking methods work best, non-spanking methods can be expected to win out over time. But if the best parenting methods, at least for some children, do involve the use of spanking, a ban on spanking could easily keep us from ever learning about them. Anyhow, in the context of a newsgroup as polarized as this one, I can see how it can seem ironic to have a person who supports spanking in some situations but also supports parents' trying to do things that reduce (and maybe eliminate) their need to spank. But I see nothing inherently inconsistant or contradictory about such a position. Looking into the way I view things a bit more deeply, I suppose my view might be explained as a sort of hierarchy of ways of resolving conflicts between parents and children. (I haven't really thought of it this way before, so this is as much an exercise in organizing my own thoughts as it is an explanation.) At the top of the hierarchy are mutually desirable solutions - solutions that both sides genuinely like. Next are solutions that involve voluntary concessions, where one or both sides have to give up a little but don't really mind giving it up. Third on the hierarchy are negotiated solutions in which each side agrees to make concessions in exchange for the other side's making concessions. Next would be the "choose from these options" approach, in which the parent defines what options are available for the child to choose from. And finally, the least desirable type of solution is something imposed unilaterally by the parents. At the first two stages of the hierarchy, punishment is completely unnecessary. If the child wants to do something that the parents consider acceptable, or is voluntarily willing to stay within the limits of what the parents consider acceptable, there is no need for punishment. With negotiated settlements, the child does have to give up something he or she didn't want to, so whether or not a possibility of punishment is needed depends on whether or not the child is willing to abide by the agreement without that possibility. Also, if the child abides by the agreement strictly on his or her own, or if just reminding the child of the agreement and of why keeping the agreement is important is enough, there is no need to bring up the issue of punishment. But if the child is not willing to abide by the agreement voluntarily, punishment may be necessary. With the lowest two levels of the hierarchy, the child is being forced to accept something without his or her consent, or with only a very limited form of consent. That gives the child a bit less of a stake in making things work without the threat of punishment, and thus increases the risk that threats or actual punishment will be needed. The way I look at it, it is best for parents (and children) to look for solutions as high in that hierarchy as is practical, but when they have to settle for something lower in the hierarchy, punishment may be necessary. So on the one hand, I support ideas that help parents avoid the need to spank (or punish in other ways). While on the other hand, I think there are times when punishment is necessary, and I view spanking as a form of punishment that has advantages in some types of situations (at least depending on the personalities of the people involved). I would also note that there is one other thing about my hierarchy that makes the issues involved a whole lot more complicated: time. Solutions imposed unilaterally by parents are the least desirable on a conceptual level, but they are also the quickest. To some extent, it can actually make sense for parents to unilaterally tell their children what to do because the value added in a solution higher in the hierarchy would not be worth the time required to find it. And there are times when external time constraints make finding a workable solution "now" a lot more important than finding a perfect solution that is "too late." On the other hand, there are also things parents can do to mitigate the time issue. If parents can see an issue coming in advance, they can start the process of looking for a good solution with the child before they start running out of time. Parents can talk with their children about what sorts of things it is okay with the children for the parents to decide unilaterally and what kinds of things need to be discussed together. And families could arrange something the children can say if they have a special reason why they want to discuss a type of decision a parent normally makes unilaterally. Such approaches can't entirely eliminate the time issue, but they could help move more of the decision-making process higher up the hierarchy. Punishment and threats of punishment do nothing to enhance cooperative win/win methods of discipline and do everything to undermine it and render it unworkable. You invoke the need for "consequences" if a child doesn't keep their end of a bargain. What you seem to miss it that there is a natural consequence built in to the breaking of a promise to a loved one, regardless of the ages and nature of the relationship of the interactants. One damages the harmony of ones relationship with a special and important figure in one's life, loses some of their trust and regard, and sacrifices the harmony of one's relationship with them. Children certainly do sometimes engage in behaviors which have this effect, but when they do there is always a reason. It behooves parents to uncover the reason by means of I messages, active listening etc. and deal with the underying cause rather than mindlessly punish the surface behavior. Now we're getting into the question of the fundamental nature of human beings, something that has been debated by theologians and philosophers for millennia. For me accept the position you are taking here, I would have to accept two things. 1) Human beings do not have free will, and cannot choose for themselves whether to follow a path of good or evil. 2) Human beings are naturally good, and as long as people love each other and communicate their needs effectively, no one will ever choose to do evil. If your religion and your philosophy accept those principles, I am not prepared to take the time to try to convince you otherwise. But I do not accept either of them. I believe that mankind does have free will, and that while the way children are reared helps influence their behavior, even perfect parents could not make it impossible for their children to choose to do wrong. And I believe that human beings are born with a mixture of competing desires such that no matter how loving and harmonious an environment they are reared in, they will face real and serious temptations to put other types of self-interest ahead of their desire for harmony. Unless you can convince me to change my religious and philosophical beliefs regarding the fundamental nature of mankind, you have no hope of convincing me with this line of argument because it is based on a foundation that I regard as invalid. Likewise, if you truly do accept the religious/philosophical basis that would have to be valid for the argument you make here to be logically sound, I have no chance of changing your mind without first convincing you to change your religious/philosophical basis. In that case, we are probably essentially in a state of deadlock, each with a position that is logically sound relative to our own beliefs about the nature of mankind but unsound relative to the other's beliefs. If we are indeed in such a deadlock, we could still attempt to discuss the issue relative to each other's beliefs. However, I am inclined to concede that if the interpretation of the nature of mankind that you are relying on is accurate (in practice, not just in theory with perfect parents), there are indeed always better options than spanking. The only real potential point of debate left would be whether those better techniques would always be worth the time they require, but that realm is so hypothetical that it does not seem worth the time to debate it. And if your interpretation does not work reliably in practice, than in practical terms, we are back to what I believe is the case, namely that there are times when children's desire for harmony will not be sufficient to produce acceptable behavior in spite of their parents' best efforts with positive methods.. For you to debate relative to my beliefs, you would have to accept as an operating hypothesis that even if parents try their best with positive techniques, some children will deliberately choose to behave unacceptably in spite of their parents' efforts. And you would have to make a case that even starting from that hypothesis, there are still always better options than spanking. Win/win cooperative methods of discipline are not an abstract concept not yet tried in practice, nor are they anything new. Thomas Gordon's classic, "Parent Effectiveness Training," has been in print for four decades now and many thousands of families have used this sort of approach successfully. Anecdotal evidence. The interesting thing about Thomas Gordon's approach is that the extent to which it works depends very heavily on how willing the child is to cooperate. Thus, even if tens of millions of children would be willing to cooperate enough for that approach to be considered effective with them, that does not address the question of how to handle children who are unwilling to cooperate sufficiently. You may be willing to accept on faith that no such children exist, that Dr,.Gordon's methods always work on every child if parents do their best to use them. But you cannot persuade me to accept that assumption without compelling evidence to support it. |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
Let me ask you, LaVonne. You were spanked as a child, right? Did you learn to hit? Using that logic, if you take toys away from your child, the child will learn to rob and steal??? :-) Doan On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Carlson LaVonne wrote: Nathan, On the other hand, a two-year-old has few bargaining tools. He or she is physically tiny, compared to his/her parents. This little child is just beginning to understand case/effect, and only in immediate situations. When this little child begins to understand cause/effect, the spanked child learns to hit. The non spanked child learns other ways to handle anger. LaVonne Nathan A. Barclay wrote: I'd like to expand a little on the issue of parents and children trying to negotiate mutually satisfactory solutions to problems. For truly fair negotiations to take place, three things must be true. First, both parties must be able to negotiate from positions of reasonable strength. Second, it must be accepted that there are some absolutes that are not part of the negotiation process. And third, the parties negotiating must not use extraneous issues to threaten each other. In regard to the first point, the nature of the parent-child relationship is such that the parents get to decide how much negotiating power their children will have. At one extreme, if parents say, "Do this or else," they give their children no negotiating power. At the other extreme, if parents refuse to put their foot down at all, they keep no real negotiating power for themselves. So the trick is for parents to find a place in between that gives their children enough negotiating power but not too much. In my view, the best types of negotiations are aimed at dealing with the issues the parents consider truly important while providing as much flexibility for the children as possible within that context. For example, suppose a little girl keeps running late because she can't decide what to wear to school and Mom, who is busy getting ready for work herself, keeps having to take time out of her own preparations to deal with the issue. The important thing for Mom is that the problem of running late be solved, not exactly how the problem is solved. Further, the solution doesn't necessarily have to be 100% foolproof. If Mom has to get involved and hurry her daughter up every now and then, it's probably not the end of the world. From that understanding of the problem, the mother and daughter could get together and try to find a way to solve the problem. It doesn't matter which of them proposes the solution that they ultimately decide together would work best. What matters is that the problem be solved. And if Mom has misgivings about her daughter's preferred solution, she might accept it on only a provisional basis, with the understanding that if it doesn't work, they'll have to change to something else. With a little luck that will give the daughter some extra incentive to make her preferred solution work. Regarding the second issue, it would be highly improper for a child who is caught shoplifting to be able to demand something from his or her parents in negotiations in exchange for not shoplifting anymore. When something is wrong, you don't do it, and you don't expect to get any special reward or compensation for not doing it. The lesson that some things in life are non-negotiable is a vital one for children to learn. On the other hand, if parents want to label something non-negotiable, they need to be able to defend why they view it in non-negotiable in ways that have as little as possible to do with "because I said so." And if they use reasons rooted in their religion, they would be wise to also provide the strongest reasons they can that are not rooted in their religion as additional reinforcement. If children understand why their parents hold a particular belief, and if the parents' behavior is consistent with what they say, children can respect their parents for standing up for what they believe is right even if the children disagree. (That is especially true when the parents and children have a strong relationship in general.) But if parents just say, "That's non-negotiable," without providing any real explanation, the risk of anger and resentment is vastly greater. Finally, if either side brings extraneous matters into a negotiation as a way of threatening the other, that upsets the balance in the negotiations. Such behavior is a way of trying to bully the other side into accepting a win-lose solution, and thus violates the spirit of trying to find a solution that both sides truly consider acceptable. That also means parents who are looking for win-win solutions need to try to avoid invoking their parental authority any more than they feel like they have to. Now, what does this have to do with the issue of punishment in general and of spanking in particular? If win-win solutions can be found within the context of these types of negotiations, it is often possible to avoid the need for threats and punishment entirely. That is especially true for children whose sense of honor is strong enough that just reminding them of what they agreed to is enough for them to comply with their part of an agreement. On the other hand, not all children will necessarily comply with an agreement just because they agreed to it. In those cases, the possibility of punishment may be needed as an enforcement provision in agreements, especially if a child wants to be allowed to push to the outermost limits of what the parents feel like they can accept. (For example, parents might feel safe allowing a child to stretch a 9:00 bedtime a great deal, but be unwilling to accept a 9:30 bedtime unless it will be enforced pretty strictly.) If all goes well, the child's knowledge that deliberately violating the agreement will result in the punishment coupled with parental understanding toward accidental violations could still make actual punishment unnecessary. But for the possibility of punishment to mean something, parents have to be willing to punish if a child pushes too far. Note that if a child has made an agreement and agreed to what the punishment will be if the agreement is violated, it is much harder for the child to resent being punished for violating the agreement as "unfair" and "arbitrary" than if the rule and punishment were imposed unilaterally by a parent, or especially if the child were punished without really understanding what the rule was (especially in practice) before the punishment took place. Those kinds of distinctions are extremely important in understanding how punishment affects children. Also, consider situations where negotiations fail, either because no common ground acceptable to both the parents and the child exists or because the common ground cannot be found in the amount of time available to look for it. If parents refuse to allow the child to proceed with a solution the parents view as unacceptable, the need for threats and punishment might still be averted if the child is willing to defer to the parents and live with a solution that the child does not really consider acceptable. But if the child refuses to defer to the parents' authority and judgment out of respect, the threat of punishment (and, if necessary, the actuality of punishment) are all the parents have left to prevent the child from doing something they cannot accept in good conscience. Punishment might not provide a long-term solution, but it at least has a chance of solving the problem in the short term. And in the longer term, parents can hope that as the child gets older, he or she will come to recognize that the parents were right after all, at least enough to make a solution that both sides can agree on possible. (Or, in some cases, the problem might solve itself as the child becomes mature enough to be allowed to do things the parents did not consider it safe to allow earlier.) Such situations are not ideal, but considering that we live on Earth, not in Heaven, always having ideal solutions available would be a bit much to hope for. As one last interesting point regarding negotiated solutions, consider the possibility of negotiating what form of punishment should be used in situations where punishment is required. From a parent's perspective, the punishment needs to be serious enough to achieve the parent's goals (which are often short-term in nature, or "serially short-term" - that is, solvable over an extended period of time through a series of short-term solutions). In some cases, parents consider it desirable to disrupt the child's activities (for example, to keep the child away from "the wrong crowd"), but often, such disruption is considered undesirable. Parents may also feel a need to consider how punishing one child might impact others. For example, how do you ground one child from watching television without having an impact on the lives of the child's siblings? After all, the siblings might very well want to play with the child who is being punished and watch television at the same time. From a child's perspective, the important points are how unpleasant the punishment will be and how much the punishment will interfere with the child's doing things he or she enjoys. Some children may view physical pain as radically worse than other forms of unpleasantness, but many do not. Children may also consider how different forms of punishment would affect their friends, and the possible embarrassment if their friends find out about their having gotten in trouble. Of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment can concentrate a given amount of unpleasantness into the shortest amount of time. That's probably one of the reasons why some people object to it so strongly: the pain of a child crying from a spanking is a lot easier to see than the same total amount of unpleasantness spread over a week or two of being grounded. We can empathize with the pain of the spanking, but it is much harder to capture the sense of time needed to empathize with the grounding - especially for people who haven't actually experienced being grounded for an extended period of time. Yet ironically, depending on the personalities and the situation involved, the same concentration of unpleasantness into a short period of time that makes spanking so objectionable to some outside parties can sometimes make it a preferred form of punishment for both parents and children. It's over with quickly, and they can get on with their lives. Which raises an interesting problem for those who support win-win solutions but oppose spanking. If parents are going to punish a child, and the child would rather be spanked than punished in some other way, does that not make spanking the child a win-win solution to the problem of how to punish the child (or at least the closest thing to a win-win solution available)? Nathan |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
"Chris" wrote in message ... How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation. It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child "asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive parent or teacher. There is a difference between a "punitive" parent or teacher and one who occasionally makes reasonable use of punishment. One of my best friends in elementary school was my fourth grade teacher (who I first became friends with when I was in second grade and stayed friends with until she left the school sometime when I was in junior high). Teachers in my school did spank occasionally, and one time she paddled me on the hand (her normal method of using corporal punishment - this was in the mid 1970's, by the way). I was embarrassed to get in trouble with her, and I was afraid my getting in trouble like that might hurt the way she felt about me, but I don't remember ever holding it against her. And as I said, we remained friends long after I left her class. From my experience (and I think anecdotal evidence I've seen from others tends to back me up), what is really important is how the use of authority fits into the overall relationship. If an adult exercises authority in a way that exhibits a lack of concern for a child's needs or desires, the child probably will react to punishment from that person in much the way Dr. Gordon describes. If an adult normally cares about what a child needs and wants and generally exercises authority only for reasons that the child can respect (if not necessarily always agree with), occasional instances of punishment are far less likely to cause any significant harm to the relationship. I'm certainly not trying to say that Dr. Gordon is entirely wrong, because I'm sure the attitudes he's criticizing here do lead a lot of parents into the kind of highly authoritarian mindsets that are most likely to cause children to react negatively - and, perhaps more importantly, lead parents away from more positive ways of addressing problems. But I do think he's overstating the case, and thus throwing the baby out with the bathwater where some types of situations are concerned. snip The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) I won't quote the list, but there is something not included on the list that causes me to view the exercise as highly deceptive. That omission is BEHAVING. When an exercise focuses exclusively on negative reactions to authority and completely ignores the possibility that children might exhibit the desired reaction, the exercise will almost inevitably skew people's thinking. I agree that children sometimes react to power-based discipline in undesirable ways. That is one of the reasons why I consider the kinds of methods Dr. Gordon promotes better - as long as they work. |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
"Chris" wrote in message ... How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. snip The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like something deliberately contrived to generate a particular emotional reaction. An objective analysis would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to affect individual children. This exercise, instead, creates an amalgam of negative effects across all the people in the group, a combination that will almost certainly be significantly longer and uglier than a typical child is likely to exhibit. Worse, a person might add something to the list because it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it happened on a much more regular basis. I'm not saying that efforts to control children through force don't have negative consequences, or that parents should adopt a dismissive attitude toward the risk of such consequences. But it is important not to blow the risks out of proportion either. If parents want to do a risk/benefit analysis regarding whether the risk involved in exerting their authority in certain types of situations is likely to be greater or less than the benefits, they need an accurate appraisal of the risks, not an exaggerated one. Nathan |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Chemically beating children: Pinellas Poisoners Heilman and Talley | Todd Gastaldo | Pregnancy | 0 | July 4th 04 11:26 PM |
misc.kids FAQ on Breastfeeding Past the First Year | [email protected] | Info and FAQ's | 0 | January 16th 04 09:15 AM |
| | Kids should work... | Kane | Spanking | 12 | December 10th 03 02:30 AM |
| Ray attempts Biblical justification: was U.N. rules Canada should ban spanking | Kane | Spanking | 105 | November 30th 03 05:48 AM |
So much for the claims about Sweden | Kane | Spanking | 10 | November 5th 03 06:31 AM |