Hunter Clarke-Fields
Studies show that spanking, yelling, and threatening are all ineffective parenting tools — causing more resistance in your children. So what do we do? How do we regulate our children’s behavior? How do we discipline today’s kids?
In this episode, I talk all about discipline — what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and how to discipline children so that you create cooperative kids who actually care about other’s feelings and the consequences of their behaviors.
Ep 500: How to Discipline- Hunter Clarke-Fields
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Hunter: Hey there, it's Hunter, and welcome to Throwback Thursday. Most Thursdays, we are going to re release one of my favorite episodes from the archives. So unless you're a longtime listener of the show, there's a good chance you haven't heard this one yet. And even if you had, chances are that you are going to get something new listening to it this time around.
How do I discipline is one of the biggest questions that I get because It's confusing in a world. We may know that we don't want to spank our children. We know that spanking leads to problems, and many studies have shown incredible adverse effects of spanking and things like that. And we know we want to have our kids be emotionally healthy and we want to have a close connection, but we can't let them just ramshod over everyone, right?
We need to have discipline. You're listening to The Mindful Mama Podcast, episode 151. Today, we're talking about how to discipline.
Welcome to the Mindful Parenting podcast. Here, it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Parenting, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children.
I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years, I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, Raising Good Humans, and now, Raising Good Humans Every Day, 50 Simple Ways to Rest Pause, Stay Present, and Connect with Your Kids. Welcome back and welcome if you're a brand new listener, I'm so glad that you are here.
This is going to be a great episode for you and I'm really going to break down some myths here today. We know that studies show that spanking and yelling and threatening are all actually ineffective parenting tools. more resistance in your children. What do we do? How do we discipline today's kids?
How do we regulate our children's behavior? So in this episode, I talk all about discipline, what it means, what it doesn't mean, and how to discipline children so that you can create cooperative kids who actually care about others feelings and the consequences of their behavior. Now, I'm going to onto this episode.
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Hunter: How do I discipline is one of the biggest questions that we get, that I get, because it's confusing in a world. We may know that we don't want to spank our children. We know that spanking leads to problems and many studies have shown incredible adverse effects of spanking and things like that. And we know we want to have our kids be emotionally healthy and we want to have a close connection, We can't let them just ramshod over everyone, right?
Like we need to have discipline. That's what today's episode is about, how to discipline your kids. How to discipline. First, let's think about this. What is discipline? This is the first thing to consider. We usually think of the word discipline as creating obedience through punishment.
I invite you to consider another way of seeing it. The Latin roots of the word, there are two roots, disciplina, meaning teaching, learning, and knowledge, and disciplinus, pupil, student, or follower. What if we thought of discipline instead as teaching, mentorship, and modeling for our children, right?
What method of solving problems and conflicts do we want to model, with the end in mind of raising our children? And then we have to think about what is the end that we have in mind. What are your goals for your child? Now, it might be part of us, right? Part of us, especially the sort of that ego, that part of us that thinks of ourselves as a separate self and wants to maintain A sense of safety for ourselves.
Is it really motivated by what do other people think of my child? And so we get really motivated by this idea of 100 percent obedience that other people might see our 100 percent obedient child and we will feel good and worthy like we have done a good job. But do we really want a 100 percent obedient child?
There are a lot of people out there who are raised with the rod and may be obedient, but there are a couple problems with that, right? One is about questioning authority. And one is, do we want people to always completely, blindly question, follow the rules without questioning authority?
And then also, what do we want? Do we want them to be maybe financially successful or but depressed and anxious, we want to think about what do we really want for our kids and in the world coming up, the blind obedience to the authority isn't such a helpful treat.
Factory workers are not needed that much anymore. In fact, we need people who know how to communicate with other people. We need people who are emotionally healthy and well adjusted, who have a sense of self worth. And are able to be creative and be problem solvers. And none of those things really stems from obedience.
You don't really learn those from obedience. So I'm going to speak in mind, with the goal in mind of emotionally healthy, well adjusted adults who, my goal for my kids is for them to do the right thing intrinsically, meaning Because they want to, because from the inside out, they want to do the right thing and they want to respect others and respect themselves, not because they're afraid of me.
So let me just back up a little bit, because if you had told me nine years ago that I would not use punishment with my children, I would have thought you were completely crazy. How would I have any control? I really remember, I remember getting to know a new family. They're some friends of ours now in the neighborhood who didn't use timeouts.
I thought they were totally nuts. I was not going to be the kind of parent who let her children run rampant. And the funny thing is now that I don't use punishment and I haven't for years and my children don't run rampant. Thank you very much. We can look at punishment, I'm going to, we're going to look at punishment first, right?
Because that's what we tend to think of as discipline, but we want to know, does it really work? Okay? Nine years ago when my daughter was little, I had two problems with my earlier ideas about punishment, and one is that I didn't actually realize what it teaches children. And number two, I didn't have an alternative model. So what do children learn from punishment?
And this is one of the biggest problems with punishment is that it actually doesn't teach your child anything helpful. And the whole premise of the authoritarian parenting approach is that if you punish a child for misbehavior, that child will see the error of their ways and want to do the right thing, right? This is the way most of our culture thinks about parenting. But what it's actually teaching them is that the person with the most power wins. And when they have more power, they can push their solution down on the smaller person.
Punishment can be psychologically damaging, both physical punishment and harsh verbal punishment. Yelling. can have lasting harmful effects on your child. Physical punishment, such as spanking, is hugely damaging. It's associated with verbal and physical aggression, delinquent, antisocial, and criminal behavior, poor quality of parent child relationships, impaired mental health, and later abuse of one's own spouse and children.
Obviously, that's not for everyone. I was spanked as a child, and I can see how it really tore down the quality of my parent child relationships, but happily, I don't abuse my spouse. But the thing is, it's, we don't even go anywhere near that. When our kids are watching what we do they are learning from the way we live our life. We are models and mentors for them. And when we physically punish, that's what they're going to learn to do. But the thing is, okay, so we may not physically punish, is yelling much better? Unfortunately, no. There was a longitudinal study of 967 families. I found that harsh verbal discipline in early adolescence was harmful to teens later, and it can cause the teens to misbehave at school, lie to their parents, steal, or fight. And the parents hostility actually increases the risk of delinquency and fosters anger, irritability, and belligerence in adolescence. That was me. I can tell you that much. I had anger, irritability, and belligerence as an adolescent, and I really think it was due to some pretty harsh parenting techniques that were happening in my family way back when.
But this is a study, a long term study of, almost 100 families that really showed this from 2013. And the bottom line is that the yelling, harsh verbal discipline made the behavior worse. Not better. It isn't actually that effective. While we think we might use this tactic in the short term, in the long term, as we start to use these tactics, our kids resent us, and we lose our influence. We lose our influence, and we lose it especially at the time when they need it most, when they're teens. In the long run, this is an ineffective tactic to yell into spank. Moreover, punishment makes children self centered. Punishment, why? You might be thinking, right? Punishment focuses children on the consequences they suffer rather than on the consequences of their behavior to somewhere else. Rather they're thinking, oh, I'm hurting because I'm punished, poor me. Rather than, oh, what I did, had this. It makes your child, actually makes their child more self centered and less empathetic. It teaches kids to only look out for themselves and to blame others rather than to care about how their behavior affects others. Your child might also feel, wronged, creating a chip on their shoulder, so they're also likely to resent making amends. Punishment teaches children to lie. The motivation for your child is to avoid punishment, right? So you're punishing them so that You think they'll just have good behavior and avoid punishment, but we all make mistakes. We all mess up, and when we mess up, we get punished. Our motivation is gonna be to just avoid the punishment. The motivation you're giving your child is to avoid the punishment, avoid the yelling or the timeout or whatever the punishment is. So they're gonna lie when they make, inevitably make mistakes because they wanna escape. Your detection, right? They're going to get sneaky and they're going to lie. So in this way, punishment fosters dishonesty. And then the other thing, punishment doesn't teach your child good behavior. And so one of the biggest problems with this approach is that your child doesn't learn to do the right thing.
They don't understand the impact that their behavior has on others. Instead, they learn that if they make a mistake, they are quote unquote bad and will end up hurting in some way if they are caught. They don't learn how to account for others feelings because they're so focused on their own suffering from the punishment, like we said. And so the motivation for your child is simply avoid punishment. They are not motivated internally, intrinsically, it's all extrinsic. And thus they lose an opportunity to develop any kind of self discipline. And also children will mimic our dominating behavior. So rather than learning to do the right thing They're actually learning to use their power over others who are less powerful. And they're not thinking about their needs versus the needs of others. They're just thinking about getting what I want. And It doesn't teach them good behavior. They're not learning what we think we want them to learn, right? And finally, punishment makes kids less likely to cooperate. So yes, even timeouts. They erode your relationship with your child, making them less likely to want to help you. The less connected you are to your child, the worse their behavior comes. They identify you as the cause of their suffering, so their anger and resentment builds. And research has shown that the authoritarian parenting approach can lead to, short term compliance that obedience. But it actually does not lead to healthy, sustainable self discipline. Because the child has no choice, if there's a conflict, but the child doesn't have any choice in the solution to the conflict, so they're not actually very motivated to follow through on that solution. And so you, the parent, have to be the enforcer, and the child feels resentful and angry at the parent, which makes them less likely to cooperate.
So it's actually less effective. Ugh, right? Oh my gosh. If punishment doesn't work, then how are we going to solve our problems and get our needs met?
Some parents they throw up their hands altogether and they let their kids make the rules. And this is the opposite of that. This is called permissive parenting. Maybe you believe that children are inherently good or you're simply tired of conflict and you want to, just decide to let your children do what they want. This is that permissive parenting, there's few rules and not much structure. Zero discipline. When we think about learning, right? This is where the child is winning and the parent is losing, and with this approach the tables are reversed and the parent can actually start to resent the child. And this approach can lead to kids who are more self centered, they lack self regulation, and even use drugs more. And while the children of parents who are permissive and feel psychologically more secure, which is something we want than those of authoritarian parents, and this is all from research, their behavior is often more out of control, and that's from research from Catherine Lewis's most recent book. This is not what we want either because these permissive parenting kids, they don't learn, they don't learn self discipline, right? They don't have healthy boundaries, so they have little need for restraint. And they also struggle. So what do we want? We want this middle path, the middle path of discipline, of learning to be a good human being.
So looking at these extremes, like we can see that solving conflicts, any, all these conflicts we have in our family, solving those conflicts is much more complex than simply demanding obedience or giving kids what they want. How we resolve our conflicts, it reflects deep views about humanity that we unconsciously are transmitting to our children. Are people inherently good? Are we all sinners? Is it a dog eat dog world that we have to fight to get our needs met? Or, do we always obey the one who has the most power? Instead, let's ask this question. How do we find that middle path where, when there's conflict, everyone can get their needs met and we can raise, emotionally healthy kids who help out around the house and do their chores and get out of the house on time, that stuff, right?
In the middle path we need to set limits. But we set limits instead of with punishment, we set limits with empathy. And empathy is Feeling the emotions of another, right? Using that inherent human drive that we have, that we feel what other people are feeling, right?
So we can start with mindful discipline means really having boundaries, having important boundaries and setting limits and allowing ourselves to be the teacher and the mentor of our children. So we set limits with empathy. We start with a strong, supportive connection with our child. We have to have that connection. We want to nurture that. When we set limits, we're thinking about our relationship is like forever, right? Hopefully we're going to know our child for the rest of our lives. And we want to put deposits in that relationship bank account so that when we set some limits, we might have to set, make a withdrawal. They're there, right? So start with that strong connection. Have deposits in the Relationship Bank Account.
In Mindful Parenting, I teach parents how to set those limits using the kind of skillful language that doesn't, offer blame and shame, right? So with empathy, the point is to see it from their point of view and offer some genuine empathy for how they're feeling while setting the limit. And then think about only setting the limits we need to set. Like little kids, I feel for them because every second of the day someone is telling them what to do, what to wear, when to do it, and they have so little autonomy. So what's necessary, right? Safety for themselves and others is necessary. and respect for themselves and others. But these things we have to learn and our kids brains are still developing. So we have to expect them to mess up and expect them to make mistakes and have that grounding in ourselves, have that foundation in ourselves, which is what we teach in that whole first part of Mindful Parenting, to have that mindful foundation so that we aren't triggered, so that we can be there to instead teach and mentor them.
How do we teach and mentor? First we do it for them, next we do it with them, side by side, we do that, do it with them, next we watch them do it, and then finally we let them do it. So it isn't just we do it for them, then we let them do it. We teach them. Whether this is emotional, dealing with strong emotions, or it's peeling the carrots, okay? Whether it's wiping the counter, or it's getting out the door. First, we do it for them, then we do it with them, then we watch them do it, and then we let them do it. Right now, I'm at the stage of letting them walk home alone on their own, right? Gotta let them do it. Gotta let them experience that. But first, I did it for them. And I did it with them, and then I'm, I've been, now I'm in this stage of watching them do it, right? Watching them cross that street, that busy street near me, and then I'm going to let them do it. And this is, that is the format of helping our kids, teaching and mentoring them and working ourselves out of a job, which is our job, right?
Setting those boundaries, a few tips for that. We can allow for the natural consequence. Even though this is, may not be how we were raised, we may have been raised with punishment, but the truth is we don't need to add layers of blame and shame or pain onto experiences when our children mess up. They naturally usually feel pretty bad or guilty when they make a mistake. And we talk about how to use that, how to. Use that language in mindful parenting that is skillful so that we can let our kids know what are the effects of their actions. But a natural consequence is anything that happens naturally with no adult interference, right? So when you stand in the rain, you get wet. When you don't eat, you get hungry. When you forget your coat, you get cold. And so we don't need to lecture and scold, say, I told you oh my God, it's so hard for me to not say I told you I'm so working on that. Or do anything else that adds more blame, shame, or pain, right? We don't need to. We just don't need to. Kids are pretty smart. They figure this stuff out. And so even though natural consequences are really helpful in helping kids learn responsibility, just want to say here that there are a few times when they are not practical. Of course, when a child is in danger, right? We can't allow a child to experience the natural consequence of playing in the street.
When a natural consequence interferes with the rights of others, right? So we can't allow the natural consequence of allowing a child to throw rocks at another person or throw sand. At another person, right? And this is why we really need a lot of supervision for kids under the age of four. And then number three, of course, when the results of the behavior don't seem like a problem to them, but are actually going to adversely affect them, like their health and well being. For example, bedtimes, eating a bunch of junk food, taking baths, seems like stuff like that. So we have to, how do we help our kids in those moments? Many times we simply insist. And in my family, we always do our responsibilities and responsibilities we have taking care of ourselves, our home, and each other before we have fun stuff. Those are natural consequences in our house, right? That the fun extra stuff, like the screen times, they wait until after those responsibilities. So allow for those natural consequences. Hold those limits with empathy. Because the other ways of doing it those, and as you've pulled your limits with empathy, as you teach your children, and they start to see that you genuinely see what they're feeling, it takes the emotion way down. And they are so much more likely to cooperate with you when, you're connecting with them on a person to person level and not barking orders at them all the time, right? And so we work on that language in Mindful Parenting.
So we talked about what are your goals for your child, we talked about whether, do we want 100 percent obedience, we talked about, if punishment works and what children actually learn from punishment. We talked about the problems with punishment, how it can be psychologically damaging, how it makes children more self centered, it teaches children to lie, it doesn't teach children good behavior. We talked about permissive parenting and the problems with that, and we talked about the middle path of discipline, right? Holding those limits with empathy, and teaching and mentoring, and allowing for natural consequences.
Hey, thank you so much for listening. I can't wait to hear your “a-ha”s. Did you learn anything from this today? If you have, be sure to head over to
MindfulMamaMentor.com. I'm wishing you a beautiful week. I'm so thankful for your ears. Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, be sure to share it.
We, this is information we need to spread. It really helps change things for a whole generation, right? We can start to shift things for generations, and you can be part of that, and I really want you to be part of that. And I wish you a beautiful week, my friend. Thanks so much for listening. Guess what? Next week, we are going to be talking, we're going to have another amazing episode with an incredible person that I'm so thrilled to talk to, Oren Jay Sofer. We're going to have an episode on how to talk to kids. He wrote an amazing book that I've been recommending, and we are actually going to be doing a giveaway too.
So be sure to come back next week and listen to that. All right. Have a great week. Sending you all my love. Namaste.
Mindful Mama Members: I'd say definitely do it. It's really helpful. It will change your relationship with your kids for the better. It will help you communicate better. And just, I'd say communicate better as a person, as a wife, as a spouse. It's been really a positive influence in our lives, so definitely do it.
I'd say definitely do it. It's so worth it. The money really is inconsequential when you get so much benefit from being a better parent to your children and feeling like you're connecting more with them and not feeling like you're yelling all the time or you're like why isn't things working. I would say definitely do it. It's so worth it. It'll change you. No matter what age someone's child is, it's a great opportunity for personal growth and it's a great investment in someone's family. You can continue in your old habits that aren't working, or you can learn some new tools and gain some perspective to shift everything in your parenting.
Hunter: Are you frustrated by parenting? Do you listen to the experts and try all the tips and strategies, but you're just not seeing the results that you want? Or are you lost as to where to start? Does it all seem so overwhelming with too much to learn? Are you yearning for community people who get it, who also don't want to threaten and punish to create cooperation?
Hi, I'm Hunter Clarke-Fields and if you answered yes to any of these questions, I want you to seriously consider the Mindful Parenting membership. You will be joining hundreds of members who have discovered the path of mindful parenting, and now have confidence and clarity in their parenting. This isn't just another parenting class.
This is an opportunity to really discover your unique, lasting relationship. Not only with your children, but with yourself. It will translate into lasting, connected relationships, not only with your children, but your partner too. Let me change your life. Go to mindfulparentingcourse.com to add your name to the waitlist.
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