As a parent you should NOT punish your kids.

I thank Con for her response. "It is the responsibility of the parent to ensure that their child is aware that negative things may happen to them if they break laws and/or social codes. The best way to do this is to instill discipline, starting at an early age. Since the later you wait to start, the harder it is. Numerous studies show an inverse link between child discipline and criminal activity [1][2]."Punishing your child does nothing to instill life-long discipline. Punishment is only effective in the presence of the punisher. If it worked so well, there wouldn't be as many troublesome kids as there are today. Most people punish their children, yet most children act bad. If this concept worked so well, why do we continue to see issues? Discipline can take many other forms that does not include punishment. "Discipline vs. Punishment To discipline effectively, think about these ideas: 1. Effective discipline methods work better than punishment in teaching children how to behave. 2. The more parents use effective discipline methods, the less children need punishment. 3. There is no excuse for using physical or verbal punishment to discipline a child. 4. Using consequences as a discipline method helps children learn to take responsibility for their behavior. 5. Consequences must be logically related to the misbehavior. 6. The child must see the relationship between his misbehavior and the consequences or it will not work. 7. The child must know he has a choice when consequences are used. 8. Use consequences in a firm, kind, friendly manner. [1]"As you can see, there is a difference between punishment and discipline. Look at it this way: kids and dogs are very much alike in some ways. Just like you should never hit or shout at your dog, you should not do so to a child. Animal trainers will tell you that you should never punish your animal, only give it positive reinforcement. In the same manner, you should do this with your child. Of course, kids can talk back and understand a lot more than a dog, so you should also explain matter of factly to them why what they did was wrong. Another situation: "Kristin left her dirty clothes on the floor and never placed them in the dirty clothes bag as mother requested. Nagging, scolding, and threatening did no good. Kristin continued to leave her dirty clothes on the floor. Mother decided to use logical consequences. She told Kristin, in a firm and friendly voice, that in the future she would wash only clothes that were placed in the bag. After five days, Kristin had no clean clothes to wear to school and she was very unhappy to have to wear dirty, rumpled clothes. After that, Kristin remembered to place her clothes in the bag. [1]"As you can see in the above situation, punishment doesn't really work. It is only when you leave it to the "universe" to punish your child that they will begin to really change their ways. That, I'd say, is true discipline-- the kind they will carry with them into their futures. I agree with Con that children need discipline to be happy in their homes, but I do not agree that punishment equals discipline. Thank you, and I await our next round. :) [1]http://pubs.ext.vt.edu...