It
is generally accepted that corporal punishment cannot be used to discipline
children because it is abusive causing not only physical pain and damage but
also negative emotional and severe traumatic damage. The same negative effects
may be caused by how we restrain children who are out of control, put them in
time-outs especially for longer periods and also verbal abuse in the form of
yelling, shouting, threatening and criticizing. How much more so, when we
deal with young children, toddlers and infants who are the most vulnerable of
children. Educators acknowledge that punishments and threats, causing children
to suffer does not help change their future behavior and at most elicits only temporary
compliance. Punishments, even if we use the euphemism " consequences"
just generates anger, defiance and desire for revenge. Moreover, it models the use of
power rather than reason and ruptures the important relationship between adult
and child. Crucial to the development of young children is their
learning to trust a caring adult and learn from them." There are many terrible things in this world, but the worst is when a
child as afraid of his father, mother, or teacher. He fears them, instead of
loving and trusting them. If a child trusts you with his secret, be grateful.
For his confidence is the highest prize." -Janusz Korczak Unfortunately, many children may look well-behaved, they are not self-regulated
, it is fear.
The
behavioral strategies to challenging behaviors focus on time-outs and token
economy systems using rewards include praise. Time-outs are still problematic
because they are perceived by children as punitive and hence cause more stress
and emotional dysregulation. Allan Kazdin says the research recommends maximum
time-outs of 2 minutes. Howard Glasser sees a time-out as an opportunity to
change gears and can be seconds. The child gets a reward for calming down and
doing a quick time out. Rewards are also problematic because they are also
experienced as controlling, rewards punish when a kid fails to get a reward and
they also generate more anxiety in children. Rewards often " hijack "
the problem, undermine intrinsic motivation, fail to deal with the underlying
problems and teach kids lacking skills. The focus of rewards and punishments is
compliance and addressing the adults need from control. They don't support the
needs of children, in fact they thwart those needs. Children need to feel
unconditionally loved because of who they are and not what they do. Kids
receive more love and attention when they do well and learn that acceptance is
conditional. Trying to manipulate people or even kids to do things one wants is
not moral. I remember a teacher feeling terrible for a kid who was given a
piece of chocolate for every time he complied- part of some ABA treatment ,
treating him as if he was a pet dog. A
mother also complained about rewards in the ABA program – instead of building
relationship and intrinsic motivation, the reward offered the child the
opportunity to stop what he was doing for a preferred activity and also at the
expense of connection with his mother.
The
alternatives to rewards and punishments, " doing to " children is
" working with" children
include focusing on healthy attachments, being receptive to the child's needs
especially in stressful situations and solving problems in a collaborative way
with children so that the solutions are mutually satisfactory and address the
underlying problems. According to Ross Greene – Collaborative and Pro-active Solutions,
CPS , challenging behavior arises when
the demands placed on the child outstrip the skills the child has to respond in
an adaptive and flexible manner. In general these kids lack crucial problem
solving skills to be adaptive and tolerate frustration. The process of collaborative
problem solving not only solves the problem , but solves in a way that the
child is picking up various cognitive skills, relationship and trust between
the adult and the child is enhanced and we are supporting the autonomy of the
child instead of fixing the child. This occurs when we try to see the problem from the
perspective of the child, when we drill-down to understand their concerns and
they share in generating the solution. The forerunner of problem solving
approaches is Myrna Shure's "I can
problem solve " program and book " Raising a thinking child. Based on
25 years of research the approach does not teach children what and what not to
do and why, but rather , it teaches them how to think so they can decide for
themselves what and what not to do and why. The process involves teaching the
vocabulary for problem solving including " word pairs ". Myrna Shure
says her approach works for kids as young as three. Ross Greene says that
children as young as three have a problem solving vocabulary, but we in fact
collaboratively problem solving with non-verbal toddlers and infants. Observing
their behavior, their chief mode of communication gives us an idea and clues
about their needs and concerns. We
respond to their cues- cries, laughter ,
their facial and other non-verbal language with our words, and plenty of
non-verbal language .It is detective work , but it is collaborative. While a
child's verbal skills may be lacking , their language receptive skills are more
advanced so we can help them use sign language – thumbs up or thumbs down, the
five finger method , the colors of the zones of regulation to help a child communicate how he is feeling. We can narrow the
focus by using Yes/No questions, then ask , can you tell me more ? We can make
tentative suggestions about what we think is the concern or problem and then
ask a Yes/no question. We can suggest solutions. We can use the work of Myrna Shure to teach collaborative problem solving language, a vocabulary to express needs , concerns or a perspective, feelings etc . We can use google pictures depicting problems
and possible solutions.https://www.livesinthebalance.org/art-for-problems-and-solutions https://www.livesinthebalance.org/art-for-problems-and-solutions Problem solving is a slow process in which we need to
give the child a time to think and not rush them into a solution. We need to
then role play the solution, show them the procedures of doing things. And let
them role play. Problem solving of course is best out of the moment. Out of the
moment we can also focus on building skills and bonding- creating relationship
by using guided participation , joint attention in the various activities in
the home or garden. R.D.I – Relationship Development interventions helps the
child to see the parent as an ally and seek their guidance.
Mona
Delahooke explains why rewards , consequences fail and what the child needs is
co-regulation. Her work is based on Brain science of Dr Dan Siegel - https://www.themontessorinotebook.com/summary-of-the-whole-brain-child/https://www.themontessorinotebook.com/summary-of-the-whole-brain-child/ and Stuart Shanker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJRtbcChy0Y
Co-regulation means engaging a child emotionally with empathy and slowly trying to direct a child away from his emotional brain to using his prefontal-cortex , so thinking can take place.
https://monadelahooke.com/toddler-tantrums-help-neuroscience/ https://monadelahooke.com/toddler-tantrums-help-neuroscience/
Co-regulation means engaging a child emotionally with empathy and slowly trying to direct a child away from his emotional brain to using his prefontal-cortex , so thinking can take place.
https://monadelahooke.com/toddler-tantrums-help-neuroscience/ https://monadelahooke.com/toddler-tantrums-help-neuroscience/
https://monadelahooke.com/child-discipline-time-to-shift-the-lens/monadelahooke.com/child-discipline-time-to-shift-the-lens
The
Monitor on Psychology’s October 2019 article, “Teaming Up to Change Child
Discipline” described how parenting advice such as “spare the rod and spoil the
child” is now debunked and outdated. This is an important shift, considering
that 60% of children aged 3-4 in the US are
spanked by their parents. In regards to the progress we’ve made in the
parenting arena, the article cites alternative approaches including, The Incredible
Years, Triple P-Positive Parenting, and “1-2-3 Magic” as more progressive.
Here’s where I disagree. All of these approaches, including the publicly funded
Parent- Child Interaction Training (PCIT) condone time-outs as a modern
parenting disciplinary tool. Our interventions will depend on knowing the difference between top-down and bottom-up
behaviors.
Bottom-up behaviors are instinctual and unintentional. They are
survival-based stress responses, and operate through the activation of the
brain’s threat-detection system. Infants only have bottom-up behaviors. They
are called bottom-up because they come from cues in the body and areas of the
brain that are driven by instincts.
Top-down behaviors are deliberate and intentional. Top-down
thinking and behaviors develop over many years through connections to the prefrontal
cortex of the brain. They are called top-down because they are literally driven
by the top part of our bodies, the “executive function” center of our brain.
These two types of behaviors have completely different causes
and should lead to very different solutions depending on the type of behavior. But this isn’t
happening. Too many approaches to helping behaviorally challenged children and
teens are based on the assumption that all challenging behaviors are alike.
And the main way we solve them? Punishment.
·
Me - the top down behavior may be
influenced by rewards and punishments but only to the extent of short term
compliance , usually feeling compelled and forced , displaying amotivation .
This brings us back to the question of motivation and in particular intrinsic
motivation - when kids needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness are met ,
kids will be more self determined and their well being advanced- Self
Determination theory. So with bottom up behavior rewards and consequences won't
even buy short-term compliance and behavior behavior.
I don’t
believe time-outs are progressive because we know more about human behaviors
than ever before. We now know through brain and developmental science that
there’s something even more foundational than teaching or discipline. It’s
called emotional co-regulation. The shift I propose is understanding
that emotional co-regulation (helping the child’s emotional journey causing the
behavioral challenge) is the new paradigm.
While
time-outs were a leap forward from corporal methods such as spanking, they rely
on a false assumption: that all behaviors are motivated and incentivized and
thus susceptible to teaching the child a lesson. This is a false assumption
because many childhood behaviors are not the result of
deliberate malintent or misbehavior, but are instinctive responses to
stress. When children can’t connect to caring adults to reduce their
subconscious perception of threat, they experience stress responses, which
often show up as behavioral challenges.
The
popular programs described in the Monitor’s article are agnostic of the
powerful force of the autonomic nervous system on childhood behaviors. This
popular paradigm views all behaviors as incentivized and motivated, rather
than instinctual and safety-seeking. When we view behaviors from
the lens of safety-seeking, we find that soothing the child through our gentle
interactions (emotional co-regulation) is the answer, not issuing consequences.
Relational safety and the neuroception of safety sets the floor
and then we do what the parent and child need in the moment to stay safe, and
feel calm enough to think.
The
Monitor article thus fails to ask the most important question when it comes to
discipline: is this a purposeful misbehavior or a response to autonomic stress?
If it is a response to stress, then any technique that blames
a child’s intentions—will be ineffective. The reason? All
techniques that degrade the social engagement system increase autonomic
distress. The parenting programs mentioned in the article suggest
time-outs when a child’s behaviors increase in severity or the child doesn’t
respond to positive reinforcement. On the contrary, in the shift I’m
proposing, when a child’s behaviors increase in severity, that’s a sign that
the child needs more engagement and not less.
ME-
More engagement of course means we don't impose our help on the child if our
attempts to calm him down, just escalate the child's emotional reactions. A
time-out is forced isolation and separation. Leaving a child , but sitting
close by without intervening except by offering a child something to drink or a
snack, or asking if he would like to calm down in a / his " comfort corner
" is not time-out. We are still providing the conditions to help the child
self-regulate.
I
respectfully submit that many popular “evidence-based” parenting programs are
working from a simplistic model that measures compliance and other easily
tested outward signs of “progress” but leave out the child’s physiology. A
child may look more compliant after a time out, but will likely also be more
stressed internally.
So what
can we do to update parenting practices for behavior challenges? Replace them
with tools that are inclusive of the human drive to feel safe. The
message for teachers, administrators, and parents: Instead of trying to
extinguish unwanted behaviors, we should shift our paradigm from behavioral
compliance to physiological safety. As a clinician, I have found that the
subconscious perception of threat underlies most challenging behaviors, and the
solution isn’t through a time-out or “counting to three,” but through social
engagement. As Alexander Van Hiejer says, “When a flower
doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
It's about bringing a neurodevelopmental lens to our
outdated methods of working with children's challenges. Mainstream psychology
hasn't kept up with neuroscience and is still enamored with behaviorism and
reinforcement schedules. Until we realize that the intervening variable of
physiological state influences a child's behaviors, and that emotional
co-regulation is the pathway to resilience, providers will continue to use
outdated models that don't place emotions and relationships at the center of
all interventions.
I share
more about how we can understand and support children in my latest book, Beyond Behaviors.