Why Using Threats and Punishments Doesn’t Work In Raising Self-Confident, Emotionally Healthy Children 

Although punitive parenting methods cause children to comply in the short term, they deeply harm the parent-child connection in the long term. Additionally, enforcing consequences affects children’s self-worth and self-esteem. These punitive methods, which can be more specifically described as Achievement-Oriented Parental Control (AOC), have negative effects on both emotional and psychological wellbeing in children:

“Controlling parental behavior was found to have negative effects on major markers of poor socio-emotional development such as depressive feelings, behavior problems, poor conscience development, and noncompliance with parents" (e.g., Assor et al., 2014; Barber et al., 2005; Kim et al., 2014; Kochanska et al., 2019; Olson et al., 2002; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010; Soenens et al., 2005).

According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), children feel that their need for autonomy is impeded when their parents get them to act in specific ways. These control-oriented parenting methods do not have to be severe to have the same negative effects upon children:

“While AOC includes these punitive practices, it also includes milder forms of control. For example, commands and repeated reminders to behave as expected that are not accompanied by threats, and non-violent physical interventions (e.g., holding and directing the child's hand to ensure success in the task), and unsolicited premature help.”

Of course enforcing consequences in parenting is effective in ‘getting a certain behavior goal met,’ but only for as long as children decide to comply based on punishments and short-term rewards. The question we must ask is why we want a certain behavior from our child, and in only wanting compliance with that behavior, whether we’re missing the barriers that interfere with our child’s willingness to naturally cooperate.

Effective Alternatives to Enforcing Consequences

Encourage Empathy

It may seem counterintuitive, but when kids act out, it is actually due to an unmet need. Because of their current states of neurological development, the ways in which children communicate do not look like the ways adults communicate. Children resort to communicating their unmet needs through yelling, tantrums, outbursts, talking back, and more, depending on age and their current state of cognitive development.

Our job as parents is to help our children learn how to identify their emotions and coach them through their emotions. The shift here is instead of looking at the behavior, we use empathy to get into the child’s shoes and view what’s happening from their perspective. When we respond with empathy instead of consequences, we can build a more positive relationship with our child and help them learn to regulate their emotions. According to self determination theory:

“Central to autonomy support is the idea that interactions between parent and child begin with empathy, with understanding and respect for the child’s points of view (or internal frame of reference) in relation to any important event. Responsive and empathic parents consider their child’s experience. Because there is understanding, when limits must be set on behavior, there is readily an acknowledgement of potential contrary feelings and a supportive approach.”

 Empathy can be shown in a variety of ways:

• Listening without judgment
• Validating how the child is feeling
• Offering comfort and supporting them through big feelings
• Asking gentle questions about what they think led to the behavior

Not only does using empathy in the relationship we have with our children create safety and honesty for them, it also creates safety and honesty within ourselves. Empathy can open the door to building self-regulation, having acceptance of our own emotions, and practicing positive self-talk, which has a huge impact on how we talk to our children and loved ones.

Set Boundaries and Clear Expectations

When setting boundaries with children, it is crucial to understand where your child is at in their neurological development, as each individual child will be different. When tensions run high, bring awareness to where they are at regulation-wise in the present moment and with this, create your expectations accordingly. For example, it may not be an appropriate expectation for your child to listen to your ‘why’ to the boundary when they are having a meltdown, they may need various modes of emotional support instead.

When communicating your limit, be clear and warm in explaining the why behind it. Enter into the conversation with a willingness to stay rooted in a firm no if necessary, and remain open to allowing your child to collaborate and negotiate. You as the parent decide what boundaries to stay firm or flexible in, and those limits all have to do with your own intentional contemplation.

It is ok to experience pushback from your child when there is a firm no or non-negotiable limit. Embrace and expect a pushback, a desire for more information, and a big release of feelings. You can rest assured that this is a sign of normal cognitive development coming from your child, not a sign of disrespect towards you or your limits. We can support them in their big feelings while also upholding important limits.

Some may question this, as it may come across as ‘letting bad behavior go.’ Wouldn’t this reinforce the ‘bad behavior’ if we do not enforce punishment?

We can feel safe in embracing the process of our child learning the limit. Don’t expect immediate perfection, and do expect lots and lots of reminders and practice! Again, this is not about enforcing punishment, this is about us modeling the desired behavior and having age-appropriate expectations of each individual child.

Empowered Conversation

While communicating with our children in the case of an undesired behavior, we can hold two priorities:

1. Allowing them to feel seen and heard in their perspective;

2. Encouraging their own problem-solving skills to be practiced, when reminding them of the value or limit (as opposed to enforcing a solution or limit in the name of “because I said so”).

Along with showing up for children with empathy, giving them the opportunity to access their own problem-solving skills enhances their personal need and willingness to step into their autonomy:

“Autonomy supportive parents nurture inner motivational resources, rely on flexible language when communicating with their child, and provide explanatory rationales for why it may be personally important or useful for a child to engage in a behavior” (Reeve 2009).

As parents, we can practice allowing our child(ren) to step into autonomy through setting up the right environment:

“Autonomy supportive environments are characterized primarily by parents’ acknowledgement of children’s perspectives, encouragement of children to experiment, provision of opportunity to make choices, and minimal use of controlling language and contingencies with children.” (Deci and Ryan 2012).

  Some examples of autonomy-supportive questioning include:

- What do you think might happen if…?

- How would you feel if this happened to you?

- How do you think this made (person) feel?

- What do you think is a possible way to fix this?

When we ask these kinds of questions, we are helping our kids learn how to think about the consequences of their behaviors. This is a huge shift from enforcing solutions and consequences, to allowing them to learn natural consequences and how to solve problems on their own (of course, with our loving support).

Allow Kids to Learn from Natural Consequences (When It’s Safe!)

While using enforced consequences is harmful to children, accessing natural consequences has the opposite effect. Through supporting our children as they learn from natural consequences, they not only further absorb the lessons learned, but also develop their problem-solving skills and autonomy. Natural consequences are necessary in the learning process.

In essence, by accessing natural consequences and supporting our children through the learning process, we are instilling discipline in our children rather than enforcing discipline. Instead of having our children rely on us to provide solutions for them, we teach them to be self-disciplined.

Allowing children to learn from natural consequences doesn’t look like allowing our child loose in a dangerous street or in any potentially harmful situation. We are always here to protect our children and ultimately be their parent. But within our parenting role, there is no need to enforce discipline, consequences, and punishments on our children in order for them to learn lessons.

We can’t make our children learn lessons, but we can teach them through modeling how to respond to challenges and allowing them to take ownership for the natural consequences to their actions.

How No Longer Enforcing Consequences Positively Affects the Parent-Child Relationship

Creates Positive Coping Skills and Confidence

When we allow children to step into their own autonomous problem-solving rather than telling them what to do, they begin to build confidence within themselves and the ways that they can solve problems on their own:

“In particular, a growing body of research has suggested that parents who interact with their children in ways that support their experience of autonomy or feeling that their actions are their own (Deci and Ryan 1987) may be particularly effective in supporting adaptive psychological, social, and academic outcomes, including psychosocial functioning (Chirkov and Ryan 2001; Ferguson et al. 2011) and academic achievement (Strage and Brandt 1999).”

If we were to keep making solutions for our kids, how could they ever learn? Learning how to solve problems on their own not only nurtures a better relationship with a child’s self-confidence, it also sets them up for success going out into the world and knowing within themselves that they can create positive change. Allowing for natural consequences allows children to step into their own leadership.

Encourages More Cooperation

When our children feel safe with us, they are much more likely to cooperate:

“When parents make the effort to express the reasons for requesting or requiring specific behaviors, it typically results (at least in the long term) not only in more cooperation but also in fuller internalization (see, e.g., Green-Demers, Pelletier, Stewart, & Gushue, 1998; Jang, 2008; Koestner et al., 1984).”

When we as parents explain our limits and continually model our empathy, respect, and support, we earn the trust of our children in knowing that we want the best for them. This means our children are much more apt to listen and cooperate with what we have to say.

Builds Deeper Trust and Connection

When we show our kids that we’re here for them no matter what, we gain their deep trust. Through allowing them to learn on their own through natural consequences and by empathically supporting them along the way, we can build a deep bond with our children:

“Parents who empathically attempt to understand the barriers from the children or adolescents’ internal frame of reference are in a better position to help their children identify, cope with, and overcome the perceived barriers, obstacles, or concerns, as well as to better understand whatever contrary aims and agendas the children may have.”

We’re parents to our children for much longer than while they’re kids. In fact, we’ll have a much longer relationship with our children while they are adults than when they are children. While it is never too late to mend and build connection, it is never too early to begin to allow children to feel safe and connected to us by moving away from enforcing punishments. Trust and connection between us and our children lasts a lifetime when it is rooted in empathy, honesty, and emotional resilience.

Builds Intrinsic Motivation in Children

By stepping away from enforcing consequences, and stepping into accessing natural consequences for our children’s learning, we help build intrinsic motivation in our children.

While enforcing discipline and consequences on our children creates resentment, fear, and avoidance towards us and kills self-trust towards themselves, using non-punitive tools gives children the confidence and trust to become the leaders of this world. As their teachers, we get to arm them with the tools to step into their fullest leadership.

As Daniel H. Pink so wisely said, “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

The Next Steps in Moving Away from Enforcing Consequences

Enforcing consequences can be deeply ingrained into all of us, even if we have made the commitment to stepping away from the dominant model of parenting. Stepping away from using punishments and consequences takes a major commitment to leadership in our own parenting, but with that commitment comes raising the next generation of incredible leaders.

At Jai, we know that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to follow through on this alone, which is why we have a tight-knit community of parenting coaches that are not only coaching parents through this work every day, but also experience this work hands-on with their own children.

If you feel called to step away from the old, dominant model of parenting and into a more transformative parenting model, consider becoming a Jai certified parenting coach today!