Discipline and Punishment…..

This is my 4th attempt at writing this blog post and each time I start out stating all the facts about this story I can't quite get it to go where I want it to. I think I'm just trying too hard to sound like a serious and important writer, which I realized I'm not! But here I am trying it again mostly cause I feel like I can't move on until I get this out and I have a whole line up of posts I've been planning to do for a while now. So, here I am, trying it one last time and this time I'm hoping I get it right!


You might have heard about this story a couple of weeks back; a story about the Alaskan mother of 6, Jessica Beagley, who went on the Dr. Phil show back in November and confessed she has a hard time discipling her children.  Out of her 6 children 2, who are twins, were adopted from Russia and Mrs. Beagley confessed that one of the twins is the hardest of all of them to discipline. With that confession Mrs. Beagley brought with her to the show home videos of her feeding the young boy hot sauce for lying and of her forcing her son to take a cold shower for getting 3 infractions at school. 


I first heard about this story on the Today Show where they interviewed a pediatrician and a psychiatrist who were both appalled at the mother's actions. At first, if I'm going to be honest, I didn't think the hot sauce was all that bad. I was upset at the cold shower. The cold shower felt very much like an out right mean thing to do to a kid. The hot sauce reminded me of when parents punished their kids with bars of soap in their mouths or as Matt Lauer pointed out, there was a time parents made their kids drink caster oil as punishment too. Parents are told to use hot sauce as a deterrent for thumb sucking so it didn't seem that bad until the 2 interviewee's started to talk about the difference between discipling and punishing. 


The overall view was that we want to, as parents, to discipline our kids when they do something wrong not punish them. Punishing only lets the kids know that the parents are unhappy with them and teaches kids to fear their parents and the punishment. It doesn't teach the kid to learn from their mistakes, it just teaches them to fear the consequences. Discipling is a way to teach kids the guidelines, rules, right and wrong and parents HELP their kids keep within those lines. 


The interviewee's suggested that instead of using physical punishment like cold showers, hot sauce, spanking, to take toys away or activities or put them in time-out to show that there are consequences to their actions. After hearing this I realized that both the hot sauce and the cold showers were very wrong things to do to kids. Not that I did either to my kids or was I planning on doing either, but the thought that physical punishment only creates fear and teaches nothing. I know that I have created that fear in my kids with swatting their bums and I have realized that all it does when I threaten to swat their bums that I'm only speaking to their fear and not creating an understanding of the situation. Plus, I'm only getting my own anger out about the situation and I'm actually teaching them that hitting is okay, when it's not. I'm going it for all the wrong reasons. 


I know that I need more information on different ways to discipline my kids and new ways to work on my frustration when my kids repeat the same bad choices. That is something that I admit to needing to change. I feel sorry for Mrs. Beagley and the way she decided to admit to her frustrations with her kids. I don't think she really thought through her actions before she put them on tape and sent them into a national television show. She's now being charged with child abuse for a how she treaded her son on the video tapes. People, there are better ways to admit your problems and find help. Putting them out there on a national television show being hosted my someone who calls themselves a doctor but really isn't is not, NOT, the way to do it.  Talking to family therapists, read books, ask friends what they do, and in this case since this woman is Mormon, she could have easily gone to her church leaders and asked for help. 


So, since I'm trying to use this blog as a way to help other mothers and parents do and be the best for their families I've asked my sister to write a blog piece on a parenting style she's recently taken classes on that specializes in how to discipline kids. The method of parenting is called Love and Logic and my sister's post will be up very soon!