In order to better understand exactly what is different about our attachment approach, it helps to take a look at various other methods of discipline. Discipline methods fall into three categories:the authoritarian style, the communication approach, and the behaviour modification approach. All three of these ways of guiding children’s behaviour have strengths and weaknesses. In twenty-two years of experience in handling discipline problems in paediatric practice, and in disciplining eight children of our own, we have found that all three of these approaches are useful at different times, though by themselves they are not enough.
The authoritarian style. The traditional way of disciplining, authoritarianism, focuses on parents as authority figures whom children must obey or face the consequences. As one authoritarian father put it: “I’m the dad, he’s the child, and that’s that! I don’t need this modern psychology stuff. If he gets out of line, I’ll show him who’s boss.” With this style of parenting, smacking is considered appropriate, even necessary. The good part of this approach is that it makes it clear that parents must take charge of their children. Many of today’s discipline problems result from adults avoiding responsibility for the behaviour of their children. Children need wise authority figures in order to learn what to do and what not to do. Authority will always be an important part of the discipline package.
Yet many problems can occur with authoritarian parenting. For one, the child can fail to feel the parents’ love. The child can also internalize fear of the parents’ power to the point that it controls her life, even in adulthood. Most important, however, is that when it is used as the sole method of discipline, authoritarianism simply doesn’t work. There are several reasons for this. First, it causes parents to focus so much on stamping out the bad in their children that they tend to overlook the good. Also, the emphasis on punishment keeps parents from learning more appropriate ways to correct their children, ways that could lessen the necessity for punishment in the first place. Worst of all with authoritarian discipline, children behave more out of fear of punishment than desire to please. As a result, they develop no inner controls. Once the controllers’ backs are turned, the controllees can run wild. They may not throw their toys on the floor as adults, but they will lack the inner discipline needed to motivate and control themselves when there is no threat of dire consequences.
The authoritarian style regards discipline as something you do to a child, not a learning
discipline is therapeutic
Disciplining a child, especially a difficult child, brings out the best and the worst in parents. It challenges them to act like the adults they want their children to become. Thus, in disciplining your child, you discipline yourself. To fix your child’s behaviour, you must fix your own. As you train your child, you train yourself. Yet childish behaviour can also push buttons that produce irrational reactions in parents. Understanding your child’s feelings and your reactions to them can lead to greater self-understanding. Disciplining your child becomes a personal discovery in how you were parented. A mother once told us, “I notice my own mother’s voice coming out of my mouth.” Problems from your past may surface in your relationship with your child and infect your ability to discipline. If you had a childhood full of dysfunctional discipline, you are at risk of passing on these problems. The desire to discipline well compels you to heal the unhealthy parts of yourself so that you can be a healthy parent to your child.
process you go through with a child. The newborn who cries a lot is seen as a tyrant whose noises should be squelched rather than as a little person who needs help. The toddler is a manipulator who is out to dominate the parents if they aren’t careful. This sets up an adversarial relationship between parent and child, and confuses taking charge of the child with controlling the child. Authoritarianism creates a distance between parent and child, for two reasons: it is based on punishment, which can easily create anger, and thus distance the child from the parent, and it makes little or no allowance for the temperament or developmental level of the child. Wise disciplinarians become students of their children and work to know their children well. Controllers often find this consideration demeaning to their authority and therefore do not believe it belongs in their discipline package. Because authoritarian parenting is not geared to the child as an individual, this style of parenting seldom brings out the best in parents and child, even when a warm heart is behind the heavy hand.
The communication approach. This philosophy teaches that communicative rather than punitive parenting is the way to discipline. Dissatisfaction with the authoritarian/ punishment approach to discipline spawned several schools of discipline based on teaching parents how to better communicate with their children. Most of today’s discipline books and classes are based on this approach. This philosophy suggests there are no bad children, just bad communication; and that children are basically good; parents just have to learn how to listen and talk to them. The good news about this “modern” approach is that it respects the child as a person whose actions result from feelings and encourages parents to delve into the feelings behind the behaviour. Parents learn constructive ways to convey to their children what behaviour they expect. Parents also use empathy and understanding to create a generally positive atmosphere in the home, so they can limit the use of the word “no”. The communication approach emphasizes parenting skills that lessen the need for punishment. Psychology replaces punishment. Smacking is taboo.
The main problem with the communication approach is that parents tend to lose their authority, instead taking on the roles of amateur psychologist, negotiator, and diplomat. Children may end up not respecting authority because their parents do not expect them to. This lack of respect for home authority carries over into lack of respect for others, including, for example, teachers and police officers. And if it is overused, most children regard this approach as phoney. The dialogue sounds like nothing more than a list of emotionally correct phrases mum and dad learned at last night’s parenting class, not true communication at all. Instead of saying, “Don’t hit your brother”, communicative parents tend to address their child’s feelings: “You must be very angry with your brother.” This sounds right, and to many parents feels right, but what happens if after identifying his anger the child continues to hit? What do you do then? Another problem is that parents often become so worried that they will damage their child’s psyche if they don’t react in the “psychologically correct” way, that they end up unwilling to take a stand. This style of discipline, therefore, runs the risk of being over-permissive.
The behaviour modification approach. Behaviour “mod”, as it is known, teaches that children’s behaviour can be influenced positively and negatively according to how parents structure their child’s environment. If the child continues to hit other children even after you have given him all of the psychologically correct communication you can provide, you simply remove him from the group. Most children respond well to behaviour modification; some regard the techniques as contrived. Although somewhat mechanistic in its approach (it’s strikingly similar to training pets), behaviour modification gives parents techniques, such as time-out, positive reinforcement, and the teaching of natural consequences, which can be called on when the authoritarian and communication approaches are not working. Behaviour modification may be especially useful for children with emotional problems or difficult temperaments who don’t respond to other methods. The trainer