Child Discipline: Spanking and Yelling Part 3
By Dr. Coach Love
In my last blog on Messages #1 through #3, I provided information on the potential backfiring of specific lessons that seem to come with spanking and yelling. These entries take a look at the negative Rules of Engagement and how they get translated later into problems for the parent/adolescent relationship.
Review the first three and continue with these. Then think about how they could apply to you. Remember, we are talking about the messages from spanking and yelling, which may be interpreted by kids in a way not intended by parents.
Message #4- Escalate the situation to get what you want. When parents resort to yelling or physical contact to gain compliance, they have demonstrated how to escalate in order to prevail. Have you ever seen a teen or preteen in full blown tantrum mode when they do not get what they want?
Parenting Opportunity Missed: Negotiating and compromising as a means to conflict resolution.
Message #5-Disagreements are win/lose. Adolescents are often described as arguing and pushing back about everything in an aggressive effort to WIN. Where did they learn this? I believe this usually originates early in parent-child relationship patterns, especially when parents get aggressive during attempts at discipline. Aggression from parents usually occurs when they buy into the impossible belief, “I MUST make my child do what I say. They are not going to win their way.”
Parenting Opportunity Missed: Learning respect and tolerance for
differences of opinion and the ability proceed to a solution without
agreement.
Message #6-Power struggles are necessary. Teens and preteens adapt this negative rule of engagement with parents when they persist in an angry power struggle in an effort to wear parents down in a manner similar to the way their parents wore them down as a younger child. It can become the survival of the ‘stubbornnest’. Is that what you are going for here? Trying to strip your child of power is counterproductive.
Parenting Opportunity Missed: Preserving individual rights for choice, taking responsibility for decision making, limits on personal empowerment, and acceptance of natural consequences.
In Parts 4 & 5, I will offer more parent coaching tips. Check back over the next few weeks in my blog for more discussion on yelling and spanking as discipline strategies. What do you think?
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Regards,
Dr. Coach Love
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© Copyright 2009 P.H. Pickett, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
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