You Can Disciplne Children Without Punching and Kicking Them.

Today, I read a post at the Minorities Interests Blog that comes down in favor of corporal discipline, offering a variety of arguments, the least convincing to me of which is the list of citations in the Bible that favor "the rod." (Nowhere does anyone advocate punching and kicking children, but too many people do it anyway.)

But corporal punishment is not an option for me, because I am a step-father (of two adolescent girls). Although their mother yells at them and even shrieks at them when she feels angry and loses patience, if I do them same she tells me that my voice is terribly scary and she doesn't want me to do it anymore.

Although my wife slaps the children when she thinks they have been particularly disobedient or disrespectful (which stimulates me sexually for some crooked reason, even when I only hear it and don't see it occur), yet my wife could never bear to see me physically inflict pain on one of her girls, even though she does a few times a weak. I'm not their father and I have no right, even though I pay the bills and provide the instruction during the 84 hours a week that my wife is at work.

To avoid becoming a doormat in my own home, I have learned some tools of discipline that are clearly within my authority (I say so at least) and that are just as effective as slapping, or more so. Here's a list of alternatives that don't involve corporal punishment but may have even more power to change children's behavior:

- Turn off the television. When my children are watching television and ignore what I'm saying, I immediately turn off the television. I ignore their shrieks that I have turned off the television (of course I have) and I proceed to tell them what my grievance with them is. If we are able to resolve the grievance to my reasonable satisfaction, then I turn the television back on. If not, then it stays off for the rest of the day or for a week, depending upon the severity of the misbehavior and the importance of my grievance.

Fact is, I'm much more interested in changing their future behavior than in punishing them for what they have done in the past. But, punishing present misbehavior is often crucial to establishing limits for future behavior.

For example, although my children would like to disrespect me, they nonetheless want all of my attention for themselves and so they once treated my friends like shit, trying to convince them not to visit me at all. I cannot live without friends, so I cannot permit my children to drive all of my friends away. When they disrespect my friends, I turn off the television for a day and for so long as it takes for them to apologize to the friends whom they have disrespected. When they apologize and when I believe that the apology truly reflects a willingness to change their behavior, then I turn the television back on again.

When I first employed this manner of discipline, they disobedient children turned the television back on themselves, to test me, to test my patience and to see what I would do. So, I cut off the electrical cord to the television and installed an extension cord to which only I have access, and which must be installed in a particular way that only I know how to do.

Once, my youngest daughter tried to install the cord herself and shorted out the cable box. Fine, they spent two weeks without television, during which they were able to reflect upon the importance of making peace with their step-father, through mutual respect, negotiation and accomodation.

The advantage of this punishment is that it saves electricity and obliges the children to do something more useful and less destructive than watching television. (Virtually everything that children can do in our house is more useful and less destructive than watching television.)

Television makes kids fight more and that makes the house unpleasant for adults. When children have a television, they inevitably fight to see who will watch what television show. Since their attention is strictly on the television, they even scream at each other for trying to talk while the television is on. The television has become the master of the home.

When I turn off the television, the children unite in anger and frustration with me, but they suddenly discover that each other's company is their only entertainment. So, they fight less and value each other more. Turn off the television when your children misbehave. It has a world of benefits for you and for them.

- Turn off the lights. Children are typically afraid of the dark. Even if they are not afraid of the dark, they don't want to spend all night in a dark house that has no sounds except the sound of their own breathing, and no activities that cannot be done in near-total darkness.

My children insist on sleeping with the lights on every night, in spite of the added cost (to me) in electricity. I willingly pay this added cost when they respect me and are reasonably obedient. But if they defy me and treat me as though it my obligation to provide them electricity regardless of their behavior, then they re-discover that I have choices, too.

If they don't at least respect my role as the financial provider in the house - the one whose name is on the electricity bill - than I am under no obligation to provide electricity for their night-light. In fact, if they really disobey me, I'll turn off every light in the house until they learn to respect my role in their life. You might say that I leverage my role as the provider of electricity to bootstrap myself up into a role as the provider of discipline.

This works. If I turn off the lights, then first they shriek in fear and indignation, they cry, and then they slowly begin to wonder what it's going to take to make me turn the lights back on again. When I first implemented this discipline, it took a week for this process to occur and for the negotiations to reach fruition. But now that they know that they really do depend upon me for that night-light, the bounds of their misbehavior and insolence have shrunken considerably. Dramatically.

Again, this punishment has the advantage that, without television, the children go to bed earlier and their noise and arguments stop sooner. The house becomes quieter and the electrical bill is less. They rely upon each other for emotional support in the darkness and so they appreciate each other more, which diminishes their arguments.

If you implement this strategy, don't allow any candles. It would be a terrible irony if your attempt to punish your children causes them to accidentally burn your house down. And, if that happens, they will laugh at you and say it was all your fault. If you turn off the electricity, then hide the candles beforehand, as well.

- Don't be afraid to be hated. Children hate anyone (at least sometimes and for a while) who doesn't let them do as they please, for example watching television all night, eating only ice cream for dinner and going into the deep water at the beach before they learn to swim. Unless parents are willing to be disliked by their children, at least sometimes, then the children will lack discipline and maybe even end up killing themselves, because they don't believe you when you tell them of even physical dangers in their surroundings, like the danger of leaving a lit candle on their pillows.

It is much better to have children's respect than to have their approval. If you have their respect, then even when they hate you, you can live in peace and go on with your life. But if you don't have their respect, then you will NEVER live in peace, even in your own home. They will taunt you because is is fun, and they will taunt you to discover the limits of your patience. Only when you earn your children's respect through firm limits and discipline can begin to live in peace with them and with yourself. That's my experience, anyway.

- Turn off the television, not the computer. Each of my children has a computer to use. No matter how angry I am at the children, I don't turn off their computers, as long as they are using the computer safely. The computer is the school where they learn typing, HTML coding, PhotoShop, Voice-Over-Internet (VoIp) communication and many other skills that are essential to their success in school and in future vocations. So, no matter how angry I am at them, turning off their computers for a day or a week is a counter-productive exercise, worse than keeping them home from school.

Trying to limit what children do on computers (like limiting the programs they use) is unlikely to be successful, because children know more about computers than adults do. The best we can hope for is to offer them advice about how to use computers safely and hope they follow our advice, just as we do when we dress them and send them off to school.

The best way to keep your children from using violent video games on the computer is simply not to buy those games in the first place, and to forbid your children to install the games themselves. If you hear them saying, "I shot him with a M22" or "I killed him with a knife", there's a good chance that there are some violent video games that need to be un-installed from their computers. Demand it, as the price of the electricity they use.

If they are playing these games at a video parlor, then they obviously have too much money. Instead of giving this money to them, put it in the bank for their college educations.

- Let your wife address some issues. Because I'm a step-father, there are some times when my daughters are much more likely to willingly respect my wife's wishes and judgments than my own. Quietly asking my wife to intervene while remaining silent myself often resolves conflicts before they occur and denies my step-children an opportunity to argue with me, letting my wife demand a measure of respect for me that the children might deem unnecessary and outrageous if I demanded it by myself. Of course, this only works in cases where my wife agrees with me about what I'm requesting.

- Buy pizza. It's important to have positive reinforcements for good behavior as well as negative reinforcements for bad ones. In fact, in healthy home, positive reinforcements like hugs and encouragement, compliments and time taken to model positive behavior should all outnumber punishments by an order of twenty or thirty to one, once boundaries have been established.

If your children do what you want them to do, then give them permission to order a pizza and pay for the pizza when it arrives. If they don't do as you ask, then when they ask if they can order a pizza you can save money by reminding them of the misbehavior that made ordering pizza impossible. If you order pizza for your children all of the time, regardless of what they do, then you become a patsy and a slave.

We mustn't punch, kick or otherwise abuse our children, no matter what color they are. I obviously believe that we can, indeed, discipline children (all children) without punching and kicking them. In fact, we must, because if we can't live without physical fights then we shouldn't be living in the same home with those children in the first place. And if we as parents can't see that then the child welfare authorities certainly will. If it gets to the point of physical battles then send them to live with an aunt (like we did with my wife's oldest boy), or enroll them in college early.

Although Black children and others are alike in terms discipline, the risks of lack of discipline in Black children are greater because our society is so anxious to put them in jail for any infraction or for no infraction at all, and because Black children and adults typically have to work much harder in order to have a even a hope of achieving what others may receive as their grandfathered birthright.

Precisely because corporal discipline is not an option for me as a step-father, I have learned that there are other kinds of discipline that are more effective at changing disobedient, insolent or dangerous behavior into a home with cooperation, bargaining, and mutual respect.