Parenting discussion w/ husband

@2the1whojudgesjustly I’ve actually had to be extra careful to not laugh when my daughter does one of the classic impulsive things because it truly is kind of amusing to see a tiny little human look you dead in the eyes and put her hand in the dirty dishwasher door pool of dripping filth literally as you say “don’t touch that yucky!” I don’t want her to see me laugh because I don’t want to suggest to her that the behavior is funny, but my god it actually is pretty funny. 😆 like, you little maniac.
 
@tonyp This thread was delightful discussion and I will steal your tips, thank you. I also chuckled about about the hand in the dirty dishwasher pool, one of those maniacs lives with me too 🤮
 
@2the1whojudgesjustly How do you deal with scenarios your toddler just don't obey you? For example, you have to go to someplace, like right now, and he doesn't want go? I'm thinking in scenarios that you have to do things immediately, and they just refuse. Don't know if I was clear
 
@srgnosis If they have to do something, I tell them plain and simple how it is, and then I do it. Carry them if necessary. It's okay to protest and show/tell that you're upset and unhappy with my decision - feelings are always okay - but that doesn't mean that anything changes.
 
@srgnosis My twins are 18 months old so I don't expect a lot of compliance because they're just not in a place developmentally where they can understand and comply reliably.

Most of the time with gentle parenting, you offer choices, and I touched on this in the first comment in this thread if you'd like to see another example. So you say something like, "okay, it's time for us to leave. Do you want to hold my hand and walk with me, or would you like me to carry you?" If your child isn't cooperating, take a moment to talk to them. Ask why they don't want to leave. Validate their feelings and explain what's going on. If they're upset because they don't want to leave, there's nothing wrong with that. Feelings should never be punished, including whining. "I hear you, it's really frustrating when you have to stop before you want to. However, it's almost time for dinner so we need to go home so we can cook dinner and eat." Kids generally cooperate more when they feel heard. Being well rested and not hungry helps a lot too. Worst case, you pick them up and carry them.

It also helps to keep your child updated on what's going on and give them time to transition. "Hey, we're going to leave in 10 minutes." "In five minutes, we are going to put on our shoes and walk to the car."

Gentle Parenting requires a big shift in perspective. You aren't seeking obedience. You don't want your kids to obey. You want cooperation and collaboration. There are a few main goals: teaching kids how to recognize and regulate their emotions, teaching kids why we do things, and teaching kids to motivate themselves. You want your child to clean their room not because they will get a punishment or reward, you want to teach your child to clean their room because they care about their home and their possessions.
 
@gavenv Reacting with violence when he as the parent can't emotionally cope teaches the child to react with violence (hitting, biting, punching, kicking) when they can't handle their emotions.
 
@gavenv Given that you are here, I am guessing you know that spanking is associated with negative outcomes for kiddos, so I am not going to get into that too much other than just acknowledging that it exists. As a parenting researcher, I'm not... extremely in love with the term "gentle parenting", which I find to be a social media-y buzzword that can interpreted in various ways by different people that include both very evidence-based practices and some uh... that are not that. But I do personally believe that it is important to get aligned on a strategy for dealing with difficult behaviors that does not include spanking!

I have some thoughts and places of curiosity:
  1. You know your partner and we do not. What types of things are likely to change your partner's mind related to spanking? E.g., Is research something that they would view as meaningful, or not so much? (If so, obviously there is a lot related to spanking, specifically.)
  2. What are your partner's concerns about NOT spanking? I.e., I could imagine a concern being, "I don't know what I should do in a situation like this." (It would not be unusual for a parent-to-be to not really be sure what they would do in the types of scenarios you have described here-- and it also would be not unusual for what you end up doing in real life to be a little different than what you imagine today.) If this is a piece of the puzzle, I might wonder if a parenting class would be a helpful way to learn more about some potential strategies to try instead of spanking.
  3. What is your goal in the conversation where you present various scenarios? Is your goal to get your partner to change to your way of handling those situations? Is it to agree that the two of you will handle them the same way? Is it to agree to try something other than spanking-- but with some flexibility about what that might be? Is your goal to open a conversation? I think that's worth taking some time to mull over-- since what your goal is is really going to inform the best communication strategy to get there (and how likely you are to succeed).
If I were in your shoes, depending on what my partner was like, I could imagine approaching it perhaps along the lines of, "You already know that spanking is an issue that is a big deal for me-- I am really opposed to it. At the same time, neither of us are experts on how to parent and we don't know what it is going to be like. It's also hard to tell what sorts of information in the world is correct and what is weird garbage that people have made up and are saying online. And we have to make sure we know what we should do and not just what we're not supposed to do. With that in mind, let's take a parenting class together so that both of us can learn more about the best ways to respond to difficult situations. We don't have to be exactly the same-- but I do want to make sure that we can come together to agree on some values related to parenting and some areas of common ground so that we're able to be fairly consistent, since I think that is one thing that helps kids be able to learn and follow expectations as they grow. Not resorting to spanking does feel really important to me as parenting value, so that is definitely something we will be coming back to, though" -- It's not uncommon for hospitals to have options here and your OBGYN may be able to make a referral or recommendation. You may also be able to just let them know your concern about the fact that you are not on the same page about spanking and ask about any resources they might recommend, since there may be options in your area that address similar issues.

I also want to explicitly state that there are a lot of cultural considerations and factors related to how people discipline their children. I don't know to what extent that is something that needs to be explicitly considered here, but I just wanted to observe that this is often relevant for families and deserves its own care/consideration/respect in terms of discussing issues like this.
 
@bqmichael This is a really great answer!!

I'd add that before I had children, I assumed that I would spank for discipline, simply because it was what I had experienced, seemed normal, and seemed (to me at the time) effective and not problematic.

By the time my eldest was actually of an age to need discipline, I had changed my mind entirely and now I rarely even punish at all (and if I do, it's something very mild like losing a privilege temporarily). I still think that overusing punishment is almost as bad as hitting because it has a lot of the same downsides. Hitting does tip over into being worse IMO, because most children are terrified of being hit by an adult (with good reason!) But in general trying to use aversives to make somebody behave is so different to my overall approach that it simply doesn't fit in. But I would have been totally baffled by this idea ~15 years ago!

The main thing was that I didn't know anything about parenting approaches which didn't have these aspects - I just assumed that my job, as a parent, was to teach my child and that included punishment when they did something that I wanted to discourage. It just seemed like the only logical response there. It was only really through living it (and also I did read a LOT of books, but I like reading) that I really got to a point where I just wouldn't even consider it. I now can't see any possible situation where spanking would be beneficial.

The point the above poster makes about gentle parenting being a social media buzzword is really important too. If you start out with your position being "defend gentle parenting" this is a huge umbrella and you could be looking at the parts of gentle parenting which are effective and beneficial, and/or you could be looking at the parts of gentle parenting which SOUND lovely but in practice are unrealistic or cause problems. And he in turn may look at gentle parenting and come across people critiquing some of the more ridiculous-sounding aspects (or actually ridiculous suggestions dressed up as legitimate parenting advice) or look at some of the very surface-level, tiktok/instagram type stuff and instantly dismiss it as nonsense - which, honestly, most of that is without the deeper contextual understanding (and some of it doesn't even HAVE that so it is literally nonsense).

What this can cause is that he starts to become concerned about what he perceives as a lack of structure, clarity and boundaries and consequences so doubles down on those things, fearing that he has to provide enough of them for both of you and to make up for your "coddling". And you become concerned about what you perceive as his lack of empathy and compassion and acceptance of your child and so you double down on these things, fearing that you have to provide enough of them to make up for his "coldness". And then you end up in a really unbalanced state where the stricter parent is coming down hard on the child for every little thing and the more empathetic parent is letting them off everything because "I know you didn't mean that" and this is extremely confusing and chaotic for the child. So it's important for you both to come together and see the positives in each others' approach. See if you can achieve your aims of empathy and understanding WHILE building in limits, accountability and so on - and he should see if he can achieve his aims of having clear lines and structure WHILE making some space to see his child's perspective.

So instead of "gentle parenting", I'd look at:

Attachment science, specifically four Ss: Safe, Soothed, Seen, Secure. If your home has an implicit threat of violence, then it's not a safe space. Obviously, there's a difference here between a household where a parent is randomly and frequently violent, vs a very rare occasional "big bad" punishment, but if it's been a while since either of you has been in a situation where physical discipline is used, you may have forgotten the fear that comes with it. This was actually a turning point for me; we visited my dad and younger siblings when my eldest child was a tiny baby, and during that visit one of the kids got threatened with a spanking and the atmosphere of the WHOLE house changed. Think about your child being a teenager or older primary school kid, they have done something which was silly and has got them into a mess. Do you want them to come to you and open up and ask for your help to put it right? Or do you want them to hide, lie, and cover up what they have done out of fear? Maybe you can each think of a situation that you might have had, or a friend of yours might have had, in these years and what your/his/the friend's parents' reaction to it was and what that meant for the child. The early years really build your foundation for those big situations later. I really like the Dan Siegel/Tina Payne Bryson books for info on this, especially The Power of Showing Up, but there are plenty of books about attachment (note, not attachment parenting, but the psychological theory of attachment.) The other Ss are about providing empathy when they are upset, seeing them as a whole person not just a blank slate/in a role you have created for them (My son will be a successful lawyer and football player etc), and security is about predictability and routine, knowing they will always have a warm bed and enough food and you'll be there.

Positive parenting/modern behaviourism: If you've had dogs at all you might be familiar with a movement within animal training where rather than punishing the dog for actions that you want to discourage, you instead look for "incompatible behaviours" and reward/encourage those. For example, if you want to discourage jumping up on furniture, you would teach lie down/lie on your bed, and then prompt and reward this every time the dog tries to jump onto the furniture, which over time they internalise as furniture = off-limits. For more specific or complicated behaviour, you can use a technique called "shaping" where you identify small steps towards a preferred behaviour and reward those incrementally. Like to acclimatise a dog to a sleeping/travelling crate, you would first leave the crate fully open and reward/praise them for investigating/sniffing it, then when they go inside just for a moment, then them spending a longer time with the door open, then you briefly close the door for a moment and reward them, then you start closing the door for longer until they are perfectly happy and calm, safe in the knowledge that they will be let out. Of course, children are more complex than dogs. But essentially, the same works for humans. Discouraging what you don't want is less effective than encouraging what you do want, and when what you want is not clear, making small steps towards that is also helpful. A good resource for this is the Everyday Parenting course on Coursera by Alan Kazdin/Yale.

Early childhood development: This might just be me as a psychology nerd but I've found learning about development to be one of the most fascinating things that I could do, and one of the most useful things because it helps you figure out if your expectations are even realistic. For this unfortunately I struggle to recommend resources because I've never found one single resource which covers everything succinctly, it's all been things I have learned here and there and by observation and so on. There is a nice book called "Experimenting with Babies" which is a fun introduction (interactive, including some suggestions of things you can try out with your baby), Montessori materials are helpful for 12mo+, though you don't need toys that are marketed as "Montessori specific" and although it's not evidence based, the Wonder Weeks app can be an entertaining introduction to the idea of looking for small increments in the things that your child is perceiving, well before any discipline comes into the question. The RIE approach to baby care can also be really great in terms of getting you into a habit of observing your child and seeing what they CAN do.

Communication guides: For example, How To Talk is a series of parenting books which emphasises communication with children over reward and punishment. It can be used in conjunction with a whole load of other approaches. Really great toolkit to have. Non Violent Communication (NVC) is also a really great resource - they have parenting guides and general communication guides and there are courses you can take. This is also useful in terms of helping you and your spouse communicate in a collaborative way, without feeling like either is attacking the other.
 
@gavenv Harvard:

Research “shows that spanking alters children’s brain response in ways similar to severe maltreatment and increases perception of threats” (Anderson, 2021).

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/21/04/effect-spanking-brain

Scientific American:

Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor “found that spanking was associated with… increased aggression and behavioral and mental health problems as well as reduced cognitive ability and self-esteem” (Anderson, 2016).

Gershoff: “Studies continue to find that spanking predicts negative behavior changes—there are no studies showing that kids improve.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-science-says-and-doesn-t-about-spanking/

Harvard:

“Spanking may affect a child’s brain development in ways similar to more severe forms of violence, according to a new study led by Harvard researchers” (Aggarwal-Schifellite, 2021).

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/spanking-children-may-impair-their-brain-development/

American Psychological Association:

“Many studies have shown that physical punishment — including spanking, hitting and other means of causing pain — can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury and mental health problems for children” (Smith, 2012).

“(S)panking doesn’t work, says Alan Kazdin, PhD, a Yale University psychology professor and director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. ‘You cannot punish out these behaviors that you do not want,’ says Kazdin, who served as APA president in 2008. ‘There is no need for corporal punishment based on the research. We are not giving up an effective technique. We are saying this is a horrible thing that does not work.’”

According to Graham-Bermann: “Physical punishment can work momentarily to stop problematic behavior because children are afraid of being hit, but it doesn’t work in the long term and can make children more aggressive,” (Smith, APA, 2012).

“In a meta-analysis of 26 studies, Larzelere and a colleague found that an approach they described as ‘conditional spanking’ led to greater reductions in child defiance or anti-social behavior than 10 of 13 alternative discipline techniques, including reasoning, removal of privileges and time out (Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 2005). Larzelere defines conditional spanking as a disciplinary technique for 2- to 6-year-old children in which parents use two open-handed swats on the buttocks only after the child has defied milder discipline such as time out” (Smith, APA, 2012).

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking
 
@gavenv I think the gap is too big for him to mentally get himself to anything with gentle on the name, but in practice, Respectful Parenting is basically the same thing. Plus they use words like authoritative (not authoritarian) so it feels like a compromise while still keeping the key principles you want.

RIE is a term to look up, Janet Lansbury is a reference.
 
@gavenv Is he open to learning and changing his mind? I think as others have said, you can have things in mind but its only until you have an actual child that you'll recognize what makes sense. Hopefully he's open to learning and recognizing he might have some old school thinking about parenting.

It's been scientifically proven that spanking is damaging to a child.

I recommend reading Dr. Becky Kennedy's book "Good Inside"

I think people think gentle parenting means permissive parenting but it's not. I recommend looking up the four parenting styles and the effects they have on children.

This resource on the circle of security goes into creating a healthy and secure attachment with your child. Spanking would NOT create a secure attachment.

Dr. Gabor Mate also has some great resources on parenting.
 
@gavenv Has your husband done any research on why he thinks this is a good method or is it coming from a place of “well, that’s how I was raised?” Because if that’s his strategy, getting him on board with the idea of learning how to be a better parent is the first step.
 
@gavenv Would he be okay with your daughter being raised the way her ancestor was raised a thousand years ago?

If no, then he evidently recognises that parenting styles evolve. Remind him that parenting styles evolve across single generations as well, that what was considered right and proper a generation ago doesn't have to be right and proper today, and that your daughter surely deserves the latest and greatest.
 
@gavenv I was also raised with the occasional spanking on top of the nappy and used to think it was okay because it didn't physically hurt (my parents were really adamant about this boundary and it made me less prone to questioning this). What changed my mind was the overwhelming research against it. It took some time so I suggest you start right now, and it took it not being forced on me by people because I'd become defensive about it (especially when it came from people who come from cultures that are "softer" than mine in the way they raise their children). At first my answer would be to question not just the sources, but the entire branch of science that is psychology, as it's one of the least stable (this is objectively true, and it's the reason why it took so long to change my mind; I'm a mathematician and psychology is at the other end of the spectrum of being an exact science), but when ALL data points in the same direction it's hard to ignore it.
 
@gavenv I don’t understand how anyone thinks spanking is a good idea. We would consider it unreasonable for a boss to smack their employee for insubordination or for an error (deliberate or accidental) at work. Why is it okay to even consider hitting children when it’s not okay to hit other adults? A lot of us were hit as kids so we just take it as a normal or even an okay thing to do. It’s worth examining that mindset.
 
@gospelmusic People who think spanking is okay generally:
  • don't know anything about child development
  • were spanked themselves and believe "they turned out alright"
  • believe that good parenting involves controlling children and think that immediate compliance in children is pretty much the main objective of parenting.
  • are bad at emotional regulation themselves and do things like yell/throw things/punch walls (or worse) when they're upset. The concept of developing emotional regulation sounds stupid/foreign to them because they haven't done it themselves and don't understand how it works
At least that's my experience.

I was spanked as a child (not a lot, but enough for it to be one of the only memories I have of my father who died when I was young) and when I was a teenager I thought spanking was okay to teach very young children. Luckily I didn't have a child when I was a teenager and waited until I wasn't a complete idiot about this type of stuff.
 
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