In an era when discipline is commonly called abuse — and abuse is worse than ever — Bill Whittle and Alfonzo Rachel reflect on the influence of fear and punishment to train up a child who disciplines himself.
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24 replies on “The Healthy Use of Fear and Punishment to Train Up a Child Who Disciplines Himself”
I remember an incident when I was 17 and took my dad’s sports car without permission. He, my mom and sister were going out for dinner, so I slipped the car key off his keyring. I wanted to cruise around for a while, then get back before they got home. Imagine my chagrin when I got home and they were already there. I sat in the driveway for a while, thinking about running away (but no where to go and no money!), trying to think of a plausible lie and knowing there was none. So I went into the kitchen to face the music, fully expecting to be grounded, scolded, something. My dad only asked for his key and why I had taken it. I gave some weak excuse, and that was it. No punishment at all! I asked him about it later, and he said he knew the torture I put myself through when I pulled up and saw they were home because he had done that at my age. He said he couldn’t have punished me any more than I had punished myself. And he was right! I never, ever did that again!
This series just keeps getting better and better. What powerful and profound thoughts and conclusions. Thank you Bill and Zo, for sharing your experiences and the knowledge that you have gained from those experiences.. We are the better for it.
The important thing is that Dad, at “Three”, kept his word.
Years ago my 4-year-old nephew looked in my eyes and deliberately defied what I had just said to him. I told him that he was now going to be spanked by me because I loved him and did not want him to grow up to be the kind of person that he was heading for. I put him across my lap and gave him three swats on his clothed behind. Then stood his little crying self up and hugged him and told him again that I loved him too much to let him be that kind of person. (No one else in the family would have thought of doing this because their line was always, “But he’s just a little boy.”)
The next day his mother said to him, “Who do you love the most in the whole world?” And his answer was, “Aunt Karin.” WOW! Interesting thing is that he has three kids himself now and is the one who provides them with non-negotiable and loving discipline because he knows how much they need it for their own character and security.
I think the term the “psychotherapists” use is modelling behavior.
My dad had a very interesting way to make the male vs man distinction and it was part of “the talk” when I started dating.
Any prick can sire a child; it takes a Man to be a Father.
Colorful guy my dad. I miss him more as I get older. I am the same age as my dad was when I graduated college, my kid is about to start senior year.
The philosophy I raised my boys by was —
“A well disciplined child requires little punishment.”
It took two judiciously administered applications of “the belt” for the oldest one and only one for the younger. The elder son was a bit pig-headed and it took twice before the lesson “stuck”.
The first one for the oldest boy was the result of willful disobedience of a direct, unmistakable instruction. It was the third incidence and lesser “lessons” had failed to achieve the desired result. So I doubled up my belt (it makes a very satisfying “CRACK! sound that way) and he got ten strokes across the gluteus maximus. With his pants on. I was punishing him, not trying to humiliate him. I used a belt because my belts are wide (less cutting, more slapping) and you should not hit a kid on tender muscles, tendons and bones with your hand. You can cause deep damage that way.
The second time he got it, it was for lying to my face. That time I made him drop his drawers, bend over and grab the window sill. I was trying to humiliate him that time because shame is something he deserved for lying to me.
The younger son “got it” for throwing snowballs with ice cores at cars. There were other kids involved and I’m sure he didn’t come up with that malicious idea himself, he wasn’t that kind of kid. No matter, he was the one the lady who got her car pelted managed to catch. She brought him to my door and explained what was going on. After ascertaining that there was no damage to vehicle or occupants I assured her that it would not only be dealt with stringently but that this particular boy would never do it again.
… And he never did it again.
Later in life when they were grown up with their own families they both said that they understood why I did things the way I did them and applied the same principles in their own households. Both of them said that the actual, corporal punishment wasn’t the worst part of the process — It was the 30 – 45 minutes I spent lecturing them before the strokes fell, explaining what I was going to do, why I was doing it and what they could expect both in the immediate future in terms of the effect on their bottoms and after that what would happen if I had to do this again.
I got no pleasure in the administration of this sort of discipline but one thing is for sure. It hurt them a heck of lot more than it hurt me.
I disagree with Bill and Zo about making them perform tasks as punishment too. That works just fine if properly applied. Make sure it’s the most mind-numbingly boring, petty, non-productive thing you can think of and then apply it at the very best occasion.
We lived in farm country in a turn-of-the-century updated huge farmhouse with lots and lots of ornate brass lock plates on the doors and yards and yards of copper pipe in the basement. This gave me options ranging from a doorknob or two to the whole house and any length up to and including all of the copper pipe accessible. I bought Brasso by the case and had the shiniest doorknobs and copper water pipes in the state. It worked like this …
Me, “I’m pretty sure I told you two to mow the lawn yesterday.” (We had three acres of lawn, btw.)
Boy(s), “We forgot, sorry Dad.”
Me, “No problem, go mow the lawn now, then come and see me when you finish.”
Boy(s), “But we were just leaving to go ____ (fill that however you like)”
Me, “No, you weren’t, you’re mistaken. You were just headed to the shed to fill up the gas tank on the mower and get started mowing.”
That was all the “discussion” we would have about such things. Anything more and they knew they were just digging the hole deeper. “Deeper” might include things like getting grounded and being as I was often gone for periods of time “grounded” included me removing a vital part from the ignition system of the offender’s car. I don’t tolerate or fold to whining. After the lawn was finished …
Boy(s), “The lawn is finished Dad. Can we go now?”
Me, “Sure take off just as soon as you each give me three doorknobs, a yard of copper pipe and I’ve inspected your work.”
You see, the punishment for not doing something they were supposed to do was more work at the time and manner of my choosing. I would usually “choose” a time when they had something else they really wanted to do. The fastest, easiest way was to not “forget” to do things. They could either fulfil their duties at their discretion or at mine. This motivated them to do what they were told to do and to discipline themselves to do it. It had the opposite effect of what Zo was saying, they learned to apply themselves and to allocate their time well. Or I would allocate their time and there would be even more work, but that extra work was mind-numbingly boring.
I love my boys and I paid very, very close attention to them. I never ever lied to them in that if I said “XYZ punishment will ensue from XYZ behavior” then that punishment was applied without fail if that behavior occurred. If I said “We’re going fishing on Saturday” or “I’ll help you with your car tomorrow when I get home from work” then that promise was also religiously kept. They both knew they could count on me to keep my promises.
The younger boy grew up to be a Naval Aviator. When he deployed to the Second Gulf War I told him —
“Keep your mind on what you’re doing and what’s going on around you. Assume anything you don’t understand or doesn’t “feel right” is a threat until you know it’s not. Don’t worry about your family, if anything happens to you they will be well cared for and your kids raised properly.”
I’m certain he never had the slightest doubt that every word was true.
Excellent stuff. I actually think that you and Zo and Bill are more aligned than you think with respect to work as punishment. Your boys had “chores” that they were expected to do. They didn’t only get chores if they did something wrong. They got extra work that impinged on their recreation time. So they both had to make amends for the error and lose out on their own time.
I presume that the brass needed to be polished eventually and that in the absence of a punitive need, somebody in that house was polishing the brass. So even if they never did anything wrong, they may have done it twice a year anyway.
What I see in some younger parents and even those my age, is that there are no chores. When my mom worked, she had a lady who came in once per week to do the common rooms and bathroom cleaning. She never touched my room. That was mine and it was vacuumed and dusted weekly. At the same time, one of my “chores” was making dinner since I got home from school before she or my dad got home from work. So I started dinner pretty frequently. It had the benefit (planned) of making me quite self-sufficient.
I know families whose cleaning people take care of everything and the kids do nothing around the house. My own feeling is that these kids are getting short changed by their parents on multiple fronts: they are not involved in how the home is kept, they are not learning necessary life skills that must be learned to be an adult (see below – this is why raise our kids, to be adults) and they learn that other people will clean up their messes. These kids will not be successful in life. To Paraphrase Lazarus Long – Don’t handicap your children by making their lives too easy. It is this type of kid to whom the boys referred; those who don’t have to work unless it is punishment. Then work becomes something to avoid rather than part of what makes us civilized.
Wonderful discussion, gents. One quibble – Bill mentioned that if he learned that time outs and soft type parenting led to happier and healthier kids, you would endorse that type of parenting. However, the goal of parenting is not to raise happy kids, it is to raise up responsible adults who can take part in a healthy society.
Another point, if physical discipline is done correctly; it need not be done often. My parents each had to do it once, I had seen what happened to my older siblings. So the idea of consequences to actions can be developed without having to resort to constant beatings.
I love your line about raising responsible adults, not happy kids. Have spoken to groups of young moms often about the fact that their job (and the dads’ job) is to shape their kids’ character, not to make life resemble Disneyland. And I tell them exactly what you said about responsible adults versus happy kids, telling them that there is nothing uglier than a 37-year-old “happy kid.” And we have more than our share of those out there in the world today–but they are just kids, not happy.
Yeah. The anti-spanking crowd usually have no clue about even the basics and keep bringing up unrelated examples where a parent just beating the children (and the wife and whoever) for sport.
There are people who like to claim that kids who have been spanked have more discipline problems as children. They cite this as “proof” that spanking does more harm than good.
I’ve started asking which is the cart and which is the horse, and how does the anti-spanking advocate know?
Safe bet that “discipline problem” means very different things to different people. Especially lately.
We had that case recently when 2 girls killed the uber driver while trying to steal his car and cared more about their phone than the bleeding victim. I’m sure some would not count even that a discipline problem. Including those in charge letting them walk.
Dads are so important. See this to find that it is universal to mammals:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-delinquents/
Involvement of the “father” beyond sperm is, in no way, universal among all mammals.
bottom line….men have no standing. not any more.
The general observation is that whoever can leave the nest first without leaving the offspring too likely to die unattended, does. So for mammals it’s usually the male, for fish it’s the female. For reptiles both.
One simple fallout is that the party that stays require some investment from the other before the mating.
It’s the point behind Fight Club. A generation of men raised by women.
So true, I wonder what most women even think fight club was really addressing?
Not every boy raised by his mother is a failure as a man. Some boys have fathers who are failures. Even fathers raised by hard fathers. The boys are better for not being raised by such men because such men do not teach good lessons.
Thanks, guys. Much straight talk as always, but more importantly, a message that doesn’t get enough attention. Zo’s point that any male can be a father in the sperm donor sense, no biggie – being a husband is where being a father should start. Husbandless women simply cannot adequately fill the role of father, especially not in this day when so many of us are separated by distance from our families – uncles and grandfathers can be a reasonable, if not perfect, substitute, but only if they are present on a daily basis. And I’m sorry, but two moms don’t make a father, either, nor do two dads make a mom.
Come on, lefties, 90% of you had both a mother and a father. Your problem is you had irresponsible parents who refused to take their roles seriously, leaving you damaged, deranged and derelict as human beings. Do us all a favor. Please don’t have kids.
We have the saying that the dog can create offspring. It reacquires a man to upbring it.
as long as k-12 is controlled by 93% of teachers and admin being feminists with the other 7% being weak-minded beta male enabling eunuchs, the path forward will be ever more destruction of the human genome.
estrogen, soy, rhitalin, titel 1X, women’s studies and revisionist history designed to denigrate white males are collectively not a good business plan …and so here we are in 2021, awaiting the ascension of our first feminist female air-headed do nothing president.
men have been locked out of their sons lives and that’s not going to bode well for civilization. most school systems won’t even allow the father in the building without the mothers permission. imagine if the opposite were true. tally ho.
I’m sorry to say that women have abandoned their rightful place in society, an honorable and highly valuable place as mothers and wives, whose husbands are at the head of the household, whom they honor with respect while providing a well-kept home and well-behaved children that they rear together. Having rejected that role, women bring chaos, disruption, dishonor and damaged children into the world, assuming they have them, or if they don’t, teach them from the daycares and classrooms to be haters, whiners and losers. Women need a man to rein in their subjective natures, to provide control and a firm but loving hand to guide them. Else, like Eve, they easily fall prey to temptation, causing all manor of mayhem.
Now excuse me while I don my protective gear to ward off the rotten vegetables and scornful words some women may wish to throw at me. Ha ha.