Discipline is undergoing an overhaul. To be more specific, the science of parental discipline is turning cultural and generational beliefs and practices on their head. Scientists aren't setting out to do this. It's their scientific findings that are sounding startling wake up calls to every adult, parent, teacher, grandparent, babysitter, caregiver, coach, counsellor, and peer.
YELLING: Science is showing us the results of yelling on the brain.
To the brain, it can be experienced the same as if yelling were physical injury.
Instead: Calm yourself down before you feel like losing it by practicing self-compassion, self-curiosity, self-understanding. The science of self-reflection, compassion and mindfulness shows that these practices grow the part of the brain that mediates self-regulation, our ability to soothe our fears, pause before reacting and know ourselves--and grows the same in our child's brain through our own practice.
REJECTION: Research is pointing us toward the undeniable fact that rejection and isolation lights up the brain in the same region that registers pain. Time outs are isolating.
Instead: Create opportunity for inclusive parent-child mutually calming approaches. "Mutually" because when we are hair-trigger emotionally reactive with our children, instead of open-heartedly responsive, we are both in need of calm, peace, and connection. Connection comes naturally when we are connected to ourselves as parents. We often reject when we don't like what we feel about what we perceive. We often reject because we were treated the same way and learned that certain parts of us (how we behaved, felt, reacted) were unacceptable. Unacceptable = rejection-worthy
CONTROLLING: A mountain of motivation research that we all need to feel connected, competent and autonomous to thrive. When we are unduly controlled, our limbic system can trip our fight, flight alarms. Kids push back when we push in ways that feel threatening to their system. When a child submits to our ultimatum or forceful control, fear is the motivating factor. The brain, in fear, is not building the circuitry of self-regulation, self-insight and emotional stability. When we parent with connection and attachment in mind, we build a foundation of mutual trust. It's in those inevitable moments of disconnection that we reach for the control panel.
Instead: When we calm ourselves, we boost our capacity for self-connection and compassionate forgiveness (of ourselves and others), we release our grip and our child can trust that it's safe to reconnect. Often, our child will make that bid for reconnection before we do, but when we are in control mode, we can't see it let alone receive it.
SPANKING: The science is undeniable that spanking is harmful to a child's developing brain and to the relational bond of trust, but long histories of personal beliefs make it difficult for people who spank to relinquish it as a disciplinary method. The scientific truth is that it is not a disciplinary method. Discipline is a teaching process, not a punitive procedure. It's hard for many people to shift this paradigm, because it's infused with decades of childhood associations with parental loyalties, shame stories, and multi-generational tradition. The science of spanking indicates that it can have deleterious effects on a growing child, from lower IQ, lower EQ (emotional intelligence), a smaller hippocampus (memory area of the brain), higher rates of aggression, bullying (and bullied), and higher risk of substance abuse and addiction in adolescence and older years, as well as higher risk of illness in adulthood.
Instead: Question your beliefs about spanking. Get curious about your motivation, your own history with spanking, your goals for your parenting journey and your fears about what not spanking may mean for you and your child.
If you can talk with your child about it, ask him or her how he or she feels about spanking. Listen with your heart, not your hand. Many people spank because they are convinced it is preventative. Ironically they spank out of fear (and cause fear), because not considered another disciplinary approach that gives them a sense of security about their child's character, future or wellbeing.
For many people who spank as perceived prevention, they see spanking as insurance. They spank to ensure their child develops a sense of morality, knows right from wrong.
But brain science is clear.
Morality is not learned from fear, but from secure attachment in childhood and authentic connection as a child grows. Morality is mediated in the pre-frontal cortex, right behind the middle of your forehead, same as empathy, insight, and self-regulation. When we spank to punish, we escalate fear and mistrust which lights on a brain scans in the part of the brain that is activated when we are in fight/flight/freeze mode of survival. If a child is scared stiff of us, he is in "freeze" mode which can shape the brain and nervous system by creating a traumatic effect inside our child. The lingering effects which are largely unseen but affect a child's whole trajectory in life, in relationship, down to the way his cells communicate.
Spanking is not the "disciplinary" method many have been lead to believe it is, regardless of personal histories.
If we truly want to stack the card in favor of our children's wellbeing, emotional stability, relational connection, personal safety and health, we can begin with some gentle questions. No judgment. No threats. No regrets.
Ask yourself what you need to know for sure in order for you to stop spanking.
For example, "I need to know my child will not become a menace to society if I don't spank him hard after he does X." Or "I need to know my daughter will not get pregnant at 16 and run with the wrong crowd and drop out of school if I don't spank her straight now." Be honest with yourself.
Ask yourself how you felt if you were spanked. Not what you thought, but how you felt.
Ask yourself why you believe spanking is the "only thing that works."
Ask yourself what you mean by "works."
Ask yourself what you most want your child to know about himself.
Ask yourself what you most want your child to learn about love.
Ask yourself what you most fear about your child in the world.
Ask yourself what you believe to be true about your child.
Ask yourself what you feel about yourself, how you see yourself.
Ask how you see yourself as a parent.
Ask yourself if you ever feel you've "messed up."
Ask yourself how you feel when you mess up.
Ask yourself whether you forgive yourself, how it feels when you don't or can't.
Ask whether you value forgiveness and how you practice it.
Ask how you describe your relationship with your child.
Ask yourself what you most long for in life, as a person, from others.
There are countless questions we can ask of ourselves with curiosity and compassion. And when we do, our brain is doing some serious weight-lifting, strengthening the 'muscle' of our very humanity, our self-knowing, empathy, ability to guide ourselves out of chaos and despair through self-compassion and reflection.
When we practice knowing, understanding and tending to ourselves, we...
1. ...calm our hair-trigger reactions and make room for relating with deeper love and tenderness for our children because we feel it in our own bodies and systems. We can 'rest and digest' in that calmer state, instead of living in a state driven by good-cop/bad-cop vigilance and reactivity. Like shifting from leaning on the horn at every turn to driving attentively and with care while also enjoying the ride (which is safer for you and others on the road).
2. ...build trust and connection with our children which makes way for their responsiveness, cooperative spirit, and open-heartedness for our guidance.
3. ...grow our child's brain for self-regulation, self-knowing, empathy for self and others,
4. ...build their emotional resilience to thrive in a tough and unpredictable world because they have learned to mend the breaks, turn negatives into positives, and actively practice relational connection-disconnection-reconnection cycles. We all learn to trust in the restorative power of relationship, instead of reinforcing steely defenses to protect ourselves from threats, criticism, rejection and humiliation.
5. ...get to know our children. Really. Because we are not seeing through anxiety and anger, we are free to see who they really are.
6. ...learn to savor the moment. Presence is a key to longevity. Science has shown that our ability to practice being 'in the moment' promotes the preservation of telomeres, the caps at the end of our chromosomes, like the aglets on our shoelaces prevent lace-fraying.
Instead of seeing parenting as something we do to our kids to raise them "right," let's reframe and embrace our parenting experience as a lifelong growth curve for all of us, not something we do to but something we are with our children. A journey for both our kids and ourselves, a privilege to witness and help shape the unfolding of our children into the people they are meant to be, and, in the process, we become who we are meant to be in this world, too.
When we consider that there is one life for each of us, a short moment on this earth, and we allow ourselves to absorb that notion, we realize that we do long to cherish this existence with tenderness, gratitude, compassion and awe. In that light, yelling, controlling, isolating, punishing, spanking manifest as desperately painful measures that arise when we have lost perspective, lost tenderness for our own hearts, buried our gratitude under calcified disappointment, and dulled our awe. These are not mistakes or failures, but the expression of our unmet human needs.
We see through the eyes of our own biography.
Understanding our stories affects our very biology.
And our children's.
Knowing our stories helps our children to live out their own stories, not the dog-eared pages of ours.
What I've really been talking about here is us practicing a discipline of self-reflection. It takes our patience to think differently about ourselves--to think positively about who we are--if we have spent years mired in self-doubt and self-loathing.
That's the hard science of cultivating tender hearts.
The truth about discipline is that when we can learn how to look beyond our children's behaviors to our own fears, we intuitively know how to teach our child. Our relationship itself teaches. We let go of the old belief that we must go to loud, conflicted, wits-end, overpowering lengths to "discipline" because we learn that stress is not a teacher.
Stress = inflammation, higher cortisol and blood pressure for us...
Stress = a reactive brain for our child.
Over time, stress changes how we breathe, see, function, relate, learn, and age.
Punitive "discipline" creates more stress out of distress, invites power struggles, and tends to generate anxiety, difficulties attending, trusting, relaxing, learning and connecting. Call it stressipline.
Relational discipline promotes growth and learning, resilience and connection.
Two-way. Reciprocal.
It gives us so much more freedom as parents to lead with flexibility, creativity, context-by-context so our lessons are authentic, relevant, real and human.
The alternative is to think we must parent inside painfully narrow margins with no room for novelty, inspiration, imagination, wonder and joy. Which leaves us depleted, afraid and empty.
It's never too late to not only fill our cup but drink from another one entirely.
-- Lu Hanessian
