4min chapter

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Ep 2: Have We Forgotten How to Discipline?

Raising Parents with Emily Oster

CHAPTER

Navigating Toddler Discipline: Key Principles for Parents

This chapter examines various methods of disciplining toddlers, emphasizing the absence of a universal solution. It stresses the importance of authority, consistency, and maintaining a calm demeanor while encouraging families to find their own effective discipline strategies.

00:00
Speaker 1
Where does all of this leave us? First of all, there is no approach to toddler discipline that is perfect. Sorry, there are multiple choices here, and you need to choose what works for your family. And like my mom's experience with my brother and me, and my own experience with my two children, that solution may differ by child. That said, I think there are some important takeaways that everyone I talk to, from Dr. Becky to Dr. Vailen agrees on. One, the parent is the authority. Dr. Vailen talked about how your home is not a democracy. Dr. Becky talked about setting boundaries by embodying authority.
Speaker 3
Hal
Speaker 1
Chaffee made clear that he sets the rules of engagement. At the same time, they all rejected the idea of the parent as the authoritarian dictator. Even Hal Chaffee was clear, I'm not the dictator. In this way, all these approaches are trying to be a form of authoritative parenting, where the parent is the authority and is firm, but is still warm and loving. Second, consistency. Whatever approach you take, you need to implement it the same every time. Kids need to know what to expect. The final thing that everyone agreed on is that parents should not get angry. And beyond that, that families need an approach to behavior which they can implement without anger. Don't yell is a shared theme. Don't punish in anger. This not getting angry may be the hardest thing of all to implement, and for me, this is where the rubber meets the road. When I think about the biggest concerns I have with spanking, one of them is what happens when parents do get angry. On the other side of the coin, a common concern I hear from parents about gentle parenting, however they define it, is that it's gentle parent, gentle parent, gentle parent, yell. The time that it takes to use talk to get your child to learn skills can feel like too much. If we rely only on the data, the approach with the best empirical support is the one, two, three magic style that Dr. Phalen discusses. The approach which is most associated with worsened outcomes is physical discipline. But none of this evidence looks far into the future. Some of it struggles with correlation versus causation. And we have literally nothing empirical which would test a strong boundary-setting approach relative to a timeout or consequence-based one. So, uh, good luck! Just kidding. In the end, much of this comes down to what approach you can consistently implement with your child without getting mad. That's going to vary across families. It may vary across kids within a family. Promoting a happy and well-functioning home is not one size fits all. You might have to mix and match. Find an approach or a balance of approaches that feels like it fits your family, and that you can do mostly without getting mad. It's about what works for you, not the latest fad. Finally, please don't let this take over your life. I have found in my many years of talking to parents that discipline approaches can be all-consuming. This is perhaps more true with gentle parenting than other methods. Because gentle parenting approaches typically take much more time, it can feel like all you're doing with your kids is discussing their behavior. The goal of these systems is to create a calm and happy family where you can prioritize fun and connection when you're together. So don't overthink it. And sometimes just put in your earplugs. Thanks for listening. Raising Parents is a production in partnership with the Free Press. It was produced by Liz Smith and Sabine Janssen. Thanks as well to producers Tamar Avishai, Sam Deer and Kiran Sampath for additional production support. The executive producer is Candace Cahn. Last, thanks to my guests today, Dr. Tom Phelan, Dr. Becky Kennedy, Hal Trafe and Abigail Schreier. I'm Emily Oster. See you next time on Raising Parents.

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