I Don’t Punish My Kids. Here’s Why.

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. I’m so glad to be here with you. This is one of my favorite times during the week and this podcast has just been so successful and that’s all thanks to you. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for continuing to use these tools and ask questions and get coached. It makes my job possible and makes this podcast possible, so I’m very appreciative and grateful for all of you listening. Today’s episode was brought on by a member inside the Mom On Purpose Membership who wrote into Ask a Coach, which is our written coaching portion of the membership, and she wrote in about how to punish her son for something that had happened.

And it brought to light that I had never done a public podcast episode about punishment. And once I realized this, I just could not believe it because I have some thoughts, and some opinions based on my experience, based on coaching thousands of women and moms and based on the tools that I am trained in. So I want to share all of that with you so that you have like a go-to episode that is specifically about punishment and alternatives and what it looks like to feel confident in your parenting and at the same time not punish because that’s the parenting perspective and position that I take in my own home as well. So I personally do not punish my kids at all. And this isn’t a weak position, it’s a very intentional decision and I’m going to share with you what I do instead and what that looks like and why I think that that is the better option.

I also want to share with you in part what this member wrote in asking about, because I think it sheds light on a common challenge that we have. Like if we don’t want to punish what, what do we do? You know, how do we solve this? So that’s where I want to start with her submission. Inside the Mom On Purpose Membership, there is the portion that is written coaching, and you can come there anytime day or night, submit a question, and it comes directly to me. I answer all of the coaching questions that come inside the membership, and I think that’s really unique. I think a lot of memberships hire out that part of the coaching since it’s not on video. And I have intentionally decided that I want to respond to all of the questions that come in, and I’m really proud of that. And I think that it makes for cohesiveness with the coaching so that you are getting the best coaching regardless of if you’re coming live or if you are writing in.

It’s really important to me. And what I think is even better than that is that these are all published anonymously in the platform for everyone to see so that you can learn from other people. It’s so easy to get inside your own mind and feel kind of consumed with some emotions when you’re really attached to your own challenge. But I promise you, when you are reading other people’s challenges, you will be amazed at how much more easily you can pick up on the skills and the mindset work and all of the tools I teach because you won’t be so attached to the circumstances. And that’s really my hope and intention with sharing, at least in part what this member wrote in with here, so that you can get some perspective and apply it to your life as well. And then I’ll also share my own ways that I apply this with my kids as well.

In the case of the Mom On Purpose member, she wrote in saying that the school called and said that her son had potentially broke something on the bus and the mom was considering taking away his iPad if this was true, but felt like she knew that wasn’t a related consequence. So she wasn’t really sure if that was the best approach and she wanted to be intentional about it. So let’s get into it. The first thing that I want to offer to you is that all kids are good kids. This mindset, this perspective, is a life changer. If you just start to view every single kid that you see that is challenging for you, that is doing something you don’t recommend or want them to be doing, if you still see them as a good kid, it will change your life because you will start to feel so much more connected to kids and you will stay out of that victim mentality where there’s someone to blame, where someone’s the villain and someone’s the victim.

All things that are not helpful with respect to your own kids, it will create so much more connection and you will create more positive identities for them. So if you’re thinking they’re a really bad kid and they’re always causing problems, then they’re going to live into that because they’re going to think that’s who they are. In this instance, the mom said, well, you know, my son isn’t destructive, he’s not a destructive kid. So I was really surprised to hear this, and I want to just bring this point to light here for all of us that there’s no such thing as destructive kids. There’s no such thing as bad kids. These are just labels. And I think they’re really unhelpful labels. When you start to see every single kid as a good kid on the inside, you see hope, you see possibility, you see connection, you become someone who believes in her kids and other kids.

And I think this is so important for our youth and just for the next generation and raising kids, I just, I can’t stress this enough. And so there’s no such thing as a bad kid or a naughty kid or a destructive kid. And it doesn’t matter, even if the kid is doing a lot of behaviors that are wrong, that are against your values that are destructive, it’s a very different to say, I have a destructive kid than it is to say my kid has been exhibiting some destructive behavior. Do you see the difference? One is about their identity, like this kid is destructive at his core, and the other is saying, okay, my kid’s a good kid and I’m noticing some behavior problems where this kid’s behavior is destructive. It’s such a subtle shift in the language that you use, but it’s a completely different mindset and it will have a completely different outcome in your relationship with your kid, which is the most important thing.

And also in your parenting, because you might take away an iPad or not. But the way that you do that will be so different. If you ever do that, it will be because you’re on the same team as your kid, you’re viewing your kid as a good kid and you think that that’s in your kid’s best interest. It won’t be because you’re against your child thinking they’re bad or they’re naughty or they’re destructive and kind of viewing them as the problem versus their actions as something they need help with. So see, your child’s goodness, again, it’s going to help with actions, but it’s also going to help maintain connection and love in the relationship for years to come because they grow up. And at one point you will not be punishing them and you will not be, you know, navigating these parenting challenges and you will just have the relationship with them.

And that matters. It matters so much, and I think we can really easily lose sight of that when we’re in the thick of parenting and wanting to teach and model good behavior to our kids. And so just don’t lose sight of the relationship and don’t lose sight of believing that your kid is a good kid on the inside and they don’t need to do anything to earn that. That’s just who you believe they are. That’s what I want you to see. You’re going to your beliefs, your mindset about them and deciding you’re going to believe in their goodness has nothing to do with their actions. Okay? So it’s really important, and we’ll get to the action part in a second, but I think this is just the foundational core principle that I live by and that I think is really powerful in your parenting when you adopt it.

The next part that I want to talk about is the problem that I have with punishment. So punishment, how I kind of think about it is, if you don’t obey me, bad things happen to you. Now, when you repeat that to yourself, if you don’t obey me, bad things happen to you. How does that feel? For me, it incites fear. I don’t want to teach my kids that if they don’t do something, that someone they love then is going to withdraw their love from them. And that’s what I think punishment sends the message of. It seems really powerful in the moment. I will give you that, right? When a child does something that we don’t want them to be doing or that’s against a rule or something like that, it feels powerful to be able to take something away that they like or give them a timeout or whatever it is, right?

That in the moment feels helpful. But if you actually look at what’s going on, I don’t think it’s helpful at all. I think first and foremost, it creates fear. And do you want your child to feel fearful of you? I’ll never forget when I learned the difference between respect and fear and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so good. So clients often with teenagers, will say to me, you know, my teenager doesn’t respect me. And they’ll say it, but what they’re talking about is fear. My teenager doesn’t fear me. And there’s a huge difference. And if you just think about it for yourself growing up, maybe there was someone in your life who you feared, and that’s very different than respect. And I think punishment creates a lot of fear, a lot of fear in the relationship, and that’s just not what I’m about.

I don’t, I don’t want to do that. The second problem with punishment that I have is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem. And I think this is the the biggest one, right? We want to be effective, we want to parent our kids to the extent that we can in a way that is helpful. The reason that it’s not effective is because it’s aiming at controlling a child’s actions without taking into consideration the actual cause of their actions. Thoughts create feelings, feelings drive actions. So an action is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s just the symptom of the actual problem. So I’m trained as a causal coach. I call it causal coaching. What does that mean? It means that I’m trained to help you solve the root cause of the problem. Now, if you have have that image of an iceberg, the root cause is way underneath right at the tip.

There’s just a little bit above the water. The same thing is true when it comes to parenting, when it comes to our children’s behaviors, that’s just a symptom. The actual root cause is their feelings, which are caused by their thoughts. So punishment is just sort of irrelevant. It’s it’s aiming at trying to control an action, but trying to solve it by way of managing the symptoms instead of actually teaching skills that help the child solve the actual problem. And so I know that this is a little bit abstract, and I want to make it a little bit more concrete here. Let’s take the example that the member wrote in with about her child potentially damaging something on the bus and the school called in. Let’s say that this did happen, and let’s say that the child was, I don’t know, like super frustrated and damaged something on the bus.

If punishment worked, then that would actually create a different result in the future. So by taking away the iPad, that would mean that in the future, the child before damaging whatever it was on the bus, would pause and think, oh, I know now how to process my feelings of anger and frustration, and instead of damaging this bus, I’m going to think twice about it. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to choose differently. Of course not. How would taking an iPad teach that skill? It’s just, it’s just irrelevant. It’s not only irrelevant to the the bus, it’s irrelevant to the skill. It’s irrelevant to the cause. The cause of actions is always feelings. So if a child is frustrated and they damage something, it’s a result of not knowing how to respond to their feelings. Inside the Mom On Purpose Membership, we have a Feeling course where I teach you there are four ways to respond to any feeling.

You can react to the feeling, you can avoid the feeling, you can resist the feeling, or you can experience and process the feeling. When we’re in a challenging moment as adults and we yell, that’s a reaction to the feeling. If a child is really frustrated on a bus and damages something on the bus, that’s a reaction to the feeling. When you have a glass of wine after a long day and you feel really stressed and you just want some wine to take the edge off, that’s avoiding the feeling When you’re feeling anxious and it’s kind of overwhelming to you and you say, oh, no, no, no, I don’t want this. And you sort of try to push it down, that’s resisting the feeling. So if the goal is ultimately to teach our kids how to respond to their feelings in appropriate ways, and in this specific instance to teach a child how to process their frustration so they don’t damage something on a bus, then actually solving the problem is through teaching the child how to properly respond to their emotions.

And I like to say there are acceptable actions and unacceptable actions. So, I’ll speak to my kids. I have a son who likes to bite and I say, I won’t let you bite me. Okay? And I block him from biting me and I say, you can bite the blankie. Here’s a blankie you can bite. You want to offer your kids options for what is acceptable. Because I think as one of my newer clients, so brilliantly said recently, she says, I, I came in the membership to help my kids with their feelings, but what I realized is that it’s just been a crash course for myself. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. We can do this work alongside our child. And you know, if the feelings work is new to you, that’s not a problem at all. But I do think it’s work worth doing because it makes teaching this work so much easier.

So the child needs to learn the skill of processing their feelings, of processing their frustration so that they can respond in a way that is more appropriate and isn’t through damaging something. So that’s a very long-winded answer of the second problem of punishment, which is it doesn’t actually solve the problem. Now, taking away the iPad is just, it just doesn’t help with feeling management. It, it also implies that this damaging of whatever it was on the bus was premeditated as if like in the future, the child would pause and say, you know what? I’m not going to do this because if I do this, my mom will probably take away my iPad. That’s just not how reactions to feelings work, particularly. And you know this personally, right? Particularly those harder emotions like frustration, anger, any of the ones that were really frustrated by and we want to react to that reaction comes when our prefrontal brain is offline. So it’s so important for you to know that your child isn’t doing this like maliciously remember to that kids are born with the full capacity to feel every emotion and zero skills to manage them.

So when your child is feeling frustrated, it is not surprising they are hitting and screaming and taking actions you don’t want them to take. It’s our job to teach our kids emotional regulation skills because there’s no point in time when they graduate from frustration. So what I really want you to take away from this part of the episode is that punishment aims to modify behavior by looking at the symptom of the problem, not by solving the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is not knowing how to manage their feelings. To learn how to do that, they need to acquire skills and practice those skills. And you can do that out of the moment, not during the moment when they’re dysregulated, it’s not going to work.

And also out of the moment, you can talk about what actions are acceptable versus unacceptable. And this doesn’t mean you don’t hold boundaries. You absolutely hold boundaries for sure. But I just want to bring to light that punishment that we all think we’re supposed to do for some reason, I have no idea why. I think it’s just because we were raised probably in that system, and so we take it on as the way to parent, but it isn’t getting at solving the actual problem. And so just because you don’t know what else to do doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is the right thing to be doing. And I want to offer to you that you just think about it logically, that thoughts create feelings and feelings drive all actions, and it’s your child’s action. It follows that the reason that they took that action is because of how they were thinking and feeling.

And if you want them to take a different action, you have to teach them how to manage their feelings and process their feelings so that when they feel those feelings, they have the skills to self-regulate, to work through them, to act and react with acceptable behaviors, taking away the iPad or taking away something that they really love. Again, it just doesn’t teach them the skill. This is totally irrelevant. The third reason why I don’t like punishment specifically is because it damages the relationship that you have with your child. There’s no space for mistakes, for openness, for learning, for connection. When you are using punishments. I’m going to talk about what to do instead. So what I’m not suggesting here at all is that you’re happy that they engaged in whatever behavior they engaged in. So let’s say one of my boys hits the other boy, I’m not happy that that is happening and I’m definitely going to separate them and I’m going to hold boundaries, but I’m not punishing them.

I’m not thinking, okay, if you don’t obey me, bad things happen to you. I don’t want to create that fear that consequently damages the relationship that I have with my child. It teaches them that my love is dependent on them acting how I want them to act in a “good way”. To me, I want my kids to know that the relationship extends far beyond any bad behavior, any problems with their actions that they’re having. I want them to know that I love them no matter what. And I think we all agree that we love our kids no matter what, and yet that’s not what they feel when we punish them. Now, again, I am not suggesting at all that we want to be permissive and lenient and only focus on feelings when it comes to parenting, but I don’t think punishment is the solution.

There’s so much shame-based parenting in punishing our kids, and I don’t think that that is helpful. I think that kids take that to mean that they are bad and that your love is dependent on them acting in a positive way, defined by you. And when they mess up or when they make mistakes or when they act in bad ways, then they are bad and your love will be withheld from them. This is kind of the philosophy behind timeouts and why I don’t like timeouts. Same thing. It’s like when they need you the most, what you’re doing through a timeout, teaching them that you will create separation from them when they aren’t “good”. It teaches them to not only be people pleasers, but also to act in a certain way that secures the attachment at all costs, which means that they won’t feel safe to be authentically them.

So what to do instead? I think it depends on the situation. Yes, sometimes there are very natural consequences. I don’t even call them that. It’s just like naturally what I’m going to do in a situation. So if one of my kids is, you know, throwing a toy at the other kid, I’m going to take away the toy. But it’s not from a punishment perspective. I’m not saying, how dare you, you know better. I’m not blaming the kid who threw it. I’m saying, Hey, I can see that you are not playing appropriately and safely with this toy. I need to remove it. It’s not okay for you to throw things at your brother. And I remove the toy, okay? But I’m viewing him as a good kid. My other son is a good kid. We’re all on the same team, and this is a hard moment and I’m holding a boundary. I’m not viewing it as I need to teach my kid a lesson and punish them. I need to teach my kid some regulation skills out of the moment. Because the only reason that you’re going to throw something at your brother is because you have a feeling and you don’t know how to respond to that feeling. So you’re feeling really frustrated and you take it out on your brother.

So the instances where it’s, you know, kind of low hanging fruit, I’ll call it, like where you can easily just remove the object or something like that, I don’t think a lot of my clients at least have questions about that. The question becomes like this member had, when there isn’t necessarily that related consequence or boundary that is going to happen naturally. Like what do you do? Well, I think curiosity first and foremost to see what’s going on. Remember that tip of the iceberg? Remember, actions are just the symptom of what’s going on underneath thoughts, create feelings and feelings drive all of your actions. So what’s going on with your child? Talk to them, see what’s underneath, see why they were feeling, how they were feeling. Talk with them to figure out what’s going on for them. And in every situation, I like to think about, okay, does repair need to happen?

And also what skills need to be worked on. So in this instance, let’s just say that the child, you know, was really frustrated and damaged something. Well, maybe having the child contributing to paying for the repair or writing a letter apologizing for what they did or whatever feels like a true repair for you. It’s just like we repair in relationships as adults. We do it with our kids, with our spouse, with our loved ones, with our friends, we’re apologizing sincerely. And we are creating a different, more helpful story about what happened in the past. So for example, if you yell at your kids and you repair with them, you’re apologizing and you’re explaining that you take responsibility for yelling and that it was a result of you not managing your own emotions and you’re working on that and it has nothing to do with them, okay?

It’s a good repair. Same thing here. Maybe you want to teach your kids about repair and talk with them about how they want to repair in this case for the damage that happened. And that is a skill that they’ll learn and they’ll take with them, okay? When we do something that’s out of character for us that is unacceptable, we have to repair. And whether that’s, you know, paying for the damages, writing an apology letter, you know, going and apologizing or something like that, it’s repair. Andy Stanley is a thought leader and a pastor who teaches a lot about personal development and leadership. And I just adore him and his family. And he talked about how when his kids were younger, there was an episode with a babysitter one time where they were disrespectful or, you know, not behaving the way they should have been while, they had a babysitter, and as part of the repair, Andy Stanley had them buy the babysitter flowers with their own money and write her an apology and then hand deliver both.

And I just love this. I think this is kind of like the pillar example of what I’m talking about here, and that’s why it’s not a one size fits all. And so you really want to look at was there a relationship that was damaged? And how can that relationship be repaired now? And you can work together with your kids. Remember, you’re viewing your kid as a good kid. You’re thinking I’m on the same team. It’s like one of my favorite mindsets. I’m on the same team with my kids. My kids are good kids. If they’re behaving out of alignment with that, that has to do with their actions and what they’re thinking and feeling underneath. And I’m here to help support them in that. And yes, they’re going to make mistakes, and yes, they’re going to push boundaries and it’s my job to uphold them. Punishment just is sort of irrelevant to me in all of this.

Aside from repair are the skills that need to be worked on out of the moment. So if your child is getting really frustrated and hitting and kicking or biting, then they need to learn what actions are acceptable when they feel really frustrated and angry. And depending on the age of your child, this is going to vary, right? So when I’m thinking of my 2-year-old, that’s very different than when you’re thinking of your 12-year-old, okay? A 2-year-old is going to be more limited in their capacity to learn these skills. You still can talk with them about it and teach them about it and help them, but a lot of the helping them is going to be holding boundaries. I won’t let you hit then grabbing their arm when they go to hit you and holding it so that they can hit you. And so it’s a, it’s a very confident, strong way of parenting.

It’s not like, oh, you feel angry, so you can just be hitting and kicking and, you know, engaging in all these unacceptable actions. It’s super important that you get clear about what actions are okay and what actions are not. Okay. I have this little kid’s punching bag in the basement that I got as an example of what would be okay to express frustration and anger. My kids don’t really use it, but it is down there anyways. And my intention was to just offer a way that they could hit it if they were mad or frustrated to show them that, okay, it’s not okay for you to hit another person ever, but when you’re feeling really mad, if you want to hit the punching bag, you absolutely can. You know, think of how we have acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors as adults. I think seeing the parallel makes it a lot easier to come up with actions that are acceptable for your kids when they’re feeling frustrated.

So you might go on a walk or maybe you scream into a pillow, you can tell them they can scream into a pillow. It’s just modeling to them what it looks like to have a big feeling and feel so consumed by it, and learning to process that. You can teach them that. Maybe you say, you know what, I name my feeling, I’m feeling angry, I’m feeling frustrated, and then I take some deep breaths. Now is your 2-year-old or 5-year-old, or even 10-year-old going to say, oh my gosh, thanks mom, I’m going to do that next time. Probably not. But we’re basing the teaching on who you want to be and we’re going to help them to the extent that we can and repeatedly do so. ’cause these are lifelong skills. And you can role play like with little dolls or share stories or examples. I think repetition is key here, but there is an art to it, and it’s based on what’s going on with your kid.

And that’s why, you know, I like to offer scripts and mantras to the extent that I can and find them to be helpful. But I more so want to impart on you that the science behind all of this is that the action is the symptom. It is not the root cause. And if you want to solve the root cause of the problem, it’s emotional regulation skills. It’s not behavior modification, okay? Because, we know that thoughts create feelings, and feelings drive all actions. And so if you want to change a child’s actions from the root cause, we gotta figure out what’s going on underneath, and it’s going to be different for every kid. So if your child is taking the iPad and hitting their sibling with it, take the iPad away. If your child is, ripping up a bus seat, then do not take the iPad away.

That would be my advice. And the reason is because it is not helping your child learn the skills of processing their emotions and acting in a way that is acceptable. And so you want to encourage, repair and do that in a way that feels good to you as a mom who you want to be. And also teach them out of the moment repeatedly what it’s like to learn the skills of emotional regulation, naming the emotion, processing the emotion, talking about ways that are acceptable to react to the emotion or act the emotion out. And that will be, I think, so much better than punishment, and it maintains and I think strengthens the relationship. Now, what I didn’t talk about at length here is how to hold boundaries. I did through some examples, right? So if my child goes to hit me or bite me, I, I block them.

I use my physicality to, hold the boundary. And I think with little ones, that’s so much more common than with bigger ones. But I do want you to know that holding boundaries is definitely a part of this as well. And so my parenting philosophy and what I think to be the philosophy that is truly the most helpful for kids and for maintaining your relationship is to focus on solving it through emotional regulation skills, teaching kids what actions are acceptable and not acceptable. Holding boundaries and viewing your kid as a really good kid on the inside who just needs to learn skills that may take them a few times to learn. And that’s okay. That’s part of being a kid. All right, my friends, if you have questions or you want coaching on this, I do so much parenting coaching inside the membership, you gotta join us in there so I can help you with your specific questions. You can come try it out for a month. I would love to see you inside. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose Membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.