Sometimes, all punishment does is push the negative behavior underground, as the child seeks to avoid the unpleasantness of being punished again. Surveys of prison populations show that serving time has proven highly ineffective. While it does curb crime in the short-term by taking the offender off the street, it rarely stops the offender’s behavior in the long run. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, which should correspond with the lowest crime rate — but instead, it has the highest homicide rate by far of the G7 countries. Not only that, the US also leads the world in recidivism; statistics show that, ten years after being released from prison, 82 percent of ex-convicts have been rearrested, a result of what one expert calls “over-punishing and under-rehabilitating.”

To children, punishment, especially without warning, can sometimes feel like “a form of hurting the child — and doesn’t give the child’s brain the opportunity to ‘look ahead,’” Sarah Chana Radcliffe M. Ed., C. Psych. points out. “Very often, children feel violated by this kind of punishment, even in those cases where they know full well that their behavior was wrong. Instead of focusing on their own behavior, they focus their attention on the ‘meanness’ of the parent or teacher.”

“Parents will want to correct a child’s behavior when it is inappropriate, harmful, dangerous, or may lead to problems in the future,” says Sarah Chana. But she says that almost all behaviors can be corrected through other techniques rather than punishment, which can often provoke more problematic behavior, damage the parent-child relationship, or do developmental harm to the child.

Punishment also doesn’t teach new, more appropriate behaviors. Children need to be shown another way, because repeating behavior over and over wires in those behaviors more strongly. A child prone to meltdowns will continue to have them, over and over. We improve at things when we practice them, so a child practicing negative behaviors is only going to get better and better at those behaviors, while a child who is shown and then repeats good behavior will entrench those behavior patterns in their brain.

Additionally, some kids will simply grow out of childish behaviors. Even bad habits will die out if they aren’t practiced often, which may happen naturally when these children become more socially savvy and notice that others aren’t acting in this way. Bad behavior that doesn’t get much interest or attention from others can also weaken and die out.

Alternative Ways

Evidence indicates that punishment doesn’t usually work well on its own. Instead, there needs to be some form of rehabilitation, a way to show a perpetrator a better path.

One of the best tools in rehabilitation is the “fix-it” method, where children must fix the problem they created or make amends. When they’re guided to put things right, using a restorative approach, they come to understand the magnitude of their mistake — and, more to the point, the evidence shows they’re unlikely to repeat it in the future.

“Fix-it” is about much more than saying sorry. “Some children use ‘I’m sorry’ as a way of placating an angry parent. They’re quick to apologize — and just as quick to repeat their misbehavior. It’s important for these youngsters to realize that if they’re genuinely sorry, their feelings of remorse should be translated into action,” write parenting experts Faber and Mazlish in their classic How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.

Riky Rumpler, MBACP, strongly supports the fix-it approach. “We call it self-agency or self-repair. Rather than fixing the child, you are giving him tools for life,” she explains. “Children need to take ownership and responsibility for what they’re doing and the choices they’re making.”

One Oklahoma State University study compared parental reactions to young children who had been hitting or acting defiant. While punishment was more effective in the short-term, reasoning with the children worked better in the long-term.

How could the parents of Dovid the chocolate purveyor have used the fix-it approach instead of a rote punishment? Perhaps they could have worked out a payment plan with his parents in order to return the money he’d taken.

Punishment’s Place

This is not to say that there isn’t a place for punishment. Studies have shown that punishments work. “Punishments aren’t a form of ‘retribution,’ as in, ‘You did something bad so you deserve to be hurt.’ Rather, punishment is an educational tool used to correct inappropriate behavior,” she explains.

How does punishment work? It rewires the brain, just like any behavior does, by adding another step onto the behavior. “For instance, think of Point A as the trigger that starts the sequence running,” Sarah Chana Radcliffe explains. “An example would be that Mom said no. The next stop along the track is Point B — child explodes in rage. The A-B circuit is practiced many times a week over many years.”

A punishment will insert a new stop along the track — Point C, the punishment. Now the circuit is A-B-C. “If C is sufficiently annoying, then when A triggers the circuit, the brain can already see C waiting further down the track and in order to avoid getting there, slams on the brakes so that B (the problem behavior) never happens. Punishment is thus a showstopper.”

So in what capacity should punishment be used?

All experts give the same advice: Punishments are a last resort. “Only after everything else has been tried should a parent turn to punishment as an intervention,” Sarah Chana says. It must come with warnings, and they shouldn’t be administered as spur-of-the-moment reactions. Without this structure in place, kids are more likely to repeat these negative behaviors without learning from their actions.

Sarah Chana recommends the 2X Rule, which works as follows:

Explain what the child did wrong and how they can react appropriately the next time a similar situation arises.

If the child repeats the unacceptable behavior again, remind the child that it’s wrong and will result in a (defined) punishment if done again. (If the behavior in question is very serious in nature, then these first two steps can be combined.)

From then on, similar behavior will result in the immediate punishment, given quietly, briefly, and respectfully.

This methodology helps children to look ahead to consequences, slamming the brakes on the train and helping to correct the behavior permanently. And a child who was warned of a consequence will be left with a sense of fairness — they knew the risk and engaged in the behavior anyway. That awareness shifts the focus from the punishing adult to the child, and it will empower the child to choose more wisely in the future.

Sarah Chana also cautions against public punishments and encourages parents to only punish a child if the child has already been told that their behavior was inappropriate and that the specific punishment will occur if they continue. “The parent should quietly announce that the punishment is in place, using the punishment itself as the teaching tool and completely refraining from displays of anger or upset. Punishment replaces parental anger.

“But when a behavior is seriously harming a child or others, it should be ‘helped out the door’ by parents, using serious discipline,” Mrs. Radcliffe adds. That can be dangerous, destructive actions, extreme disrespect, and antisocial behavior that breaks the rules of Hashem, society, or parents.

So don’t write off punishment altogether. Couple with an educational moment — fixing the problem or at least exploring what harm was done in the process — and the moment of negative behavior can be transformed into something productive.

In Action

C

haim’s birthday party began on a high note. Only 12 boys in his class had been invited. As they walked up the path to the front door, they were accompanied by the sound of shouting. Chaim came to the door to see what was going on. Four boys who hadn’t been invited to the party stood outside on the street, holding a protest.

Chaim’s father went out and sent the boys away, but as soon as he went back inside, they returned to their posts.

“Mean!”

“Not fair!”

“You’ve got some nerve!”

The party continued regardless, but the protests affected the atmosphere. After everyone had gone home, Chaim put his head down and burst into tears. Chaim’s parents called the school, demanding that they discipline the boys involved.

How could this be dealt with without resorting to punishment?

The principal called the four boys in. Instead of shouting or lecturing at them, he surprised them by asking them how they thought Chaim had felt: “It was his birthday, which he’d been waiting for excitedly for weeks. How do you think he felt when boys stood shouting outside?”

“Sad.”

“Upset.”

The principal looked at them each in turn, meaningfully. “Well, boys, what can you do to fix things?”

The boys seemed surprised at the question initially, but then started to consider it seriously. The mood swiftly changed from fear to one of purposefulness. After some animated discussion among themselves, they came to a decision: they would buy flowers for Chaim’s family for the Shabbos table. Each boy would bring a couple of dollars of his own money, and they would pool their resources.

Chaim’s father called the following week to tell me that the four boys had come to the house on Erev Shabbos with a beautiful bunch of flowers, with a handwritten apology letter attached signed by all of them.

T

here was an ongoing rivalry between the second and third grades at Bais Yaakov Elementary School. As part of the school’s social studies curriculum, the second-grade teacher introduced a recycling project. The second-graders carried out surveys about litter, urged everyone to avoid unnecessary waste, and plastered the premises with posters bearing the message, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”

One week, the teacher had her students collect used plastic bags in different colors. The girls cut the bags up into triangles, which they attached to a piece of string to make bunting, which they hung around the schoolyard. But then someone pulled it down, tore it into pieces, and trampled on it. After rumors swirled back and forth for a while, the ugly truth emerged: It was two third-graders, Blimi and Rivky. Their teacher was deeply disturbed. “What a chutzpah of those two third-graders to deliberately wreck other students’ hard work!” she felt.

How could this be dealt with without resorting to punishment?

The third-graders, Blimi and Rivky, didn’t even attempt to claim they were innocent. The principal, Mrs. Turner, told them in a stern voice that the second-graders were very upset about the torn bunting, and that it needed to be repaired. At first, they found the task fun, and chatted animatedly to each other, but the novelty quickly wore off, and soon they were wishing they hadn’t touched it to begin with.

When the job was finally completed, they hung it up. It looked a little the worse for wear, but nobody said a word, as it was clear from Blimi and Rivky’s faces that they regretted their actions.

Bashie Lisker contributed to this piece.

Rachel Atkins QTS NPSLBA is a UK government-accredited educator and behavior specialist, a Triple-P Parenting Practitioner, the director of Brilliant Behaviour Ltd, and cofounder of the Bye Bye Bullying Program.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 964)