The Hand Licking Incident
This is a great anecdote to describe a formal approach which is called <i>positive discipline</i>.<p>We assume as adults that children who do things that are not what we want or against our instructions need “discipline” in order to learn they should have made a better choice.<p>This fails on the most basic point. Young children are, in most cases, not making a conscious choice at all in these cases. They are not thinking in their brains, the same way we adults imagine a conscious decision making process occurs, weighing the concequences and choosing a certain path. They are not deciding to be bad because it is easier&#x2F;more fun&#x2F;worth it at that age.<p>Positive discipline is not actually discipline at all. It is fundamentally a realization that children make “mistakes” because they weren’t actually <i>capable</i> of doing what was asked of them.<p>The essence of positive discipline is the search for the underlying reason a child is not capable of following your direction at that point in time &#x2F; for the task at hand.<p>Barring an exceptional case, (younger in particular) children are straight up desperate for attention and affection of their parents.<p>Sometimes this is the hardest thing in the world, as a fully functioning adult, when your child is doing something [annoying&#x2F;destructive&#x2F;insulting&#x2F;dangerous&#x2F;disgusting] after the n-th time you’ve told them not to. Adults respond to punishment &#x2F; negative reinforcement very differently than [young] children.<p>In particular keep in mind this is primarily a <i>learning</i> experience for a child to develop coping skills and the ability to regulate their emotions. The skills don’t develop very well from a basis of fear of reprisal in my opinion.<p>I’m not always able to practice positive discipline with my kids, but I can’t count the number of occasions where I’ve pulled out that tool in response to some stressful situation and watched the sheer relief&#x2F;release on my kid’s face when they manage to actually communicate outloud to someone that will listen that thing that had them so upset or feeling sad&#x2F;mad&#x2F;lousy.