"Chris" wrote in message
...
In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: But by and large, the system works. And throwing it out before we're
: positive that we have something that will work better in the real world,
: with real parents and real children, would be foolish.

Once again, Nathan, you appear to be talking about win/win cooperative
nonpunitive discipline as if it were some sort of new untested concept
rather than a set of approaches to dealing with conflict in the
parent/child relationship developed decades ago and used successfully in

Chris, this is anecdotal evidence. If I argued that there are thousands of
parents who spank and get good results, you would correctly counter that
just because there are thousands of parents who spank and get good results,
that most definitely does not mean that all parents who spank get good
results. So why should I accept the same kind of reasoning from you
regarding non-punitive techniques?

As I keep saying, how well strictly non-punitive techniques work depends on
children's willingness to cooperate. The fact that there are some children,
or even a lot of children who are sufficiently willing to cooperate for
purely non-punitive techniques to be considered "successful" in no way
implies that there aren't other children for whom eliminating parents'
authority to punish would be a disaster. (And that's doubly true -
actually, a lot more than just doubly true - if a lot of parents forced to
use exclusively non-punitive techniques wouldn't put nearly the effort into
them that parents who are highly committed to making non-punitive techniques
work do.)

Further, what evidence do you have regarding whether those "thousands of
families" rely entirely on non-punitive techniques? What evidence do you
have that the parents in those families never punish, and never even raise
the possibility that they might punish if they feel like they have to? And
even if you can find thousands of families where you can be sure that even
the possibility of punishment never comes up, do those reflect the vast
majority of families who are trying to use exclusively non-punitive
techniques, or do a large percentage of parents who would like to use
exclusively non-punitive techniques find that they need at least the
possibility of using punishment as leverage? Keep in mind that knowing that
their parents could punish if they feel the need gives children a bit more
incentive to make non-punitive techniques work than they would have
otherwise.

I'm not trying to say that non-punitive techniques aren't useful. They are.
I'm just challenging your unsupported assertions about how reliably they
work.