"Parenting Without Punishing"

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your drink
at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.


Only if you're allowed to do it.

As I've stated, a teacher recieved a formal reprimand for requiring a group
of students clean up a mess (after they decided to shoot spitballs in the
library)-because that was degrading. So much for a logical conseqence.

As far as grades go, grades are considered punitive by some parents too-so
much so that schools in some districts aren't supposed to post graded work,
honor rolls and the like. And sending homework home is asking to have
parents down your throat complaining that it's interfering with family time.
Requiring a child to complete unfinished homework at recess will have
parents complaining that it is unfair to require their child to miss recess
because he/she needs the physical activity. Assigning only incomplete work
as homework? Still unfair-after all, why should this poor child who works
slowly be penalized because of that (never mind that this poor child who
works slowly spent the whole period talking to his friends)

I teach music-the most common logical consequence is the "use it correctly
or lose it" rule-which works great, until PARENTS started complaining that
it was unfair for their poor baby to be unable to use an instrument just
because he/she decided to play the drum with their feet instead of their
hands-after all, I was stifling the poor child's creativity.

And believe me, it isn't the parents who advocate more punitive discipline
who refuse to allow logical consequences-it's the ones who believe in NO
punishment, and apparently, NO consequenses. I believe strongly in logical
conseqences-because I KNOW they work if I'm allowed to use them. But all it
takes is one parent complaining for any reason, and they're not allowed.

And, what happens when minor consequences are not allowed is that only the
major ones are left-so the teacher or principal ends up calling the parent
for every trivial thing (because the parent has tied their hands) and then
the parent is even more convinced that the school is out to get their child.

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life. If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be
consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

And what happens if bad grades are not a sufficiently serious consequence
for the child to correct the failure to do his or her homework? As long as
the child is making good grades on tests, it may not be an issue. But if
the child starts to fall behind, and bad grades aren't motivating the child
to keep up, isn't something more serious needed?

Keep in mind that in the adult world, the consequence of refusing to do
one's job on an ongoing basis is getting fired. So it's not as if imposing
something more serious than a bad grade on a child would be out of line with
the consequences adults face for similar behavior.

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:20:39 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


"toto" wrote in message
.. .

Grades are merely a measurement device. Thus, the reward
of a good grade is the reward of doing something
successfully, much as winning a game because one
played it well is a reward or playing a song on the piano
well is a reward.

I disagree.
Grades are often an *incorrect* measurement of the learning
that is going on.

Would you mind elaborating on this? Offhand, the three issues I can think
of are (1) differences in test-taking skills, (2) tests don't tell whether
the child has particular answers "down cold" or is just guessing, and (3)
especially, how much the child knows above and beyond what was on the test.
Did you have other things in mind?

And, children who are motivated internally
want to learn, not to be graded by some outside source.
When you play a game, you can win despite playing poorly
if your team plays well or if your opponent makes mistakes.
YOU know whether or not you played well. And, you can play
well and lose because your opponent played better. When
you play a song well on the piano, you know that you did it
well. No audience or prize is needed to motivate you or to
*make* you practice until you do play it well.

In academic subjects, without some kind of testing (even if it's just the
child checking his answers against the back of the book), there is a very
real possibility that the child will think he knows the material better than
he really does.

And by the way, it is by no means rare for sports coaches to catch flaws in
players' techniques that the players are not aware of.

Conversely, bad grades "punish" in the same sense that
losing a game as a result of making mistakes is a "punishment"
or making mistakes while playing the piano is a "punishment."

Nope. The problem with grades is they are someone else judging
your learning, not your own judgement of whether or not you learned.
With the piano, *I* make the judgement because *I* can hear what
went wrong. This is true of learning anything *if* we use tests and
evaluations as learning tools instead of as judgements. Grades,
however, are not used this way. They are used to determine whether
or not a child fails in the judgement of the teachers and parents.

I very strongly agree that tests should be learning tools. The whole point
of schools is for children to learn, and what use is there in identifying a
problem if no effort is made to correct it?

Granted, if parents or teachers express approval or disapproval of a child's
grades, that provides an extrinsic reward or punishment. But the grade
itself is merely a summary of how well the child did overall. It is how it
is used that can make it an extrinsic reward or punishment.

The "reward" or "punishment" inherent in grades is intrinsic to the
child's knowing that he is doing something well or poorly. It is not
something extrinsic intended solely for the purpose of manipulation.
Indeed, the only way children WON'T feel the reward of being
highly successful in their studies or the "punishment" of being
less successful is if adults refuse to provide the children with
accurate information about how well they are doing.

Providing accurate information is not the same as *grading* the
child's progress.

True. A grade provides no more than a summary, and the summary itself is
not really necessary when the specific errors are pointed out. On the other
hand, a child just might want to calculate the percentage of wrong answers
even if a teacher didn't. And if a teacher adjusts the grades upward to
reflect the difficulty of a test, that sends the message, "This test may
have been a bit on the hard side, so missing a certain percentage isn't
necessarily as big an issue as it would be on an easier test." Thus, the
information is not useless.

Personally, I view hiding information from children out of fear that
knowing the truth might hurt their "self-esteem" as reprehensible.
True self-esteem comes from recognizing one's abilities and
limitations and regarding it as success to do one's best even if
other people's best is better, not from ignorance. And false
self-esteem founded on ignorance is doomed to failure in the long
term because once children see the truth, their old sense of self-
esteem collapses and they have no foundation on which to build a
new sense of self-esteem to replace it.

I don't think you should *hide* the evidence of limitations, nor
should you try to raise self-esteem by false pretences. OTOH,
grades don't actually evaluate objectively and they give no feedback
to tell the child what he needs to do to learn the subject matter.

Grades don't give an indication of exactly what the child needs to do, but
they do give an indication of how much the child might want or need to do.
An "F" indicates that the child needs to work a lot harder to keep up with
other children. A "C" was originally supposed to mean that a child was
doing about average, which would raise the question of whether the child
wants to settle for doing about average or to push harder to do better. (Of
course from some of the things I've read about grade inflation, I get the
impression that the average grade is higher than "C" these days.) So I view
the information as useful from a student's perspective.

Keep in mind that when children grow up, they will be competing with each
other for jobs. For example, if a child wants to get into medical school
and become a doctor, he needs to learn enough to compete with others who
have a similar desire. That kind of thing can make knowledge of how a child
measures up against other children very important - to the child, not just
to the teacher and parents.

Nathan

In article ,
says...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences. You
dont show up to work and you get fired, you slack off at your work you get
fired. You make a mess in your home eventualy you or your spouse will have
to clean it up. You cheat on your spouse they will most likely leave you.
While it would be wonderful to live in a world without punishment in general
it is just not the case. To raise a child to not have cause and effect
other then the "natural consequenses" (IE sticking a fork in the outlet will
get the child shocked) is just as bad IMO then to over punish a child.

I have been lurking on this thread and wanted to pipe in that IMO people
are confusing natural consequences with punishment. A detention is a
punishment, a bad grade resulting from not studying or cutting class is
a natural consequence. As a teacher for years I have seen parents too
often try their best to protect children from the natural consequences
of bad behavior, and this usually leads to children who make poor
choices. I teach in an alternative school for at-risk youth, and have
seen first hand the benefits of structured expectations and
consequences.

-kim

In article ,
says...

"Tori M." wrote
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues, followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

I am just curious - do you see getting suspended or expelled from school
as a punishment or natural consequence? And what type of consequence
would you suggest for children in schools who sexually molest another
student, bring weapons or drugs to school, assault other students or
teachers?

-kim



In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your drink at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.

"Doan" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Lesa wrote:


"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

And what are the results of this philosophy? Do the students learned
more? Do the schools no longer need cops nor metal detectors?

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your
drink at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.

What if the children don't want to clean it up?

Doan

Quite honeslty this in not something I've encountered on more than a very
very infrequent basis. It is understood that taking responsiblity for one's
actions is expected, and I've found that children will what you expect of
them. If you expect that a child will act in a cooperative manner, they do
so. If you expect that a child will constantly rebel and refuse to do what
is required, they do this as well. On those rare occasions where a child
would not want to clean up, all that is necessary is disussing with the
child that you understand that they don't want to do this now, but that it
needs to be done and you would appreciate their taking care of it -- neve
rhad a problem beyond that.

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Lesa wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Lesa wrote:


"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

And what are the results of this philosophy? Do the students learned
more? Do the schools no longer need cops nor metal detectors?

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your
drink at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.

What if the children don't want to clean it up?

Doan

Quite honeslty this in not something I've encountered on more than a very
very infrequent basis. It is understood that taking responsiblity for one's
actions is expected, and I've found that children will what you expect of
them. If you expect that a child will act in a cooperative manner, they do
so. If you expect that a child will constantly rebel and refuse to do what
is required, they do this as well. On those rare occasions where a child
would not want to clean up, all that is necessary is disussing with the
child that you understand that they don't want to do this now, but that it
needs to be done and you would appreciate their taking care of it -- neve
rhad a problem beyond that.

Good for you! You seem to have figured out what work with your kids. The
problem I have with this is when you try to generalize it to everyone. As
you acknowledged, it didn't work 100% of the times even with your own
kids! Imagine a single-mom having to catch a bus to work in the morning
and uncooperating child that don't want to go to daycare that day. What
are the consequences in this case? Theory is nice, but reality is what
really bites!

Doan

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 09:02:28 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


"toto" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:20:39 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


"toto" wrote in message
.. .

Grades are merely a measurement device. Thus, the reward
of a good grade is the reward of doing something
successfully, much as winning a game because one
played it well is a reward or playing a song on the piano
well is a reward.

I disagree.
Grades are often an *incorrect* measurement of the learning
that is going on.

Would you mind elaborating on this? Offhand, the three issues I can think
of are (1) differences in test-taking skills, (2) tests don't tell whether
the child has particular answers "down cold" or is just guessing, and (3)
especially, how much the child knows above and beyond what was on the test.
Did you have other things in mind?

Several other things come to mind as well. For example, grading an
essay is subjective. Several teachers can grade the same essay with
grades that differ by quite a lot. In subjects where teachers have
particular viewpoints, often if a child disagrees with the teacher's
views and writes with good support about their own view, the grade
will reflect that the child disagreed rather than how good the actual
writing and support were. A good rubric helps when grading English
essays, but it isn't going to ameliorate the subjectivity entirely.

And, children who are motivated internally
want to learn, not to be graded by some outside source.
When you play a game, you can win despite playing poorly
if your team plays well or if your opponent makes mistakes.
YOU know whether or not you played well. And, you can play
well and lose because your opponent played better. When
you play a song well on the piano, you know that you did it
well. No audience or prize is needed to motivate you or to
*make* you practice until you do play it well.

In academic subjects, without some kind of testing (even if it's just the
child checking his answers against the back of the book), there is a very
real possibility that the child will think he knows the material better than
he really does.

I am not against *tests,* but I am against using them the way they
are currently used to compare one student to another and to evaluate
the student's learning. I am all for using tests to give students
feedback about what they need to learn by allowing them to correct
errors. OTOH, it's not necessarily about right and wrong answers
if we are attempting to teach critical thinking and supporting your
opinions on things.

And by the way, it is by no means rare for sports coaches to catch flaws in
players' techniques that the players are not aware of.

Yes, but the way this is corrected is not to *grade* the player and
fail him and keep him from playing the sport again. A good coach
points out the flaw, shows the player what can be done to correct it
and allows the player to practice the new technique so they can
become better players.

Conversely, bad grades "punish" in the same sense that
losing a game as a result of making mistakes is a "punishment"
or making mistakes while playing the piano is a "punishment."

Nope. The problem with grades is they are someone else judging
your learning, not your own judgement of whether or not you learned.
With the piano, *I* make the judgement because *I* can hear what
went wrong. This is true of learning anything *if* we use tests and
evaluations as learning tools instead of as judgements. Grades,
however, are not used this way. They are used to determine whether
or not a child fails in the judgement of the teachers and parents.

I very strongly agree that tests should be learning tools. The whole point
of schools is for children to learn, and what use is there in identifying a
problem if no effort is made to correct it?

Granted, if parents or teachers express approval or disapproval of a child's
grades, that provides an extrinsic reward or punishment. But the grade
itself is merely a summary of how well the child did overall. It is how it
is used that can make it an extrinsic reward or punishment.

The problem is that such summaries are flawed.

The "reward" or "punishment" inherent in grades is intrinsic to the
child's knowing that he is doing something well or poorly. It is not
something extrinsic intended solely for the purpose of manipulation.
Indeed, the only way children WON'T feel the reward of being
highly successful in their studies or the "punishment" of being
less successful is if adults refuse to provide the children with
accurate information about how well they are doing.

Providing accurate information is not the same as *grading* the
child's progress.

True. A grade provides no more than a summary, and the summary itself is
not really necessary when the specific errors are pointed out. On the other
hand, a child just might want to calculate the percentage of wrong answers
even if a teacher didn't. And if a teacher adjusts the grades upward to
reflect the difficulty of a test, that sends the message, "This test may
have been a bit on the hard side, so missing a certain percentage isn't
necessarily as big an issue as it would be on an easier test." Thus, the
information is not useless.

You seem to believe that everything has right and wrong answers when
you are learning. This is what is untrue. There are right and wrong
answers to standard math problems, but not to much else in the world
of learning.

Personally, I view hiding information from children out of fear that
knowing the truth might hurt their "self-esteem" as reprehensible.
True self-esteem comes from recognizing one's abilities and
limitations and regarding it as success to do one's best even if
other people's best is better, not from ignorance. And false
self-esteem founded on ignorance is doomed to failure in the long
term because once children see the truth, their old sense of self-
esteem collapses and they have no foundation on which to build a
new sense of self-esteem to replace it.

I don't think you should *hide* the evidence of limitations, nor
should you try to raise self-esteem by false pretences. OTOH,
grades don't actually evaluate objectively and they give no feedback
to tell the child what he needs to do to learn the subject matter.

Grades don't give an indication of exactly what the child needs to do, but
they do give an indication of how much the child might want or need to do.
An "F" indicates that the child needs to work a lot harder to keep up with
other children.

Why should he *keep up with other children.* Learning is an
individual thing. He should go at his own pace. If that means
he is ahead and can go on to another class early, that's fine.
If it means he needs to continue practicing for mastery and stay
on a topic longer, that should be fine too.

A "C" was originally supposed to mean that a child was
doing about average, which would raise the question of whether the child
wants to settle for doing about average or to push harder to do better. (Of
course from some of the things I've read about grade inflation, I get the
impression that the average grade is higher than "C" these days.) So I view
the information as useful from a student's perspective.

Keep in mind that when children grow up, they will be competing with each
other for jobs. For example, if a child wants to get into medical school
and become a doctor, he needs to learn enough to compete with others who
have a similar desire. That kind of thing can make knowledge of how a child
measures up against other children very important - to the child, not just
to the teacher and parents.

No, it's not. If a child wants to do something, then they can do
their best for themselves. They don't have to care what others
are doing as long as they are doing their own best work.

Nathan


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 03:42:12 -0700, Doan wrote:

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, toto wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 21:42:25 -0500, "Tori M."
wrote:

To raise a child to not have cause and effect
other then the "natural consequenses" (IE sticking
a fork in the outlet will get the child shocked) is just
as bad IMO then to over punish a child.

Children learn easily that *other people* can be punitive
without having their parents punish them.

Yes, that is why it is better for their parents to prepare
them for the REAL WORLD, not Oz land. Do you want your
children to grow up and be like Steve? :-)

Parents do NOT have to punish kids to prepare them for
the *real world.* They do have to instill a sense of ethics
and a sense of self-discipline.

My children both have that and I am now helping to raise
my grandchildren in the same way.

I have said before that permissive parenting is not the same
thing as positive parenting. Giving in to the whims of anyone
doesn't help them to learn to respect the feelings of the other
person involved. But there is no need to punish children to
accomplish this.

Doan


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 08:14:09 -0500, "Donna Metler"
wrote:


"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your drink
at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.


Only if you're allowed to do it.

As I've stated, a teacher recieved a formal reprimand for requiring a group
of students clean up a mess (after they decided to shoot spitballs in the
library)-because that was degrading. So much for a logical conseqence.

I do think this is ridiculous. What exactly is degrading about
cleaning up a mess *you* made?

It is interesting to me that in one upper middle class junior high
school here, kids are required to sit at their tables in groups and
to clean up the tables after lunch. It seems logical to me for them
to do this and so far no parents seem to have a problem with it.
The kids rotate who does what and one kid actually has to sweep
under the table too.

In poorer schools, the attitude seems to be that the janitor is paid
to do this, so it is degrading because the kids are doing janitorial
work. This too is really an outgrowth of our society's disdain for
any work that is not *clean.* It's almost as if the kids think that
those who clean are *untouchables* like the Indian caste that does
those dirty jobs.

As far as grades go, grades are considered punitive by some parents too-so
much so that schools in some districts aren't supposed to post graded work,
honor rolls and the like. And sending homework home is asking to have
parents down your throat complaining that it's interfering with family time.

This I have seen as we had some parents in my son's high school who
seemed to believe that.

Requiring a child to complete unfinished homework at recess will have
parents complaining that it is unfair to require their child to miss recess
because he/she needs the physical activity. Assigning only incomplete work
as homework? Still unfair-after all, why should this poor child who works
slowly be penalized because of that (never mind that this poor child who
works slowly spent the whole period talking to his friends)

I teach music-the most common logical consequence is the "use it correctly
or lose it" rule-which works great, until PARENTS started complaining that
it was unfair for their poor baby to be unable to use an instrument just
because he/she decided to play the drum with their feet instead of their
hands-after all, I was stifling the poor child's creativity.

And believe me, it isn't the parents who advocate more punitive discipline
who refuse to allow logical consequences-it's the ones who believe in NO
punishment, and apparently, NO consequenses. I believe strongly in logical
conseqences-because I KNOW they work if I'm allowed to use them. But all it
takes is one parent complaining for any reason, and they're not allowed.

And, what happens when minor consequences are not allowed is that only the
major ones are left-so the teacher or principal ends up calling the parent
for every trivial thing (because the parent has tied their hands) and then
the parent is even more convinced that the school is out to get their child.

Permissive parenting is not the same as non-punitive parenting,
however. It sounds like you have a great many permissive parents.
I wonder how many spend any real time with the children doing anything
that matters.

I wonder at this culture in a school. Where is the principal in terms
of taking a stand with parents and explaining to them what must be
done for learning to take place?


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits