5 Alternatives to Spanking for Cycle-Breaking Parents

This is part I in a series. Read part II here.

So you’ve done it. You’ve made the commitment—you’re not going to parent the way you were parented. Perhaps your parents did the best they could with the tools they had, or embraced harsh punishment out of some sense of cultural or religious obligation. Perhaps you’ve read the spate of recent research articles on all the negative social and emotional effects of spanking. Turns out, spanking interferes with a child’s ability to gain interpersonal intelligence and interpersonal effectiveness skills, is correlated with later life mental health problems, and most crucially—it doesn’t work. It doesn’t actually teach what we think it teaches. In many cases, it can reinforce the very behaviors we're trying to teach kids not to use.

To spank or not to spank? It's sometimes presented as "spank- or spoil". But there are actually much better options - research based - for teaching kids self-control. No spanking required! Here are 5 tried-and-true alternatives - better choices - for helping kids learn self-regulation and self-control. Post-Traumatic and Cycle Breaking Parents - rejoice! You do have effective options.

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Most post-traumatic and cycle-breaking parents tell me, "I know what not to do, but I have no clue what to actually do. If I don’t spank, how can I keep my kids safe? How can I stop them from becoming playground bullies, or teach them there are consequences to anything from staying up too late to pushing other children on the playground to running into the street without looking both ways?" It seems scary to abandon spanking and other forms of harsh discipline.

So, here’s the thing:

Precisely because you want your children to listen to you, to be guided by you, and to learn social pragmatics and self-regulation skills from you—that’s why you don’t want to spank them.

There are much more effective ways to teach children how to behave appropriately, to help children learn social pragmatics skills, to instill conflict resolution abilities, and even to keep children safe.

We're going to discuss the first two in depth in this installment, and follow up with the final three in the second installment.

1. Stop signal
2. Logical consequences
3. Preload self-control
4. Teach self-regulation, teach using signals
5. Control the environment, not the child. Scaffold self-control into the child.

Problem 1: Obedience = Safety.

Many post-traumatic parents, particularly parents of toddlers, tell me they don’t see an alternative to spanking for safety reasons. My kid needs to learn not to dash into the street, to stop reaching for a hot stove, to stop being rambunctious and nearly killing the pet cat—or their baby brother. I am worried that spanking can interfere with attachment—how can I be the source of safety, security, and stability when I’m also the angry source of pain?

Do you know in which context instant and blind obedience is a safety consideration? In danger zones. Soldiers are trained to instantly obey orders, and that could save their lives. Similarly, we drill obedience to danger signals like fire alarms—because in those moments, blind obedience to an authority figure could save us.

I’m hoping that our homes are not war zones. I’m hoping that our homes feel like safe and secure environments where one doesn’t need to be constantly hypervigilant for danger. Training our children to always be alert and blindly obedient means we’re training them that home is like a war zone, where danger could always lurk. Is that consistent with your parenting values? It definitely isn’t with mine. Yes, the world can be a scary place, but home should be a safe haven.

Solution 1: Stop Signal

Instead, teach and drill a “stop” signal. When I was taking self-defense classes, and we learned more dangerous moves, like chokeholds, our instructor drilled a stop signal into us. If she yelled “FREEZE”—no matter what we were doing, we’d freeze in place. Sometimes, she’d yell “FREEZE” while we were chatting before class or changing. The idea was to instantly freeze when we heard that signal.

With the littlest kids, we’d turn it into a specialized game of “freeze tag." It didn’t take long before even the preschoolers in the youngest classes knew how to obey the freeze signal.

Come up with your own freeze signal and train it into your kids, using a game. After a while, whatever word you use to signal “freeze” will become second nature. I suggest coming up with a word or sound you don’t usually make so that the signal remains clear. If your toddler is dashing to the street, or your 8-year-old is about to crash into a younger sibling, this signal could avert real danger—and there’s no pain, punishment, or attachment interference.

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Problem 2: If I don’t spank, how will they learn?

Another thing I hear from parents goes along the lines of, “I need my kids to listen to me, and I know when my parents punished me harshly or even threatened a spanking, I fell in line.”

Solution 2: Logical Consequences

Repeat after me: Logical consequences are not punishments. Logical consequences are just that—the logical consequence of unsafe or inappropriate behavior. If we’re ignoring safety rules on the trampoline, it’s time to get off the trampoline now. If we’re throwing toys, we’re going to have to put the hard-edged toys away, and only play with soft toys for a while. If a middle schooler was disrespectful to a teacher, that’s a rupture in the relationship. He’s going to have to repair that relationship, maybe by writing an apology letter that includes a plan for handling this type of situation in the future—in a prosocial way.

The function of punishment is to inflict pain as a deterrent. The function of a natural consequence is to help a child develop self-control. Punishments constrain behavior, consequences contain behavior.

Does the child sometimes learn from the aversive aspect of the consequence? Sure.

Little Timmy might think, “The playground is so much fun! I wish I could stay here forever. Last week, when I pushed my cousin and got too silly and overstimulated, Mom took me home early. I don’t want to go home early this week, so I’ll manage my silliness.”

The aversiveness wasn’t the point. It isn’t “Mom controlled me by taking me home.” It’s “I learned self-control because I don’t want to go home.”

Other Solutions

Perhaps you're concerned that if you don't shut "problem" behavior down immediately, you're condoning it. Or maybe you worry that other children will learn that it's OK to act aggressively, speak disrespectfully, or dodge responsibility. Or you're thinking, "My child goes from zero to sixty in 5 seconds. Stop signals and logical consequences won't work. Or maybe you're thinking, but what about power struggles? If I don't discipline harshly, they'll get worse."

The last three alternatives to spanking—preloading self-control, teaching self-regulation, and controlling the environmnent, not the child—all help with these concerns. We will get to them in more depth in the second installment of this article.

For now, know that there's hope out there. There are alternatives to spanking and harsh punishment. Not only are they alternatives—they’re better, more research-supported options that will keep kids safe, teach them self-regulation and social competencies, while preserving our relationship with them. Most importantly, they’ve been demonstrated to be more effective at teaching these skills.