Serious answer: reactionary discipline is worse than proactive discipline and discipline is not synonymous with punishment in my book.
The best discipline is guidance via presence and conveyance of purpose. Letting a child absorb the sickness of our age from school and media is poisoning them with indiscipline.
Cautiously select their media library until you are confident they know right from wrong. Give them activities that guide their development either moral, physical, or artistic, developing disciplines such as a martial art physical acumen or a regime, a musical or artistic discipline, also understand they need relaxation, play, and friends and so need guidance in their social behavior and need positive reinforcement for good behavior, you need to study reward circuits to do this bit properly.
When you need reactionary discipline the punishment should fit the crime but also should be within expectations of the child, setting expectations for punishment is a good deterrent in the first place but better after first administration and one should never go overboard on the punishment and lose themselves to anger. Caution is important because sadomasochism and most weird sex fetishes are rooted in experiences of childhood punishment or confusion, the modern theories for why might have merit, spanking does draw blood to the are and in adults we know for a fact that blood can induce sexual arousal. This may well be the circuit driving the association of taboos and sexual pleasure. I encourage a switch, a young green branch from a dogwood or similar tree peeled down until it is thin, flexible and without knobs it should draw less blood to the area but if your child welts from a switch never use them again, it could induce allergies.
The best reactionary discipline genuinely is deprivation of stimuli, put them in a corner or in their room and don't let them have stimulus in there, I don't advise depriving them of food or punishment with food.
If you are certain they did something wrong to another person making them write a written apology is also a great option.
This was a good read. Thank you for it. My mom leaned too much on ass whooping to the point of abuse. She was very reactionary in her discipline and often quoted the Bible "spare the rod spoil the child" to justify this.
Sometimes I see myself performing reactionary type discipline with my toddler and he seems so sad and wounded that I think that I have over done it, though ive found his actions rarely if ever deserve a spanking and it is I that has over reacted to an accident. If I see that I have done this I will hug him and apologize and explain what happened. Idk that he totally gets it but he seems to relax and appreciate it
If a child cannot understand their punishment then in almost all cases that punishment is simply abuse, I understand a small pop on the wrist for misbehavior that needs immediate correction but physical punishment runs the risk of creating negative associations to touch (bad touch) that will discolor the perceptions of good touch for their whole life.
I should say when verbal warnings and explanations of punishment become viable, easy to understand explanations and asking the child to help in reasoning out the bad behavior are important to show they understand, but being overly verbose or haranguing the child may backfire, they aren't likely to internalize what you are telling them, short and to the point is best. A good tip for this is if you are flustered send them to their room while you collect yourself and consider how you will explain the punishment so that they understand it.
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