Ep 2: Have We Forgotten How to Discipline?

Raising Parents with Emily Oster

There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they’ve changed wildly in America over the decades. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the old school, 1950s approach: spanking. Then, there are middle-ground approaches: time-outs, warning systems, consequences, and punishments. And then, there are the fairly new approaches on the way other end of the spectrum. These are the kind of approaches that claim that the right way to parent is not to punish your child, but rather to help your child understand why they’re frustrated and to help them work through their frustration. “Gentle parenting”—sometimes called “respectful parenting” or “attentive parenting”—has become really popular in the last few years, and if your social media feeds are anything like ours, you’ve heard all about it and been told you need to do it.

The question many parents are asking is: We have been told that spanking was bad, and we shouldn’t go back to it. But have we gone too far in the other direction? Has gentle parenting led us to permissive parenting, where kids are learning that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want? And yes, there are consequences of being too hard on your kids, but what are the consequences of being too soft on them? Today: How should we be disciplining the next generation of kids? And have we gotten too soft on them along the way?

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Resources from this episode:

• Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
• Dr. Thomas Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Gentle 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting
• Dr. Becky Kennedy: Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
• Hal Chaffee: How to Spank Your Kids the Right Way