by Adele Faber
But last Friday my son was late for school, which meant I was going to be late for work. And I lost it. “You’re thirteen years old and still have no sense of time. Why do you always do this to me? I bought you a new watch. Do you ever wear it? No. And don’t you dare walk away while I’m talking to you!”
He stopped, threw me a look, and said, “Ma, go read your door!”
a quick reminder
To Engage a Teenager’s Cooperation
Instead of ordering (“Turn that music down! And I mean now!!”), you can:
Describe the problem: “I can’t think or have a conversation when the music is blasting.”
Describe what you feel: “It hurts my ears.”
Give information: “Frequent exposure to loud sound can damage a person’s hearing.”
Offer a choice: “What would you rather do—turn the volume way down or lower it a little and close your door?”
Say it in a word: “The volume!”
State your values and/or expectations: “We all need to tune in to each other’s tolerance for loud music.”
Do the unexpected: Put your hands over your ears, make a motion of turning the volume down, place palms together, and bow in a gesture of gratitude.
Put it in writing: Music this loud
May be cool for a crowd
But for just me and you
It is much too, too
LOUD!!!
Three
To Punish or Not to Punish
Our third session hadn’t started yet. People were still clustered in small groups, deeply engrossed in conversation. Scraps of sentences reached my ears.
“After what she did, I’m grounding her for the month!”
“So I said to myself, No more Mr. Nice Guy. I’ve been too easy on this kid. This time he’s going to be punished.”
Well, I thought to myself, we haven’t talked about punishment yet, but it sounds as if some people are more than ready.
“Laura, Michael,” I said. “Would you be willing to let us all in on what your kids did that made you so angry at them?”
“I wasn’t just angry,” Laura sputtered. “I was worried sick! Kelly was supposed to be at her friend Jill’s birthday party at six o’clock. At seven I got a call from Jill’s mother. ‘Where’s Kelly? She knew we had to be at the bowling alley by seven-thirty. It was on the invitation. Now we’re all standing around in our coats waiting for her.’
“My heart began to pound. I said, ‘I don’t understand. She left in plenty of time. She should have been there long ago.’
” ‘Well, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I just hope she gets here soon,’ Jill’s mother said, and hung up.
“I made myself wait fifteen minutes before calling back. Jill answered the phone. ‘No, Kelly still isn’t here. And I even reminded her in school today not to be late.’
“Now I really started to panic. Horrible pictures flashed through my mind. Twenty agonizing minutes later the phone rang. It was Jill’s mother. ‘I thought you’d like to know that Kelly has finally arrived. Evidently she met some boy on the way here and was so busy talking to him she forgot we were waiting for her. I only hope we didn’t lose our reservation at the bowling alley.’
“I apologized for my daughter and thanked her for calling. But when Kelly walked in after the party, I tore into her: ‘Do you realize what you put me through? How could you be so inconsiderate? How could you be so irresponsible? You never give a thought to anyone but yourself. It was Jill’s birthday. But did you feel an obligation to your friend? No! All you care about is boys and having fun. Well, the fun is over, young lady. You are grounded for the rest of the month! And don’t think I am going to change my mind, because I won’t.’
“Well, that’s what I said to her then. But now I don’t know. … Maybe I was too hard on her.”
“Seems to me,” Michael commented, “Kelly got exactly what she deserved. And so did my son.”
All heads turned toward him. “What happened?” someone asked. “What did he do?”
“It’s what he hasn’t been doing,” Michael answered. “Namely, his homework. Ever since Jeff made the team, soccer is all he cares about. Every day he comes home late from practice, disappears into his room after dinner, and when I ask him if he’s keeping up with his homework, he says, ‘Not to worry, Dad. I’m on top of it!’
“Well, Sunday, when Jeff was out, I walked by his room and noticed a letter lying on the floor near his door. I picked it up and saw it was addressed to me. It had been opened and was dated a week ago. Guess what? It was a warning notice from his math teacher. Jeff had handed in no homework—none—for the past two weeks. When I saw that, I hit the roof.
“As soon as he walked through the door, I was ready for him. I held up the letter and said, ‘You lied to me about doing your homework. You opened mail that was addressed to me. And you never showed me this warning notice. Well, I have news for you, mister. No more soccer for you for the rest of the term. I’m calling the coach tomorrow.’
“He said, ‘Dad, you can’t do that to me!’
“I said, ‘I’m not doing anything to you, Jeff. You’ve done it to yourself. Case closed.’ “
“But is it really closed?” Laura asked.
“Jeff doesn’t think so. He’s been working on me all week to get me to change my mind. So has my wife.” Michael glanced at her meaningfully. “She thinks I’m being too tough. Don’t you, dear?”
“What do you think?” I asked Michael.
“I think Jeff knows now that I mean business.”
“Yeah,” Tony chimed in. “Sometimes punishment is the only way to get a kid to shape up—to be more responsible.”
“I wonder,” I asked the group, “does punishment make a child more responsible? Take a moment and think back to your own experiences when you were growing up.”
Karen was the first to respond. “Punishment made me less responsible. When I was thirteen, my mother caught me with a cigarette and took away my phone privileges. So I smoked even more. Only I did it in the backyard where no one could see me. Then I’d come in and brush my teeth and say, ‘Hi Mom,’ with a big smile. I got away with it for years. Unfortunately, I’m still smoking.”
“I don’t know,” Tony said. “To my way of thinking, there’s a time and place for punishment. Take me, for instance. I was a bad kid. The gang I hung out with used to get into a lot of trouble. We were a wild bunch. One of the guys ended up in jail. I swear, if my father hadn’t punished me for some of the things I did, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
“And I don’t know where I’d be today,” Joan said, “if I hadn’t had therapy to help me undo the effects of all the times I was punished.”
Tony looked startled by her comment. “I don’t get it,” he said to her.
“Both my mother and father,” Joan explained, “believed that if a child did anything wrong and you didn’t punish her, you weren’t a responsible parent. And they always told me they were punishing me for my own good. But it wasn’t good for me. I became an angry, depressed teenager who had no confidence in herself. And there was no one I could talk to at home. I felt very alone.”
I found myself sighing. What people had just described was all the familiar fallout of punishment. Yes, some children become so discouraged by punishment and feel so powerless that they begin to lose faith in themselves.
And yes, some children, like Tony, conclude that they really are “bad” and need to be punished in order to become “good.”
And yes, some, like Karen, become so angry and resentful that they continue their behavior but devise ways not to get caught. They become, not more honest, but more cautious, more secretive, more crafty.
Yet punishment is widely accepted as a preferred method of discipline. In fact, many parents see discipline and punishment as one and the same. How could I share my conviction that in a caring relationship there is no room for punishment?
Aloud I said, “If we were someho
w forced to eliminate punishment as a disciplinary tool, would we then be completely helpless? Would our teenagers rule the roost? Would they become wild, undisciplined, self-absorbed, spoiled brats, devoid of any sense of right or wrong, who walk all over their parents? Or might there be methods other than punishment that could motivate our teenagers to behave responsibly?”
On the board I wrote:
Alternatives to Punishment
State your feelings.
State your expectations.
Show how to make amends.
Offer a choice.
Take action.
I asked Laura and Michael if they’d be willing to try to apply these skills to their current situations with their children. They both agreed to take on the challenge. On the following pages you’ll see, in cartoon form, the results of our struggle to work out scenarios that would meet the new guidelines. First we looked at how Laura might deal with her daughter Kelly, whose disregard for time had caused her mother such great concern.
Alternatives to Punishment
State Your Feelings
State Your Expectations
Show How to Make Amends
Offer a Choice
But suppose Kelly repeats her offense? Suppose Mom receives another “Where’s Kelly” call? The next time Kelly wants to visit a friend, Mom can
Take Action
The group was impressed. Many comments ensued:
“I was afraid when you first talked about alternatives to punishment that you meant some kind of ‘nicey-nice’ approach where the parent gives the kid a little scolding and lets her off the hook. But this is strong. You say what you feel and what you expect and give her a way to take responsibility for her behavior.”
“And you’re not being mean or harsh or making the girl feel like a bad person. You’re being tough, but respectful. Respectful to her and respectful to yourself.”
“Yeah, it’s not you, the parent, who’s the enemy. You’re on the kid’s side, but you’re holding her to a higher standard.”
“And showing her how to meet it.”
“And you’re not sending the message ‘I have all the power over you. I won’t let you do this… I’m taking away that.’ Instead, you’re putting the power back in the teenager’s hands. The ball is in Kelly’s court. It’s up to her to figure out exactly what she can do to give her mother peace of mind—like calling if she’s delayed, and calling when she arrives, and making sure to call again before she leaves for home.”
Laura groaned and held her hand to her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Working it out here with all of you, I almost feel confident. But what happens when I’m faced with the real thing? This approach makes a lot of demands on a parent. It means you have to have a whole different attitude. The truth is, punishing a kid is a lot easier.”
“Easier for the moment,” I agreed. “But if your goals are to help your daughter to assume responsibility and at the same time to maintain a good relationship with her, then punishing her would be self-defeating.
“But you have a point, Laura. This approach does require a shift in our thinking. Suppose we get more practice. Let’s see how the skills could be applied to the problem Michael is having with his son.”
Alternatives to Punishment
State Your Feelings
State Your Expectations
Show How to Make Amends
Offer a Choice
What if Jeff does his homework, makes up his assignments, but little by little lets his schoolwork slide again? Dad can then
Take Action
Tony shook his head. “Maybe there’s something I’m missing, but I don’t see the difference between ‘taking action’ and punishing Jeff. Either way his father is keeping him off the team.”
“Wait, I think I’m finally beginning to get it,” Laura said, turning to Tony. “When you punish a kid, you close the door on him. He’s got no place to go. It’s a done deal. But when you take action, the kid might not like the action, but the door is still open. He still has a chance. He can face up to what he did and try to fix it. He can turn a ‘wrong’ into a ‘right.’ “
“I like the way you put that, Laura,” I said. “Our goal in taking action is not only to put an end to unacceptable behavior but to give our kids a chance to learn from their mistakes. A chance to right their wrongs. Punishment may stop the behavior, but it may also stop children from becoming self-correcting.”
I glanced at Tony. He still looked skeptical. I went on, determined to get through to him. “My guess is that the teenager who has just been grounded for a week does not lie up his room and think, Oh, lucky me. I have such great parents. They’ve just taught me a valuable lesson. I’ll never do that again! It’s far more likely that the young person will be thinking, They’re mean, or, They’re unfair, or, I hate them, or, I’ll get back at them, or, I’ll do it again—only next time I’ll make sure I don’t get caught.”
The group was listening intently now. I tried to sum up. “As I see it, the problem with punishment is that it makes it too easy for a teenager to ignore his misdeed and focus instead on how unreasonable his parents are. Worse yet, it deprives him of the work he needs to do to become more mature. More responsible.
“What is it that we hope will take place after a child transgresses? We hope he’ll look at what he did that was wrong. That he’ll understand why it was wrong. That he’ll experience regret for what he did. That he’ll figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And that he’ll think seriously about how he might make amends. In other words, for real change to take place, our teenagers need to do their emotional homework. And punishment interferes with that important process.”
The room was silent. What were people thinking? Did they still have doubts? Had I been clear? Could they accept what they had heard? I looked at my watch. It was late. “We did a lot of hard work here tonight,” I said. “I’ll see you all next week.”
Tony’s hand went up. “One last question,” he called out.
“Go ahead.” I nodded.
“What if you use all the skills we worked on tonight, and the kid still doesn’t shape up? Suppose he doesn’t know how to be what you call ‘self-correcting’? What then?”
“Then that’s an indication that the problem needs more work. That it’s more complex than it originally appeared and that you need to give it more time and gather more information.”
Tony looked bewildered. “How?”
“By problem-solving.”
“Problem-solving?”
“It’s a process we’ll be talking about next week. We’ll be working on ways for parents and kids to join forces, explore possibilities, and solve the problem together.”
For the first time that evening Tony smiled. “Sounds good to me,” he said. “This is one meeting I’m not gonna miss.”
The Stories
In the week that followed our session on alternatives to punishment, several people reported how they put their new skills into action.
This first story was told by Tony about his fourteen-year-old son, Paul.
Tony
Paul and his friend Matt came running down the driveway, out of breath, grinning from ear to ear. I said, “What’s up, guys?” They said, “Nothing,” and looked at each other and laughed. Then Matt whispered something to Paul and took off.
“What did he tell you not to tell me?” I asked Paul. He didn’t answer. So I said, “Just tell me the truth. I won’t punish you.”
Finally, I got it out of him. The story was that he and Matt biked over to the community pool for a swim, but it was closed for the night. So they tried all the doors, found one that wasn’t locked, and let themselves in. Then they turned on all the lights and ran around, whooping it up, knocking over all the lounge chairs, throwing cushions everywhere—including into the pool. And to them it was one big joke.
The kid was lucky I promised not to punish him, because believe me, when I heard what he did, I wanted to throw the boo
k at him—cut off his allowance, take away his computer, ground him indefinitely—anything to wipe that stupid smile off his face.
I said, “Listen to me, Paul. This is serious. What you did has a name. It’s called vandalism.”
His face turned red. He yelled, “See I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I knew you’d make a big deal out of it. It’s not like we stole anything or peed in the pool!”
“Well, congratulations for that,” I said, “but, Paul, it is a big deal. A lot of people in this community worked their tails off to raise enough money to build a pool for their families. They’re proud of it, and they work hard to maintain it. And it also happens to be the pool where you learned how to swim.”
Paul said, “What are you trying to do? Guilt me?”
“You bet I am,” I said, “because what you did was wrong and now you need to make it right.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go back to the pool—now—and put everything back the way you found it.”
“Now?! … Jeez, I just got home!”
“Yes, now. I’m driving you.”
“What about Matt? It was his idea. He should come too! I’m calling him.”
Well, he did call, and at first Matt said, “No way,” that his mother would kill him if she found out. So I got on the phone. I said, “Matt, the two of you did it, and the two of you need to fix it. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
Anyway, I drove the kids back to the pool. Luckily, the door was still open. The place was a wreck. I told the boys, “You know what you have to do. I’ll wait in the car.”