General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Woman forces stepdaughter to wear dowdy thrift store clothes as punishment for bullying [View all]enough
(13,255 posts)young children and then older ones, I often felt that I had failed to communicate with them if I had to punish them for something they did wrong. It would always be a lot better if they could understand what the problem was and figure out how to change in some way that would work. By imposing a punishment, I was by definition using my superior power to impose something on them, rather than having them see and understand why certain behaviors are unacceptable or destructive.
This does not at all mean that I believed that they should always be happy or that they should not learn that "actions have consequences." In fact my husband and I were seen by our friends as being very strict parents, possibly to a fault. But we did not resort to actual punishments very often. Rather, it was a matter of including them in the human endeavor of trying to live in a way that is ethical and functional, and expecting them to take part in that.