Discipline, punishments & boundaries for children

And so much happening. I think we've just kind of had enough. We are full-time parents, and in the real sense, right now we are full-time parents because we are literally seeing our children absolutely all the time, since the time they wake up till the time they go to— till the time they go to sleep. So there is no time whatsoever where we have time to ourselves, and that does cause a lot of stress, anxiety, even frustration and irritation. Now here, as a parent, I feel the more you set boundaries and the stronger your, um, you know, your parenting style is, the more you can succeed and thrive and enjoy with your children. You know, some parents feel, oh, we should never be strict. Being strict shows that we don't love our children. Not at all. You have to be firm. You have to be strict. It's equally important. Just because you love your child doesn't mean that you actually understand your child. So understanding is more important than really loving. You need to understand your children, you need to understand their milestones, you need to understand their mindset. And you cannot expect a 5-year-old to understand your situation. You have to understand their point of view from a 5-year-old's. Does that make sense? So as a 5-year-old, they are going to make mistakes. They are going to cry for chocolate every day. They are going to cry for screen time. These are normal things. They are going to say, "Oh, Mama, I'm bored. I want to watch TV," or, "Mama, I want to play video games." That is absolutely normal. But the way you tackle it, the way you handle it, is most important. So today I am going to talk about how you can set boundaries How you can actually be a more successful parent by being slightly stricter, by being— having some kind of restrictions, by having some kind of rules and regulations. Yes, if you're all listening to me and if it all makes sense, please give me a thumbs up. Please let me know that yes, it makes sense. All right, great. So now, punishments. Punishments is a very sensitive topic. It's very touchy. You keep wondering, should you punish your child? Should you not? Sometimes we think, oh, when we were young, our parents used to punish us so much. Our parents used to hit us, right? When you used to go to school, a teacher used to take a ruler and hit you if your homework was not done. You used to get punishments all the time. Be a chicken, go out of the classroom, stand up, do, um, do otak betaak. All of these were regulars. All of these were normal punishments in our lives, and we've all faced it. But now, in today's world, we keep hearing, don't punish your child. You will make them underconfident. You will affect their mental health. You will affect their overall growth if you punish your child. They'll start feeling scared. You'll develop fear in their minds, right? All of these are repercussions of punishments. As a parenting expert, as a mental health counselor, I will be giving you tips on why you should punish your child how you should punish your child and whether you should punish your child. So I will be answering these 3 main questions: whether you should punish your child, how you should punish your child, and why you should punish your child. Okay, so let me start with a situation. Are you ready? All right, so you have your 6-year-old crying, crying, absolutely crying at the toy store. Store, okay? Normal situation, you've gone to a toy store and your 6-year-old baby, your 6-year-old child is crying. He really wants this car, okay? So he's saying, Mama, please get me this car. I really want this car. I don't have this kind of a car. I really want it. You say, no, you're not going to get it now. He says, why, Mama? I don't have this car. I don't have it. You say, but you already have 10 cars in the house, you cannot get it. Now you're getting angry, right? Slowly your voice is increasing, you're getting super angry, your tone is increasing, you're getting upset. Now the child is crying louder and louder and louder, and Rahul is saying, I really want this car, Mama, I really want it, I want it right now, get it for me right now. And now he started rolling on the floor and he started crying really, really loudly. And you get angry and you say, "No way! You're not going to get it right now. Stop this nonsense!" Right? This is how you react. Did it help the situation? Did it calm him down? Please answer. Did it calm him down? Did it make him cry less? No. It did not make him cry less, right? It did not make him cry less. What happened was, in fact, his crying increased, his misbehavior increased. He started creating more of a ruckus. He started saying, Mama, you're always rude to me. Mama, you always scream at me. Mama, you always shout at me. This is not done. That's what happened. So your yelling, your screaming, your shouting actually became a part and more of the problem. Now Rahul forgot that he wanted the car. What Rahul remembered was, my mama shouts at me, my mama screams at me, my mama is always making me cry. These are the memories that he had in his mind. The attention from the car went on to, "Mama's always screaming at me. Mama never gets me what she wants, what I want. Mama is always, always, always shouting." So his memory— please close that— his memory changed from the car to, "My mama is rude. My mama is mean. My mama is always angry." Remember, a 6-year-old makes such conclusions. A 6 or a 7-year-old can make such conclusions and can say, "My mother always screams and shouts at me." So the attention gets diverted. Here it is very, very important to have boundaries from early on. You need to set boundaries. That's why I say, before you go to the toy store, you need to have certain boundaries with the child. Now this means having rules and regulations, setting certain rules. For example, you can tell your child, every week I am going to make you a discipline chart, and if you get more than 15 stars, I will buy you a toy at the end of the month. So you can have a pact with the child where every month you will buy him or you will give him one treat. It could be a chocolate, it could be a toy, it could be a book, it could be an activity, anything. So this way your child is absolutely clear that every month I am going to get rewarded with whatever I want. This is setting boundaries, which needs to be done every single day, right? So every day you have to set boundaries with your child. After a month, if you do these, these, these, these, these, these activities in your discipline chart, you will get X, right? That's the first thing, setting boundaries. Now the second thing is ways of punishing your child. Punishment doesn't always mean squats or hitting or pinching. Or reacting. Those are not the kind of punishments we are looking at. Punishments can also mean a 5-minute timeout. Punishments can also mean not talking to your child for 10 minutes, being silent. Punishments vary. Punishment doesn't always mean reaction. We feel punishment as you hit the child, that is a punishment. You slap the child, that is a punishment. You are rude to the child, that is a punishment. Or you say, go out and stand out of the room for 10 minutes, that's a punishment. That is not a punishment. A punishment is something that actually changes the result of your child's behavior, which means when you are punishing the child, it has to be effective. It has to work for your child. So I'm going to tell you a very simple trick that I do with my children. When I want to punish my child, before that I start with telling my child, okay, Serena, write down 5 punishments that I can give you when you do something that is undesirable. You got it? Make your child write down 5 punishments that they can get if they don't behave in the right way or if they behave unproductively. So make them write down punishments that will actually affect them, that will actually make them feel that they've done something wrong. You can sit with your child and write down punishments together. It could be things like, I will have to do 2 extra pages of homework. That could be a punishment. It could be you will have to, um, sit outside for 10 minutes. If that affects the child, it could be you will have to not watch TV. You will have to sacrifice your TV time for the entire month. It could be you will have to have a bath 3 times a day. Just anything that your child doesn't like or that your child feels like is a punishment should be given to the child, right? Anything that your child feels that is a punishment for the child is a punishment. Don't give punishments based on your moods. I think I'll make her do 10 push-ups, that's a punishment. That's not a punishment. A punishment is something that works for the child, that makes the child feel bad and guilty for what she has done. For example, if the child is not very fond of writing, you can say, okay, Rahul, you have to write I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry 100 times. Now every time your child is writing I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, your child will be thinking about the behavior that she made that was not right, right? The more she thinks, or the more he thinks about the behavior, the more he will realize that it was wrong. So the first thing I spoke about was setting boundaries from before, telling them after every month you will get this, making them— making it known. The second thing I spoke about was telling your children that punishments are going to be according to you, making them write down the punishments that they could get and making them write down those punishments and giving them those punishments only, right? That's the second thing. Now the third thing, the third and most important thing is why should you punish your child? Punishment sets boundaries. Punishment avoids reactions. See, we are all human beings. As mothers, especially right now in the lockdown period, we are doing most of the things. We are loaded with household work. We are also loaded with our business and professional lives. Plus we're handling our children 24/7. We're homeschooling our own children. We're disciplining our children. Our husbands are a lot more stressed out because of the lockdown, because of the work. Our husbands have a lot more to do. So overall, there is just a lot going on, and at this time we need to be stronger than everything else. We need to be the strongest. That's why we have to set punishments, because if we don't set consequences of malbehavior or of unproductive behavior, we will start screaming, we will start shouting, we will start reacting, and a reaction is the worst thing that you want. You have to respond to behavior. You cannot react, right? So punishments avoid reactions, punishments avoid conflict, punishments avoid confusion. To not be confused, to be clear, to be known. The children should know this is the result of this behavior, this is the result of this mistake. You need to be absolutely clear. You need to set punishments. I would say write down punishments, you know, on a whiteboard. The 5 punishments that your child has chosen, that if she does something wrong, these are the punishments she's going to get. Write it down on a whiteboard so that you can also set that, okay, if you cry more than 5 times in a day, this is the punishment you're going to get. Right? If you complain more than 10 times in a day, this is the consequence. You have to make them aware of the consequences. Now this is possible for children above, I would say, 5 years of age. Above 5 years, this is possible. But what about children under 5 years? How do you discipline children under 5 years? How do you set consequences for children who don't understand that behavior A causes result B? How do you set consequences for that? Simple thing. For children under 5, your first rule is you have to be consistent. You cannot sometimes forgive and sometimes give a consequence. You have to always be consistent in your way of punishing, number 1. Number 2, hitting is an absolute no-no. No hitting, no raising your hand up on your children, not even throwing things at your children, because if you do that, your children will definitely emulate you and they will do the same back at you at some point. So no hitting, no throwing, no pinching. These 3 are no-nos. If you can avoid yelling and screaming, that is a no-no as well. The most simple punishment is a timeout, which you can start with your child even when they are 1 year. Even when they are 1 year of age, you can take your child, make your child face a wall, and put him or her there and start a timer. Start a timer on the mobile phone for 5 minutes. And for 5 minutes your child has to just look at the wall without any conversation. That's it. Till the age of 5, I find timeouts to be very effective if done consistently, if done with intent, which means after the timeout you need to explain to the child why you gave them that timeout, why that timeout was given to the child. You need to explain the result of their behavior, right? So timeouts are very, very important under 5. Remember, no hitting, no shouting, no screaming. A timeout has to be given for children under 5. For above 5, let them choose their own punishments. Let them choose what kind of punishment you can give the child. Remember, parenting is a lot about self-control. It's a lot about mindfully parenting your child. It's a lot about consciously calming yourself down. It's a lot about consciously calming yourself down and parenting, right? So you have to parent your child very confidently, calmly, and mindfully. Mindfully means you have to tell them that this behavior will cause this result, which also means if your child does something that is wrong and if you just scream at your child, you are teaching your child that screaming is okay. You are teaching your child that screaming is allowed. You are telling your child, scream back at me. Remember, children are not listening to you. Children are watching you more than they are listening to you. That is always the case. So if you throw a hairbrush at them, if you throw a remote control at them, they are definitely going to throw it back at you at some point, or they are going to throw it at your friends at some for sure, definitely. So you have to control your actions, you have to control your behavior so that they don't do the same thing again at you, right? Setting boundaries, setting punishments is extremely important. The fourth thing that I come to today is your tone. How you talk to your child. Remember, firmness is what is required. Be firm. Don't scream, but be firm. Now, firmness has two things. Firmness can mean saying something firmly, strongly, and also consistently, saying something again and again and again doesn't mean that you are firm. A lot of children say sometimes, Mama, you're always repeating the same thing again and again and again. You keep saying the same thing again and again and again, right? A lot of children say that, Mama, you're always repeating. So don't repeat. We have a habit of nagging our children. Now we have spoken about children under 5. We've also spoken about children from the age of 5 to 10. What about from for children above 10. We as mothers have a habit of nagging. We feel the more we say something to our children, eventually they are going to listen to it. However, that doesn't happen. In fact, the opposite happens. The more you say things to your children, the more times you repeat it, the more times they are actually going to not listen. Into it, right? If I keep telling you again and again and again and again and again, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands— if I keep repeating it, sometimes your child might do it. Sometimes a child might just say, Mama, I'm old enough, I understand, you don't need to say the same thing again and again to me. Or The third result might be that you've said it so many times that you've made your child conscious, so conscious that the more you say it, the more your child will start getting repulsed and averse from it, the more your child will run away from it. Now, I have seen parents who are very particular, let's say, of respect and manners, and they obviously want only the good for their child, so they let's say, tell their children when somebody comes from outside, when a guest comes, wish the guest, you know, either touch their feet or say, or say hello. And sometimes we end up repeating it again and again and again. Every time a guest comes, touch their feet. Every time a guest comes, showcase your talent. We have this habit of showcasing our children's talents in front of other guests also, or telling them, did you meet the guest? Did you say 'Hello' to the guest. A lot of times that creates a negative image. Eventually your child will get frustrated and your child will stop meeting people. Your child will say, 'I don't want to meet others. I don't want to meet guests.' That happens as well. So you have to set boundaries. You have to make sure you don't talk, you don't tell the same saying again and again and again to your child, right? You have to make sure that happens.