By Deborah Godfrey                

The other day I was taking a final exam in my “Deviance” class.  There was a fill in the blank question that I just could not remember.  It asked, “What is the name of the theory by Henry and Short describing one motivation for homicide and suicide?”  I squirmed, sweated, closed my eyes and just couldn’t pull the words out of my brain.  The reason I was so frustrated is that I had just gone over the whole concept with my son that morning!  So I drew an arrow from the aggravating question to the back of the paper and related this story to my professor:

“It must be my age, but I simply cannot remember the name of the theory to which you are referring.  Just this morning, my son and I were at breakfast, and I read him the entire passage about Henry and Short’s Theory.  I described to him how a researcher had found that parents who use physical punishment, such as slapping, spanking or hitting, tend to raise children that will be outwardly aggressive, or more likely to commit homicide.  Whereas children that are raised with psychological punishment, such as withdrawal of love, or lecturing to induce guilt, tend to raise children that would be prone to inward aggression or suicide. 

About ten minutes later, my son (12 years old) and I left the restaurant and went upstairs for an appointment at the eye doctor.  On our way out, he playfully called me a name.  I playfully elbowed him and he turned and said to me, “OH!  Now I’m gonna grow up to kill someone!”  Of course I started laughing.  Kids are so quick!  I hope you will give me partial credit, even though I still for the life of me cannot remember the name of that theory!”

There are two points that I want to make about parenting styles regarding this incident.  The first one is, please do not interpret this to mean that spanking, slapping and hitting your child would cause him or her to be homicidal, which is not the case!  What it means is that of the people that were aggressive in the form of homicide, there was a correlation with physical punishment in childhood and of the people that committed suicide, there was a correlation with psychological punishment in childhood.  Most kids who are physically punished and most kids that are psychologically punished do not become aggressive, either inwardly or outwardly.

With that said, I think the idea bears some thought regarding the results of our discipline style.  Let’s say the tendency toward outward directed aggression such as hitting other people, name calling, etc. being more strongly correlated with physical punishment is true, and the tendency toward inward directed aggression such as low self-esteem, eating disorders, self-mutilation is true.  Let’s observe our children; do they seem more one type than the other?  Is it possibly correlated with our discipline style?

One reason that I so enjoy a positive discipline style is that it moves us away from the punitive model, or the shaming model and into a new realm with possibilities that very few of us were raised with.  Can you imagine a parenting style where you no longer need to yell, spank, threaten or lose it with your kids?  If this is possible, than we would not need to worry about our children tending to become aggressive because of our actions.  Tomorrow, I will write some ways to discipline that are neither physically punitive nor psychologically detrimental.

The second point I want to make about my experience is about learning styles and children’s schooling.  You may have observed from my story, that I had a great deal of knowledge about the topic, even though I could not remember the name of the theory.  If we look at this from a parenting perspective, it would be, “Testing does not necessarily accurately measure what a child knows about a given subject.”   There are many children struggling in school.  Many of these children are extremely bright.  Children all learn differently and so it is important that we parents begin to understand the manner in which our children learn best.  If our child is not achieving satisfactorily, let’s begin to look at it from a perspective of being a learning coach.  How can we best help and support this child to succeed?  Meeting with your child’s teacher is important and so is understanding the problem from your child’s perspective.

The nice thing about having kids is that they learn so easily.  I studied and studied to understand the theory and my son only had to hear it once and was able to apply it to his world.  What a great teacher he is for me.  Children are often much more malleable than we would expect them to be.  If you find that there are patterns of behavior that you have unknowingly reinforced, but would now like to undo, I can nearly guarantee that the kids will find that change easier than the adults.  Let them teach you.  Not only will it help you bring a more affirming parenting style forth from you, but their self-esteem and respect grows so quickly and easily when we empower them by learning from them.  Give it a try.  Make it a goal this week to learn something new from your child, and let him or her know what it was that he or she taught you.

From May 24, 2003