DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DISCIPLINE AND PUNISHMENT
Discipline is:
- Giving children positive alternatives
- Acknowledging or rewarding efforts and good behavior
- When children follow rules because they are discussed and agreed upon
- Consistent, firm guidance
- Positive, respectful
- Physically and verbally non-violent
- Logical consequences that are directly related to the misbehavior
- When children must make restitution when their behavior negatively affects someone else
- "Time-outs" that are open-ended and governed by the child's readiness to gain self-control
- Understanding individual abilities, needs, circumstances and developmental stages
- Teaching children to internalize self-discipline
- Re-directing and selectively "ignoring" minor misbehavior
- Reflection and verbal give-and-take communication
- Listening and modeling
- Using mistakes as learning opportunities
- Teaching empathy and healthy remorse by showing it
- Directed at the child's behavior, never the child
Punishment is:
- Being told only what NOT to do
- Reacting to rather than responding to misbehavior
- When children follow rules because they are threatened or bribed
- Controlling, shaming
- Sarcastic
- Negative and disrespectful of the child
- Physically and verbally violent and aggressive
- Consequences that are unrelated and illogical to the misbehavior
- Children are punished for hurting others, rather than shown how to make restitution
- "Time-outs" that banish a child for a set amount of time governed by the adult
- Inappropriate to the child's developmental stage of life
- Individual circumstances, abilities and needs not taken into consideration
- Teaching children to be controlled by a source outside of themselves
- Teaching children to behave only when they will get caught doing otherwise
- Constantly reprimanding children for minor infractions causing them to tune-out
- Forcing children to comply with illogical rules "just because you said so"
- Criticizing the child, rather than the child's behavior
