Discipline as Encouragement

The Philosophy of Positive Discipline || Positive Discipline Series 1/2 ||

The people we love the most often have a knack for pushing our buttons. Children, whether at home or at school, can seem to refine this ability into a science. Straw after straw they add to the camel’s back: endless whining, disruptions and distractions peppering a lesson, chores and homework that go undone.

Parents and teachers, for their own sanity, want it to end now. So, they often resort to one of the two fail-safe methods that get immediate results: being punitive or being permissive. The child that is threatened, punished, or coerced will do what the adult wants in that moment. The child who is accommodated, appeased, or mollified will be less of a hassle in that moment.

The cost of winning peace in the moment, however, is the loss of peace in the long run according to the proponents of Positive Discipline. The child who is punished often becomes rebellious or fearfully submissive. The child who is appeased often becomes co-dependent or manipulative. In either case, he has irrevocably lost a chance to strengthen his own self-discipline and has instead relied on parents or teachers to be responsible in his place.

Positive Discipline is a set of principles that advocate a third way, a way that allows the child to incrementally build a character of self-discipline and responsibility over the long run while still allowing the short run, though never completely free from conflict, to be enjoyable for both the child and the adult. First formulated by Austrian psychologists Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs in the 1920’s and 30’s, there are now dozens of books on Positive Discipline for all ages, and trainings that span parenting, education, and even the workplace.   

The philosophy of Positive Discipline focuses predominantly on communication, conflict-resolution, and cultivation of better attitudes. Usually, when discussing the parenting or education philosophy of a given group or thinker, I talk quite broadly about what they believe to be the nature of the child, the role of the parent, the purpose of education etc. For this philosophy, however, I will be focusing on related, but narrower, ideas: on what they believe to be the reasons for misbehavior and the goal of discipline more generally. The purpose here is also not to delve into the details of how to apply Positive Discipline, but on the ideas behind the strategies. The concrete how-to’s will be presented in a future piece.    

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Why Misbehave?

Though the child enters the world knowing little beyond his mother’s heartbeat or the voices of his parents, soon he is surprising everyone with the phrases he’s picked up or the new climbing skills he’s mastered. He is an eager sponge who absorbs details big and small about the world. Through each and every experience, the child is making implicit conclusions: about himself, about the world, and about what he needs to do to survive and thrive.

These beliefs transfer to his behavior and become his “blueprint for living.” According to Dr. Adler, behavior is goal oriented. The child’s primary goal in a social context is to belong and feel significant. The difficulty is that neither the conclusions he is coming to nor the knowledge of how to achieve belonging and significance are automatically right. Often, he comes to the wrong conclusions and his actions, instead of creating or re-establishing connection, incur resentment and annoyance.

Proponents of Positive Discipline believe that most misbehavior stems from mistaken beliefs or goals in a child’s attempt to achieve belonging and significance. He thinks that his belonging or significance has either been threatened or destroyed and he is acting in a way to remedy the situation. This may be because he lacks the knowledge or skills to achieve his goal productively or there may have been a surprising incident that triggered a fight or flight response. *¹

Rudolf Dreikurs believes there are four common mistaken beliefs or goals that a child may adopt in his attempt to achieve (or make up for the loss of) belonging or significance: undue attention, misguided power, revenge, or assumed inadequacy.

With a mistaken belief of undue attention, the child believes that the only way he belongs is when he has his parent’s or his teacher’s attention. While desiring attention from the people we love and admire is natural, it becomes a problem when it is sought in unhelpful ways. The child who adopts this mistaken belief may be pestering adults incessantly with questions or demands to play, picking fights with other children so that adults intervene, engaging in forbidden behaviors as if it’s a game or anything else he can imagine in order to remain the center of attention.

In other situations, the child may have a mistaken belief of misguided power, or the belief that the way to be significant is by being the one in charge. Wanting to be capable and have influence over his own life is a vital aspect of the child’s self-esteem and becoming a competent adult. This becomes misguided, however, when it is redirected toward asserting dominance instead of gaining and refining abilities. Jane Nelsen, in Positive Discipline, relates that this may be the case for many of the mealtime battles where the child complains or refuses to eat because this is one area where he can assert his own power. The end result of many of these behaviors is a protracted power struggle with the parent or teacher.

With a mistaken goal of revenge, the child has concluded that he doesn’t belong or isn’t significant, but he is reassured by the fact that at least he can hurt back. He has given up trying to achieve belonging or significance in any way, either productive or unproductive, and has instead decided to make his parent or teacher pay for what he’s lost. This is exacerbated when the behavior is followed with even harsher punishment because it creates a revenge cycle. Nelsen relates:

“Some adults make the mistake of thinking that children continue to misbehave because the punishment wasn’t severe enough to teach them a lesson. So they punish again, more severely—and children find more clever ways to get even.”²

Similarly, with the mistaken belief of assumed inadequacy, the child has concluded that it is impossible to belong or be significant but, rather than getting revenge, he has decided to give up. This child may not be causing many dramatic behavior problems like the others, but his dispirited demeanor, unwillingness to try, and dejected “I can’t” is still deeply troubling to parents or teachers.

The view that a child’s behavior stems from his beliefs and that his misbehavior stems from mistaken beliefs in pursuit of belonging and significance is in sharp contrast to prevalent ideas that children are inherently corrupt and that they act to defy adults for its own sake.

Adults with the latter view may be tempted to use punitive methods to make the child ‘pay for his corruption’ and suffer for his misbehavior in order to learn to do the right thing. With the former view however, proponents of Positive Discipline argue that to get to the behavior, the adult must first get to the belief. What’s more, targeting the behavior by inducing suffering only further entrenches the child and makes it even more difficult to correct the belief.

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The Target

According to Positive Discipline, the child’s behavior is a result, or a secondary effect, of a mistaken belief or goal he holds. Because of this, addressing the behavior first or only addressing the behavior is a band-aid solution, whether it’s done through punishment or appeasement. It may stop the behavior in the moment, but it never gets to the root of the issue.

Punishment and appeasement are both short-term, reactive solutions as opposed to long-term, proactive solutions. Regardless of whether the parent or teacher chooses punishment or appeasement, the child misses countless opportunities to build competency in crucial life skills such as self-discipline, self-control, and conflict-resolution. Parents and teachers who punish or appease, in effect, take control and perform these functions in the child’s place, thereby robbing him of guidance and practice. Adults are then unpleasantly surprised when the child gets older and cannot exhibit the very responsibility they prevented him from developing.

What’s worse, though, is that because the underlying beliefs were never challenged or corrected, they strengthen or transform into something far worse. The child who was punished may become rebellious and resentful, sneaky to avoid detection, or become a doormat who is convinced of his worthlessness. The child who is appeased may become entitled, manipulative in order to have others serve him, and suffer from lack of self-esteem from never having a sense of his own efficacy.

Jane Nelson notes that:

“all human beings get hooked into reacting instead of acting. Most adults truly mean well—they simply want to teach children to be more respectful.

The problem is that, when reacting, we use disrespectful behavior (we misbehave) in our attempts to teach respect. While reacting, we become more interested (without thinking about it) in making a child “pay” through blame, shame, and pain for what he or she has done.

We are not thinking about the long-term effects on the child. If we were, we would not be reacting.”³

The goal of discipline, then, with a long-range view, is to address the child’s underlying mistaken belief and give him the opportunity to practice problem-solving, resolving conflicts, and monitoring and re-directing his own behavior. Self-discipline, according to thinkers such as Nelsen, is about the child learning to see and act on the truth, not paying for his mistakes through external blame, shame, and pain or being lulled away from learning from his mistakes through appeasement.

Discipline is fundamentally seen as an act of encouragement, rather than discouragement. Not only encouragement in the sense of encouraging the skills needed to enact the right behavior as opposed to discouraging misbehavior, but also encouragement in the form of helping the child feel better. Because the root of the misbehavior is a mistake based on feeling threatened or discouraged about losing belonging or significance, the child will most be able to ‘do better when he feels better.’

The point is not to reward the misbehavior, but to provide reassurance and correct the mistaken belief in order to make it possible to effectively correct the behavior in the short and long run. The goal is to enable the child to access his rational mind to solve the problems he faces, whether it’s problems with responsibility, conflicts with siblings, or a power-struggle with his parents.

What this enables, in the broadest sense, is a relationship between parents (and teachers) and children based on mutual respect and personal responsibility. With both parties working toward being less reactive, less revenge-seeking, and less dominance-seeking. With both parties committed to respectful problem-solving, communication, and win-win solutions to conflicts. A relationship based on respect and responsibility for both parties is a relationship that is enjoyable both now and in the future.

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For those who gravitate toward punishment, the idea of discipline as ‘encouragement’ can seem suspicious and erring too close to permissiveness. For those who gravitate toward appeasement, the idea of addressing the behavior and the discomfort that often entails can seem dangerous and erring too close to punishment. It can be tempting to discount new ideas touting a third way, opposed to both being punitive and being permissive. After all, didn’t we turn out just fine?

Nelsen retorts:

“Yes, most of us turned out just “fine,” even though we were punished. We can laugh at some of the punishments we received as a child—and even say we deserved them. However, if we had been allowed to learn from our mistakes instead of being made to pay for them, is it possible we might be even better than “fine”?”⁴

Positive Discipline is a parenting philosophy that holds that the reason for a child’s misbehavior is a mistaken belief or goal he has while in pursuit of belonging and significance. In order to solve the behavior challenge while enabling the child to build self-discipline and responsibility, therefore, the belief must be handled first. Thus, discipline becomes a tool of encouragement, a way to help the child feel better so that he can use adults’ guidance and his own rational mind to resolve problems and do better.

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Stay tuned for upcoming articles discussing the essentials of applying Positive Discipline at home.

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1. *It’s important to note that some of the child’s “misbehavior” is actually developmentally appropriate behavior that has been mis-categorized due to a lack of understanding and/or preparation on the part of the adult. For example, the toddler who pulls clothes out of the dresser or wants to climb up and down the stairs is not misbehaving, but is following a natural desire to learn about the world and develop his faculties. This behavior, if troubling to the adult, can be redirected productively in various ways.

2. Nelsen, Jane. Positive Discipline (p. 99). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

3. Nelsen, Jane. Positive Discipline (p. 292). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

4. Nelsen, Jane. Positive Discipline (p. 299). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.