May 2, 2025 • 16 mins
We sit down with world-renowned author and speaker Alfie Kohn to explore why traditional discipline methods—punishments and rewards—don’t truly work. We unpack how control-based parenting backfires, what the research says about intrinsic motivation, and how parents can move from “doing things to children” to “working with children” to foster true moral development and connection.
KEY POINTS:
-
Punishment teaches power, not morality—it damages relationships and promotes self-interest over empathy.
-
Rewards, including praise and star charts, undermine intrinsic motivation and long-term growth.
-
Both punishments and rewards focus on short-term compliance at the cost of deeper learning and ethical development.
-
Real change happens when parents collaborate with children, exploring problems and empowering kids to find solutions.
-
Effective parenting means questioning whether our expectations are reasonable and focusing on trust and respect.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“All rewards are just sugar-coated control.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
-
Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn
-
Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
-
Happy Families resources – happyfamilies.com.au
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
-
Shift from control to collaboration—work with your child to solve problems, rather than doing things to them.
-
Question your assumptions—ask yourself whether your expectations are developmentally appropriate and reasonable.
-
Talk less, ask more—engage your child in reflective conversations about their choices and experiences.
-
Move beyond rewards and punishments—focus on building intrinsic motivation by nurturing autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
-
Stay patient—working with children t
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
poor parent who just want's answers.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello, I'm doctor Justin Colson here with my wife and
co host, missus Happy Families, Kietie. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Thank you anyway.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
We're the parents of six kids. I've written six books
about raising happy families, and today on the podcast, something
pretty big.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm pretty excited about our interview today. We're going to
talk to someone who's been on Oprah. Do you know
how big a deal that is?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I haven't been on Oprah, so I don't know what's
a big deal. I'd love to be on OPRAH. That
would be I would.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Love you to be on Oprah too. That means I
might actually get to meet her. Time magazine has described
him as being perhaps the country's most outspoken critic on
education's fixation with grades and test scores, and Justin, he
probably is one of the biggest influences on you of
any author. I know.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, you know. If I was to put a list
together of people that I would love to interview for
this podcast, this guy would be very told the list,
and we've got him.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So I'm pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm ecstatic Alfie Kohane is the name of the person
we're speaking to in just a sec He's a very
very well known author and writer around parenting and education
in those kinds of areas. In nineteen ninety three, Alfie
wrote a book that was called Punished by Rewards, and
that was pretty much the central reason that I left
(01:25):
my radio career and went back to school to study psychology.
Alfie is the reason that I am, in many ways,
who I am today. His influence has been far reaching,
and he's affected not just me, but our family and
obviously thousands and thousands and tens of thousands, if not
millions of parents around the globe. So so excited to
be able to talk to Alfie today.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You know, I actually remember when you brought that book
home and you wanted me to read it. It's not
a book for the fainthearted. It was a really, really
intense book. But I remember how excited you were about
all of the concepts you were learning, and specifically actually
having an opportunity to talk to Alfie on the phone
for the first time. I remember that.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, not only did I talk to him, but then
a few years later he was in Australia, and I
got to hang out with him. In fact, I drove
him from the central coast of New South Wales down
to Sydney because he needed transport, and I was the
one that contacted the organizers and said, what do you need?
How can I help? And they said, oh, we really
need someone to take him for a drive. I said
I can do that. So that was pretty epic. And Alfie,
we've got you here right now, Alfie, can.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I start Hubert? I'd love to ask you a question
when we think about punishment and discipline together, why is
punishment such a lousy way to discipline our kids?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Because punishment teaches power, It undermines the possibility of moral
growth in children. If I say to kids, do this,
or here's how I'm going to make you suffer, which
is what punishment is, and by the way, you can
call it consequences, it's still the same thing. It says
to kids, do this or here's what I'm going to
(02:53):
do to you. Then kids are first of all thinking
only about themselves how do I avoid the punishment, never
about the impact of their actions on others. All use
of consequences punishment focuses kids narrowly on self interest, and secondly,
(03:16):
what they have modeled for them is that someone who
has more power than they do can coerce them into
doing whatever or she wants. And that's the main lesson
that kids learn. Sometimes they take it out on others
that very same day when they come across peers who
have less power than they do. So punishment is a
(03:37):
way of doing things to children, and the only way
we help kids become good people is by working with them.
To put it slightly differently, the only thing you can
ever get from any kind of punishment, from forceable isolation
which is euphemistically called time out, to withdrawal of privileges
(03:59):
or yelling, spanking, whatever it is, the only thing you
can ever get is temporary compliance at an enormous cost.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, that reminds me of a story that I love
to tell. When I was about fifteen years old, I
was in the kitchen. My little sister was driving me
up the wall, and I said a word that we're
not supposed to use in my family. You know, we
had some very strict rules around the kind of language
we use. And I called my sister a stupid idiot.
I said something like, oh, shut up, your stupid idiot,
My mom heard and came dashing into the kitchen and said, justin,
(04:31):
we don't speak like that in this house. You need
to say sorry to your sister right now. And so
here's a false apology. So I'm obviously being dishonest when
I apologize. But I looked at my sister and I said,
to a fine Carena, I'm sorry, you're a stupid idiot,
which obviously made a lot of sense to my fifteen
year old brain, but it infuriated my mum, who, with
(04:51):
the best of intentions, said, you go to your room
right now and you think about what you just said.
And you know, Alfie, I went, I had.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
A child in history, ever often in a constructive way,
after being forcibly isolated. What you're thinking about in that
room is how unfair it is that you're there, how
you're misunderstood, and how you're going to get back at
your sister when your mother isn't looking. Never can you
get a response by simply making kids unhappy, by taking
(05:20):
things away from them or putting them in their rooms
or or whatever, and forced apologies, Well, that teaches kids
to lie. Yeah, what all say things that they don't believe?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
What I was going to say is that I went
to my room. I sat on my bed, and I
thought carefully about how I was an impediment to my
family's happiness, and I resolved to be a bit of human.
But I didn't really I did exactly what you said.
I was furious about my mom and how she didn't
understand me. It really ruptured my relationship in that moment, right,
and boy boy, I couldn't wait to get back at
my sister when mom wasn't watching.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Right, And the alternative to anticipate maybe where you're going
next and said, no, we have very limited time that
is offered to many parents. Instead of using sticks, use tarrots.
Instead of controlling them by making them suffer if they
don't do what you want, give them a doggy biscuit
if they do do what you want. But rewards are
(06:12):
just the flip side of punishment. So if I threaten
to punish a kid, I'm saying, do this, here's what
I'm going to do to you. If I reward children
or offer to reward them, I'm saying, do this and
you'll get that. So in the first case with punishment,
kids come to ask the question, what do they want
me to do? And what happens to me if I
(06:34):
don't do it? If you offer a reward for good behavior,
which typically means mindlessly obedient, not generous or thoughtful, but
then the question kids come to ask is what do
they want me to do and what do I get
for doing it? And so the research is very clear
(06:55):
that rewards like punishments, can only get temporary compliance, and
in both cases they retard moral and social and intellectual development.
Because we have hundreds of studies showing that the more
you reward people for doing something, the more they tend
(07:15):
to lose interest in whatever they had to do to
get the reward. So, on the one hand, if you
want to destroy children's interest in reading, for example, you
would offer a prize for reading a book because now
you've taught them that reading is something you would never
want to do, and it becomes devalued. They say, well,
(07:36):
you know, if this was so much fun, they wouldn't
have to bribe me to do it. But the other
reason that it devalues that that kids lose interest in
whatever they're rewarded for doing is because it's control. If
I punish a kid for doing something, it's obvious I'm controllingum.
But what a lot of parents don't realize is if
they reward kids, and that includes verbal rewards good job,
(08:01):
I really like theau dot dot dot. This is just
a verbal doggie biscuit and all rewards are just sugar
coated control, and kids don't like being controlled. So we
have research that shows that almost anything that kids are
rewarded for doing becomes less appealing to them. They have
(08:21):
less commitment to it over the long haul of Several
studies have shown a couple of just in the last
few years that children who are frequently rewarded or praised
by their parents are less generous and helpful than other kids,
and the effect is most pronounced if they're rewarded or
(08:42):
praised for being helpful. So you are undermining with the
use of any kind of reward, including praise or punishment,
including time out. The only alternatives to this are not
quite so east need to script or to have a
one size fits all when you do this, when your
(09:04):
kid does this, you should do that. So it's frustrating
because you actually have to think, as opposed to being
scripted out by a parenting expert. But rewards and punishments
always as they say, of doing things to children forms
of control. What helps us to become the best parents
we can is to figure out ways of working with
them to solve problems.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I mean, what about those parents who would say, but
I just can't get my kids to do anything without
a reward. You know, those parents who are using reward
charts or other ways of coercing the children to do
the household chores. Some parents would actually say that the
kids are more motivated by using them.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Right, And the question is not how do we motivate kids?
The question is how are kids motivated. For the last
few decades, psychologists have helped us understand that there are
different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than
the amount. Specifically, psychologists talk about the difference between intrinsic motivation,
(10:13):
which means you do something because you want to do it,
because you get a kick out of it, it's satisfying,
and extrinsic motivation, which is where you do it to
avoid a punishment or to get a reward. And what
we know from research as well as experience, is that
the two tend to be inversely related. So the child
who seems quote motivated to do it in order to
(10:36):
get the gold star, the ice cream call, and the
good job whatever has more extrinsic motivation, and as a
direct result, is now less committed to being a helpful person,
less interested in whether his actions around the house are
making other people feel good. So I guess when I
see the When parents say you know they work, I
(10:58):
always ask work to do? What? What's your goal? You
can get mindless obedience in the short run if the
reward is juicy enough or the punishment is awful enough.
What you can never get is a child who is happy,
more ethical, more compassionate, or caring, more of an independent thinker,
(11:21):
all of the things we parents want in the long
run for our goal. Rewards like star charts and stickers
in the life actually get in the way of those
more ambitious, meaningful, long term goals.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
If I'm not going to use punishments and I'm not
going to use rewards, what does Alfie Kohne and the
research suggest would be the best way to respond to
this child who is just driving me up the wall?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Talk less, ask more. There's no one size fits all solution.
As I indicated before, everything will depend on what's going
on in this child's environment and in this child's head.
Five different kids who are seen as difficult or troubling
or making us go crazy and pushing our buttons, maybe
(12:08):
doing it for five completely different reasons, and each of
those reasons calls for a different course of action. I mean,
this is the thing when I wrote my book Unconditional Parenting,
which is get specifically to looking at parenting punished by rewards,
also looks at schools and workplaces as well as families.
But I had to end the working with section the
(12:30):
what do we do instead? You know, break the bad
news that I'm not going to give you a magic formula.
If a child is acting this way rolling the eyes,
because frankly we're saying stuff that deserves an eye rolling,
then the problem is not the kid. The problem is
with what we have been doing that we need to rethink,
(12:51):
and we need to come to the child and say
I'm really frustrated sometimes by your attitude here, and I
want to hear where it's coming from. And then you
have to listen for the answer without getting defensive or huffy.
And then when there's a particular problem, like we want
to get to the house clean, I don't know about
using a different technique to get the kids room clean.
I mean, it's the kid's room, isn't it. Why would
(13:13):
the kid have to keep it up to our standards?
In other words, the premise of the question here ought
to be called into question. Don't ask how do I
get the kid to do X? If I can't use
punishments and rewards, begin by asking whether X really needs
to be done. But if we're convinced it does, like
everybody should pitch in with stuff around dinner, then I
(13:35):
would be asking the child, you know what's the problem here?
What can be done? What do you think you can
do in order to help help things go smoothly whenever possible.
Kids learn to make good decisions by making decisions, not
by following directions, and so we end up getting kids
(13:57):
who are happier to participate because they feel trusted and
respected as a result of our asking about their experience
and responding appropriately, rather than mindlessly and unilaterally trying to
impose our demands and agenda on them.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It sounds like something that I share with parents is
what I call the three ease of effective discipline. And
when I say discipline, I mean discipline is teaching and
guiding and instructing. It's helping our children to internalize those
things that matter most. So I talk about how we
need to explore their world, explore why they're struggling with
this question that we've asked, which helps us to understand
(14:36):
whether it was a good question or a good behavior
or requested in the first place. And then we explain
what our rationale is so that they can at least
see what our perspective is, and then we empower them
to work together with us to find a solution that's
mutually agreeable. It sounds to me like that's the kind
of process that you're describing.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Uh yes, but with not to throw away, but to
really linger on the problem on that one ask. In fact,
that a lot of times when kids don't do what
we've told them, the problem is with what we've told them,
and so we have to begin by being willing to
question the premise, whether it's what we're asking of them
(15:13):
is reasonable, whether it's developmentally appropriate, and so on, and
then to keep checking back with them if let them
propose a solution, and then let's talk about it later
to see how it's going.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, it sounds like effective exploration is the central pillar there. Alfie,
this has just been such an awesome conversation. Thank you
so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure
speaking about the problems of punishment and rewards being used
as a way to get our kids to do what
we want them to do.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I reckon we need to get Alfie backy In Justin,
that was just such a worthwhile conversation. Jack.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
We could have you back, Elphie sure be happy to
do it.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
For listening to the podcast. If you'd like more info
about how we can make your family happier, please jump
on to our website, happy families dot com dot au.
Find us on Instagram and on Facebook. Doctor Justin Coulson's
Happy Families
It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
poor parent who just want's answers.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello, I'm doctor Justin Colson here with my wife and
co host, missus Happy Families, Kietie. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Thank you anyway.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
We're the parents of six kids. I've written six books
about raising happy families, and today on the podcast, something
pretty big.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm pretty excited about our interview today. We're going to
talk to someone who's been on Oprah. Do you know
how big a deal that is?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I haven't been on Oprah, so I don't know what's
a big deal. I'd love to be on OPRAH. That
would be I would.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Love you to be on Oprah too. That means I
might actually get to meet her. Time magazine has described
him as being perhaps the country's most outspoken critic on
education's fixation with grades and test scores, and Justin, he
probably is one of the biggest influences on you of
any author. I know.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, you know. If I was to put a list
together of people that I would love to interview for
this podcast, this guy would be very told the list,
and we've got him.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So I'm pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm ecstatic Alfie Kohane is the name of the person
we're speaking to in just a sec He's a very
very well known author and writer around parenting and education
in those kinds of areas. In nineteen ninety three, Alfie
wrote a book that was called Punished by Rewards, and
that was pretty much the central reason that I left
(01:25):
my radio career and went back to school to study psychology.
Alfie is the reason that I am, in many ways,
who I am today. His influence has been far reaching,
and he's affected not just me, but our family and
obviously thousands and thousands and tens of thousands, if not
millions of parents around the globe. So so excited to
be able to talk to Alfie today.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You know, I actually remember when you brought that book
home and you wanted me to read it. It's not
a book for the fainthearted. It was a really, really
intense book. But I remember how excited you were about
all of the concepts you were learning, and specifically actually
having an opportunity to talk to Alfie on the phone
for the first time. I remember that.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, not only did I talk to him, but then
a few years later he was in Australia, and I
got to hang out with him. In fact, I drove
him from the central coast of New South Wales down
to Sydney because he needed transport, and I was the
one that contacted the organizers and said, what do you need?
How can I help? And they said, oh, we really
need someone to take him for a drive. I said
I can do that. So that was pretty epic. And Alfie,
we've got you here right now, Alfie, can.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I start Hubert? I'd love to ask you a question
when we think about punishment and discipline together, why is
punishment such a lousy way to discipline our kids?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Because punishment teaches power, It undermines the possibility of moral
growth in children. If I say to kids, do this,
or here's how I'm going to make you suffer, which
is what punishment is, and by the way, you can
call it consequences, it's still the same thing. It says
to kids, do this or here's what I'm going to
(02:53):
do to you. Then kids are first of all thinking
only about themselves how do I avoid the punishment, never
about the impact of their actions on others. All use
of consequences punishment focuses kids narrowly on self interest, and secondly,
(03:16):
what they have modeled for them is that someone who
has more power than they do can coerce them into
doing whatever or she wants. And that's the main lesson
that kids learn. Sometimes they take it out on others
that very same day when they come across peers who
have less power than they do. So punishment is a
(03:37):
way of doing things to children, and the only way
we help kids become good people is by working with them.
To put it slightly differently, the only thing you can
ever get from any kind of punishment, from forceable isolation
which is euphemistically called time out, to withdrawal of privileges
(03:59):
or yelling, spanking, whatever it is, the only thing you
can ever get is temporary compliance at an enormous cost.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, that reminds me of a story that I love
to tell. When I was about fifteen years old, I
was in the kitchen. My little sister was driving me
up the wall, and I said a word that we're
not supposed to use in my family. You know, we
had some very strict rules around the kind of language
we use. And I called my sister a stupid idiot.
I said something like, oh, shut up, your stupid idiot,
My mom heard and came dashing into the kitchen and said, justin,
(04:31):
we don't speak like that in this house. You need
to say sorry to your sister right now. And so
here's a false apology. So I'm obviously being dishonest when
I apologize. But I looked at my sister and I said,
to a fine Carena, I'm sorry, you're a stupid idiot,
which obviously made a lot of sense to my fifteen
year old brain, but it infuriated my mum, who, with
(04:51):
the best of intentions, said, you go to your room
right now and you think about what you just said.
And you know, Alfie, I went, I had.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
A child in history, ever often in a constructive way,
after being forcibly isolated. What you're thinking about in that
room is how unfair it is that you're there, how
you're misunderstood, and how you're going to get back at
your sister when your mother isn't looking. Never can you
get a response by simply making kids unhappy, by taking
(05:20):
things away from them or putting them in their rooms
or or whatever, and forced apologies, Well, that teaches kids
to lie. Yeah, what all say things that they don't believe?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
What I was going to say is that I went
to my room. I sat on my bed, and I
thought carefully about how I was an impediment to my
family's happiness, and I resolved to be a bit of human.
But I didn't really I did exactly what you said.
I was furious about my mom and how she didn't
understand me. It really ruptured my relationship in that moment, right,
and boy boy, I couldn't wait to get back at
my sister when mom wasn't watching.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Right, And the alternative to anticipate maybe where you're going
next and said, no, we have very limited time that
is offered to many parents. Instead of using sticks, use tarrots.
Instead of controlling them by making them suffer if they
don't do what you want, give them a doggy biscuit
if they do do what you want. But rewards are
(06:12):
just the flip side of punishment. So if I threaten
to punish a kid, I'm saying, do this, here's what
I'm going to do to you. If I reward children
or offer to reward them, I'm saying, do this and
you'll get that. So in the first case with punishment,
kids come to ask the question, what do they want
me to do? And what happens to me if I
(06:34):
don't do it? If you offer a reward for good behavior,
which typically means mindlessly obedient, not generous or thoughtful, but
then the question kids come to ask is what do
they want me to do and what do I get
for doing it? And so the research is very clear
(06:55):
that rewards like punishments, can only get temporary compliance, and
in both cases they retard moral and social and intellectual development.
Because we have hundreds of studies showing that the more
you reward people for doing something, the more they tend
(07:15):
to lose interest in whatever they had to do to
get the reward. So, on the one hand, if you
want to destroy children's interest in reading, for example, you
would offer a prize for reading a book because now
you've taught them that reading is something you would never
want to do, and it becomes devalued. They say, well,
(07:36):
you know, if this was so much fun, they wouldn't
have to bribe me to do it. But the other
reason that it devalues that that kids lose interest in
whatever they're rewarded for doing is because it's control. If
I punish a kid for doing something, it's obvious I'm controllingum.
But what a lot of parents don't realize is if
they reward kids, and that includes verbal rewards good job,
(08:01):
I really like theau dot dot dot. This is just
a verbal doggie biscuit and all rewards are just sugar
coated control, and kids don't like being controlled. So we
have research that shows that almost anything that kids are
rewarded for doing becomes less appealing to them. They have
(08:21):
less commitment to it over the long haul of Several
studies have shown a couple of just in the last
few years that children who are frequently rewarded or praised
by their parents are less generous and helpful than other kids,
and the effect is most pronounced if they're rewarded or
(08:42):
praised for being helpful. So you are undermining with the
use of any kind of reward, including praise or punishment,
including time out. The only alternatives to this are not
quite so east need to script or to have a
one size fits all when you do this, when your
(09:04):
kid does this, you should do that. So it's frustrating
because you actually have to think, as opposed to being
scripted out by a parenting expert. But rewards and punishments
always as they say, of doing things to children forms
of control. What helps us to become the best parents
we can is to figure out ways of working with
them to solve problems.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I mean, what about those parents who would say, but
I just can't get my kids to do anything without
a reward. You know, those parents who are using reward
charts or other ways of coercing the children to do
the household chores. Some parents would actually say that the
kids are more motivated by using them.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Right, And the question is not how do we motivate kids?
The question is how are kids motivated. For the last
few decades, psychologists have helped us understand that there are
different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than
the amount. Specifically, psychologists talk about the difference between intrinsic motivation,
(10:13):
which means you do something because you want to do it,
because you get a kick out of it, it's satisfying,
and extrinsic motivation, which is where you do it to
avoid a punishment or to get a reward. And what
we know from research as well as experience, is that
the two tend to be inversely related. So the child
who seems quote motivated to do it in order to
(10:36):
get the gold star, the ice cream call, and the
good job whatever has more extrinsic motivation, and as a
direct result, is now less committed to being a helpful person,
less interested in whether his actions around the house are
making other people feel good. So I guess when I
see the When parents say you know they work, I
(10:58):
always ask work to do? What? What's your goal? You
can get mindless obedience in the short run if the
reward is juicy enough or the punishment is awful enough.
What you can never get is a child who is happy,
more ethical, more compassionate, or caring, more of an independent thinker,
(11:21):
all of the things we parents want in the long
run for our goal. Rewards like star charts and stickers
in the life actually get in the way of those
more ambitious, meaningful, long term goals.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
If I'm not going to use punishments and I'm not
going to use rewards, what does Alfie Kohne and the
research suggest would be the best way to respond to
this child who is just driving me up the wall?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Talk less, ask more. There's no one size fits all solution.
As I indicated before, everything will depend on what's going
on in this child's environment and in this child's head.
Five different kids who are seen as difficult or troubling
or making us go crazy and pushing our buttons, maybe
(12:08):
doing it for five completely different reasons, and each of
those reasons calls for a different course of action. I mean,
this is the thing when I wrote my book Unconditional Parenting,
which is get specifically to looking at parenting punished by rewards,
also looks at schools and workplaces as well as families.
But I had to end the working with section the
(12:30):
what do we do instead? You know, break the bad
news that I'm not going to give you a magic formula.
If a child is acting this way rolling the eyes,
because frankly we're saying stuff that deserves an eye rolling,
then the problem is not the kid. The problem is
with what we have been doing that we need to rethink,
(12:51):
and we need to come to the child and say
I'm really frustrated sometimes by your attitude here, and I
want to hear where it's coming from. And then you
have to listen for the answer without getting defensive or huffy.
And then when there's a particular problem, like we want
to get to the house clean, I don't know about
using a different technique to get the kids room clean.
I mean, it's the kid's room, isn't it. Why would
(13:13):
the kid have to keep it up to our standards?
In other words, the premise of the question here ought
to be called into question. Don't ask how do I
get the kid to do X? If I can't use
punishments and rewards, begin by asking whether X really needs
to be done. But if we're convinced it does, like
everybody should pitch in with stuff around dinner, then I
(13:35):
would be asking the child, you know what's the problem here?
What can be done? What do you think you can
do in order to help help things go smoothly whenever possible.
Kids learn to make good decisions by making decisions, not
by following directions, and so we end up getting kids
(13:57):
who are happier to participate because they feel trusted and
respected as a result of our asking about their experience
and responding appropriately, rather than mindlessly and unilaterally trying to
impose our demands and agenda on them.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It sounds like something that I share with parents is
what I call the three ease of effective discipline. And
when I say discipline, I mean discipline is teaching and
guiding and instructing. It's helping our children to internalize those
things that matter most. So I talk about how we
need to explore their world, explore why they're struggling with
this question that we've asked, which helps us to understand
(14:36):
whether it was a good question or a good behavior
or requested in the first place. And then we explain
what our rationale is so that they can at least
see what our perspective is, and then we empower them
to work together with us to find a solution that's
mutually agreeable. It sounds to me like that's the kind
of process that you're describing.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Uh yes, but with not to throw away, but to
really linger on the problem on that one ask. In fact,
that a lot of times when kids don't do what
we've told them, the problem is with what we've told them,
and so we have to begin by being willing to
question the premise, whether it's what we're asking of them
(15:13):
is reasonable, whether it's developmentally appropriate, and so on, and
then to keep checking back with them if let them
propose a solution, and then let's talk about it later
to see how it's going.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, it sounds like effective exploration is the central pillar there. Alfie,
this has just been such an awesome conversation. Thank you
so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure
speaking about the problems of punishment and rewards being used
as a way to get our kids to do what
we want them to do.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I reckon we need to get Alfie backy In Justin,
that was just such a worthwhile conversation. Jack.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
We could have you back, Elphie sure be happy to
do it.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
For listening to the podcast. If you'd like more info
about how we can make your family happier, please jump
on to our website, happy families dot com dot au.
Find us on Instagram and on Facebook. Doctor Justin Coulson's
Happy Families
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