Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Will discipline break a child's spirit?

Some friends of mine and I have had an ongoing conversation based around nature vs. nurture, different parenting styles and outcomes. One of the issues that keeps getting brought up is that we should nurture a child's spirit and that discipline will break a child down so that they lose their spark (we are not talking corporal punishment, just basic manners reinforcement, etc).

Given that, here is a scenario:

5 year old female child (E) has a ball. Her older sibling (S) would like to use a ball. The ball is a house ball that might have been given to E originally, but is used by the household. S takes the ball. E throws a fit, "MY BALL!!!" and grabs it back. S says she wants to use is for baseball. E refuses. This may or may not devolve into the children hitting each other. This instance was dealt with by mom telling E that she can keep the ball (ie not share a toy she wasn't even playing with) and then calling a friend to ask if she can borrow a ball for S to use. The reasoning given was that asking E to give up the ball would "break her spirit."

Oh and E did not originally have the ball, it was just lying around.

Now I know what my take is on this, but I'm curious what other people see and how other parents would react to that situation.

Wow.

Well, I'm pretty old-school as parents go, I guess...


Maybe real life is at some point going to break the child's spirit in far more significant ways.

Exactly how is formal schooling going to go, hmm?

(Nevermind. I'll bet that I know the answer. )

Discipline is about training/civilizing children, not "punishing" them, first of all. Much of that is for their own benefit, whether they see it that way or no (and all too often it's the latter-- sucks to be the parent).

Sorry, but my personal belief is that children are born who they are, all right... and that a LOT of 'who they are' requires some fine tuning if they are to live in harmony with other human beings. In some cases, major tuning. They'd mostly turn out to be tyrannical and capricious dictators otherwise. Imagine an entire world filled with only people intent on serving their own desires in the moment...


I don't really hold with the view that socializing/training children "destroys" their lovely and charming natural selves. I think that our natural selves are a lot like Howler Monkeys.

This particular scenario is pretty simple in our house. If you have something you have been given as a gift or purchased yourself (a ball) and you really treasure it, it's your responsibility to keep it put away in your room when you aren't playing with it. And if you've done that, we will respect that it's yours. If its out, and you aren't playing with it, it's fair game. So in our house since E wasn't using the ball and had left it out and about, S would get to play with it.

More generally, I don't think discipline done correctly breaks anyone's spirit. I think discipline is a chance to guide kids into self-discipline- and a lack of self discipline as an adult can be an awful experience for everyone. Discipline is a gift, even if kids don't always welcome it. And when you create some good clear guidlines you can create a safe way to offer age appropriate freedom of choice for the child. In our case, the child chooses to put the toy away every time he is done playing or understand that he will be sharing it. The freedom of choice belongs to the child but within the guidlines we set.

I agree with HowlerKarma and GinaW.

There's a difference between discipline and punishment. Both are necessary, but I believe that more of the former can lead to less of the latter.

"Disciplining children breaks their spirits" sounds a bit like an excuse for something to me. But that's just my opinion.

Sounds like some BS from the attachment-parenting crowd.

If they are claiming attachment parenting- then they've missed the boat on what it is. I consider myself an AP mom and discipline is key. I've heard lazy parents "adopt" the title of AP parenting as a sort of excuse. "Oh I'm not really too absorbed in my smart phone to parent my kid- its just part of my attachment parenting philosophy.". But true attachment parenting ( as defined by the guy who coined the phrase) is NOT without discipline.

Uhh...but lack of discipline will break a child's spirit because everyone will dislike them as a human.

My take on the ball situation is...those two children need to figure it out for themselves or they both need to go to their rooms (or own space) and no one gets the ball.
I think that the idea of a parent being so hyper-involved in the day to day disputes between her children is unreasonable. How will they ever learn how to handle things for themselves if they can't negotiate with their siblings?

Point well made, and taken. I'm talking about the faux attachment parenting crowd, I guess, led by such people as the discredited Naomi Aldort.

In the example, I'm pretty sure Iwould NOTdo what the mom did, no matter how tired I was.... But

I often wonder if I'm breaking my children's spirits with dicscipline. Yesterday, after a bunch of discipline issues I thought were indepe dant of one another, I found out that my kid, who desperately wants to learn how to fight, and has been asking about it for over a year (and he's only 3), was nervous because he had his first karate class and didn't want to blow it.

I should have been hearing his real concerns *all freqking day*

You're human! Hang in there!