The most commonly used and
socially acceptable parental response to a display of
"irrational" behavior (a temper tantrum, for example)
is to punish the child for it. Most parents operate according to
the widely held belief that the child will not repeat a form of
behavior for which he has been administered a dose of pain. This
technique has a kind of surface validity, because very often in
the face of repeated punishment and threats of punishment a
child will abandon a particular form of behavior. When the
offensive form of behavior diminishes in frequency, the parent
is reassured that he is following the proper philosophy
and fulfilling his duty both to the child and to the broader
society.
But unfortunately the problem is more complex. Irrationality
has an inner, experiential, unobservable quality as well as an
outer, observable behavioral manifestation. When the parent
punishes the child, all that the child does is to eliminate the
overt evidence of his irrational needs, desires, and way of
thinking. Punishment does not change in any manner whatsoever
the underlying thought processes that produced the unacceptable
behavior originally. The "badness" has merely
gone underground.
When a parent depends to a great extent on disapproval and
punishment as the means of dealing with their child's
unacceptable behavior, a long-term process of building anger
within the child takes place. Gradually and imperceptibly, over
a period of years, angry feelings are growing and competing with
loving feelings for control of the child's personality. The
parent remains unaware that there is anything to be concerned
about because outwardly, in response to punishment, the child is
behaving dutifully, and is gradually eliminating all the ways in
which "poorly trained" children act. But after years
in a "latency" period, the irrational anger that has
been accumulating comes to outweigh the power of loving feelings
to restrain them. When this occurs, the outward behavior of the
child changes radically. A typical delinquent picture then
emerges, reflecting the intense angry feelings
"inside." Even at this point it cannot be said that
the child does not love his parents. He still loves them and at
times may act very lovingly. But the angry feelings predominate
and determine the major portion of the child's behavior.
The change from good to bad behavior is often sudden,
occurring most frequently when the child approaches adolescence.
For this reason, parents are likely to blame the change on
chance coincidences, not recognizing that they are witnessing
the fruition of a lifelong process. Some parents review
their own behavior and conclude that they had not been punitive
enough, believing that if they had just been tougher, they would
have gained complete control over the child's bad impulses. And
some people blame drugs, as if the use of drugs, rather than
being symptomatic of a person "sick" with rage, had
caused the child's behavior to change.
Parents who assess the situation in this manner are merely
deceiving themselves. They are either unaware of or are refusing
to recognize the long-term deterioration in their relationship
with their child. If parents can recognize and acknowledge the
threat that punishment presents to the parent-child
relationship, they can take steps while their child is still
young to protect the relationship.
There is no "speedy" way to train children to
behave properly. What appears to be rapid training must always
depend on the fear of pain, and fear of pain achieves only one
end: it empties the "love bank"*,
setting the stage for later difficulty.
