Overview

On these pages, we’ll examine issues that need to be evaluated and decided before we can actively begin the program of Family-ing. In Preparing for the Foundation will outline the reasons we will move forward wholeheartedly into building an EPP family life.

By necessity, we’ll discuss parenting and discipline styles. We’ll define them for the sake of discussion and evaluate them in light of our goals in Family-ing.

Preparing for the Foundation is a necessary step to EPP. To use our “foundation” metaphor, Preparing for the Foundation is the brainstorming we do before we meet with the architect to build our custom home. It’s the processing and information gathering we engage in. In building a custom home, we use all the experiences we’ve had living in homes. We remember how we felt, moved, worked, loved and played in various homes we spent time in. Based on that information, in combination with our physical resources (time, geography, money, professionals), we develop a fairly concrete idea of our new, custom home.

Consider this the same process for home-life you’ll create. In preparing for the foundation, we’ll focus primarily on making a choice regarding discipline style.

Simply put, there are 3 kinds of discipline:

Punitive – Parents who use punishment as a means to teach.

Permissive – Parents who fail to define and enforce appropriate rules.

Effective Practical Parenting – Parents who build a foundation for family-ing, utilize proactive and responsive measures to honor reasonable rules of conduct.

Let’s study each in more detail.

Punitive Parenting

Punitive parenting approaches children with the assumption that parenting is a battle of wills. Parents and children stand on opposite ends of the rope in a figurative game of tug of war. Indeed, even our language reflects this assumption. We have a “battle” with our children and we find ways to “win”. How many parenting books or articles have you read that contain the phrase “power struggle”?

Punitive parents assume children have to feel bad in order to learn - though they may not use those words to describe it. When confronted with inappropriate behavior in their children, punitive parents search for a punishment to extinguish the behavior. Punitive tools include: time outs, spanking, lectures, grounding, loss of unrelated privileges or property, physical exercise, and physical discipline such as hot sauce on the tongue. Reward/punishment systems are part of a punitive paradigm.

Punitive parenting is the most common type of parenting today in our culture. Even most permissive parents use punitive tools when they do attempt to discipline their children. Punitive parenting is so pervasive that punishment and discipline are used interchangeably, as though there were synonyms. We are immersed in a punitive culture; it’s hard to imagine parenting without those tools. You’ll find punishments in homes, at church, school, on sports teams, and in other organized activities for children.

Permissive Parenting

Permissive parenting is an awful thing to do to a child, a family and a culture. It creates unhappy families, unhappy grocery store clerks, aghast in-laws and, later, frustrated employers.

Permissive parenting takes many forms.

It’s the parent who repeats a child’s name endlessly without doing anything to enforce what they claim to want done or stopped.

It’s the parent who has vague rules around the comings and goings of a preteen.

It’s the parent who threatens a (punitive) response, but never follows through.

It’s the parent who walks on eggshells to avoid a meltdown or tantrum.
Permissively parented children often feel unloved, insecure and inappropriately powerful.

Permissive parents come in several types. One type comes to permissiveness through neglect. Often this parent has unresolved addiction and/or depression issues. The parent isn’t able to parent adequately and the child is allowed to do nearly anything.

Another type of permissive parent is more attuned and better intentioned. This is the type who feels age appropriate behavior is not only expected, but ought to be outgrown without intervention.

Another type of permissive parent is simply lazy, or at least unaware. This is the parent who intends to guide and direct but does little more than issue empty threats and repeat their child’s name endlessly in a lame attempt to get the child to change the behavior.

The final type of permissive parent I’ve observed is the parent who comes to permissiveness though a reaction to their own upbringing. Often parents where were themselves over punished adopt a “gentle” parenting approach. Instead of cultivating an intentional authoritative style, they default into doing less in order to not perpetuate what was done to them.

All permissive types are at risk for switching into a severely punitive, angry style when the ineffectiveness of their discipline attempts makes life miserable.

The reasons to avoid permissive parenting are more obvious than the reasons to avoid punitive parenting. Permissively parented children quickly become terrors at 2, bullies at 7 and delinquents at 16. These are the extremes. Permissively parented children are often damaged in less glaringly obvious ways, including depression, poor decision making, and failure to define and assert boundaries in their adult lives.

Security, safety, health are issues for permissively parented children.
Permissive parenting doesn’t “work”. Although some assume the child is going to love it, typically a permissively parented child feels unloved, neglected and out of control. Other family and friends often resist spending time around permissive families. The child searches for the limits, for the envelope of love and control which good, aware and engaged parenting would provide.

Most people reading would agree that it’s imperative to avoid permissiveness, even though many permissive parents don’t see themselves as qualifying for that label.

If we are to avoid punitive parenting and permissive parenting, how do we discipline children in a way that has reasonable rules and respectful ways of enforcing them?

We build our home using the intentional, progressive process outlined in Effective Practical Parenting; the process of Family-Ing.