Disciplinary Action

DETROIT – If you’re a parent, you’ve likely been there, done that and hope not to go there again.

Take Kellie Krepsky’s example. For almost an entire school semester, she couldn’t get her son Drew, 10, to get going swiftly on his homework.

She’d be in the kitchen washing dishes after dinner and she’d yell into another room something like, “Get started on your homework!” He didn’t, so she’d yell some more, says the Clinton Township, Mich., mother.

“Trying to get him to stop what he’s doing sometimes was like trying to stop a moving train,” she says.

Krepsky’s experience demonstrates a constant challenge facing parents: figuring out the best way to discipline their children.

A third of parents don’t think their methods of discipline are working very well, according to a study of 2,134 parents with children ages 2 to 11 in Canada, Puerto Rico and 32 states. The study appears in the January issue of Clinical Pediatrics.

“I think if most parents are honest the numbers would be even higher than that,” says the study’s author, Dr. Shari Barkin, chief of the Division of General Pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University.

“It’s a central element of parenting, yet it’s difficult for many parents,” she says. “Usually if you have to do something every day you get good at it. But discipline is difficult and messy. There are so many factors. It’s dependent on that particular child, that child’s stage of development, that particular circumstance, that particular parent. It has endless combinations and permutations.

“For example, how I discipline my 3-year-old when he’s hungry and tired requires a different strategy than what’s needed when he’s well rested and very verbal,” she says.

And what parent hasn’t spelled shopping with kids D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!

Let Mindi Gavie tell you about it. In December, she and her 4-year-old son, Ayden Crowley, were in the mall. They stopped at a KB Toys store and, of course, Ayden saw something he wanted. “Maybe later,” mom said, thinking she’d consider it for Christmas.

Later, when they were ending their shopping trip at J.C. Penney, Ayden reminded his mom that he wanted that toy.

She told him he wasn’t getting it that day.

“He freaked out. He laid out on the floor and started screaming. Everyone was looking at me, like I’m the worst parent in the world.

“You’re not supposed to yell at children. I was speaking softly, whispering even, but he was not hearing me. I had to calm myself down, then pick him up and carry him out of the store,” says Gavie, 32, a hair stylist. “Parenting, especially discipline, it’s very difficult.”

Barkin says she conducted the study to help parents and others who raise children do so more effectively. Discipline is an area where parents need and want a lot of help but get little, she says.

Barkin believes in-depth discussion about disciplinary strategies should be a regular part of well-baby visits – the series of recommended childhood checkups that generally focus on immunizations and the child’s physical health.

Barkin says there are four principles to good discipline:

“Keep a level head.

“Be consistent.

“Establish logical consequences.

“Apply the consequences as immediately as possible.

Barkin also suspects that more parents spank than the 8.5 percent who acknowledged it in her study. She noted some inconsistencies. About half of all parents surveyed said they were spanked; almost 40 percent said they use the same methods their parents used. But only 8.5 percent said they spank their children.

“We strongly suspect that both yelling and spanking might be underreported, because we know when parents perceive their methods are not working, as a third reported, then emotions can quickly escalate,” Barkin says.

She says yell only when a child’s well-being is in danger, such as when the child is about to run into the street.

Spanking should be used only as a last resort, and then only a whack to the bottom – the child’s most padded area.

Some pediatricians and child advocates say it’s never OK to hit a child.

“Studies show that children who have been spanked regularly are more likely to become physically abusive as adults,” says Barkin.

“Discipline in Latin means to teach; it doesn’t mean to punish,” she says.

“I find the great majority of parents want to talk about this,” says Barkin, who has three children, ages 3, 7 and 9.

Parents and authorities agree discipline is an overlooked, yet essential element of parenting.

“Before you have them, you think having kids is easy,” says Kellie Krepsky, 46, a substitute teacher. “Especially me. I have a degree in elementary education. But when it happens and you have children, you quickly learn it’s not easy.”

Kellie Krepsky and Mindi Gavie were among about 50 parents at a recent class aimed at helping parents discipline more effectively.

Gavie says while the store incident was embarrassing, she knows it would have been even more disastrous to give in and get the toy.

“I’m divorced, so it’s even more important to me that I communicate the right messages to my son,” Gavie says.

Eric Herman, clinical psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, says the greatest difficulty results because parents wait too late before trying to establish discipline. As soon as there is a problem, address it, he says.

“If you let a problem go on, when you try to discipline a child it may get worse initially. But stick with it and be consistent,” he says.

He also says it’s important that parents agree on the approaches to discipline.

Su Porter, a Michigan State University parent educator, incorporated those principles in the recent parenting class attended by Krepsky and Gavie at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Clinton Township.

Porter outlined a strategy that uses the acronym SMILE:

“Say it without rage.

“Model appropriate behavior.

“Involve everyone (parents, children, caregivers).

“Listen as much as you talk.

“Encourage, because praise for good behavior is more effective than criticism.

She complimented the parents for attending the class.

“It’s a struggle for everybody,” she says. “The fact that you’re here, it means you care.”