Ep 2: Have We Forgotten How to Discipline?

09/25/24 • 48 min

There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they’ve changed wildly in America over the decades. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the old school, 1950s approach: spanking. Then, there are middle-ground approaches: time-outs, warning systems, consequences, and punishments. And then, there are the fairly new approaches on the way other end of the spectrum. These are the kind of approaches that claim that the right way to parent is not to punish your child, but rather to help your child understand why they’re frustrated and to help them work through their frustration. “Gentle parenting”—sometimes called “respectful parenting” or “attentive parenting”—has become really popular in the last few years, and if your social media feeds are anything like ours, you’ve heard all about it and been told you need to do it.

The question many parents are asking is: We have been told that spanking was bad, and we shouldn’t go back to it. But have we gone too far in the other direction? Has gentle parenting led us to permissive parenting, where kids are learning that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want? And yes, there are consequences of being too hard on your kids, but what are the consequences of being too soft on them? Today: How should we be disciplining the next generation of kids? And have we gotten too soft on them along the way?

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Resources from this episode:

Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
Dr. Thomas Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Gentle 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
Hal Chaffee: How to Spank Your Kids the Right Way

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Resources from this episode:

Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
Dr. Thomas Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Gentle 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
Hal Chaffee: How to Spank Your Kids the Right Way

Previous Episode

Ep 1: Are We Over-Parenting Our Kids?

1 Recommendations

When Emily was a kid in the 1980s in New Haven, Connecticut, she grew up on a block with a lot of other children. Every day after dinner, around 6:30, everyone emptied out of their houses and went down to the church parking lot where they engaged in all kinds of unsupervised activities—throwing balls at each other in front of the church wall, climbing up trees and sometimes falling out of them, riding Hot Wheels until people skinned their knees. There was street hockey and there were scrapes. There were a few broken arms.

That experience of playing outside unsupervised in the dark—or walking a mile home from school in kindergarten—is very different from her own children’s experiences, even though they’re growing up in a very similar environment, with very similar parents. They aren’t leaving the house every day after dinner. If Emily had suggested that they walk home from school in kindergarten, even though it’s only a couple of blocks, there’s no chance that would have been met with the school’s acceptance.

Since 1955, there has been a continuous decline in children’s opportunities to engage in free play, away from adult intervention and control. In 1969, 47 percent of kids walked or biked to school, whereas in 2009 that number had plummeted to 12 percent.

How did we get here? What are the consequences of hypervigilant parenting? On kids’ happiness? On their well-being? Their mental health? And on their ability to grow into independent, self-sufficient, and successful adults? And, maybe most importantly, how can we alter this trajectory before it’s too late?

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Resources from this episode:

Timothy Carney: Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be (Bookshop))
Jonathan Haidt: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Bookshop)
Lenore Skenazy: Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow (Bookshop)
Let Grow
Free Range Kids
Jonathan Haidt in The FP https://www.thefp.com/t/jonathan-haidt

Next Episode

Ep 3: Are We Feeding Kids the Wrong Foods?

In January 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics surprised doctors and parents by changing its guidelines on treating childhood obesity to include the use of popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, also known as semaglutide, for children ages 12 years or older. And parents all over the country were faced with yet another difficult decision: Should I consider a lifelong weight-loss drug for my 12-year-old?

The fact that this is even on the table at all is a pretty shocking indictment of the state of our kids’ health. Nearly 20 percent of American children and adolescents are obese, a 300 percent increase since the 1970s. Meanwhile, a little over 42 percent of American adults are obese, a 180 percent increase since the 1970s. The United States ranks 12th worldwide in obesity prevalence. This places the U.S. among the countries with the highest obesity rates in the world.

The question is: Why? And why haven’t we been able to reduce childhood obesity rates?

As obesity rates have skyrocketed, we as a society have also changed the way we talk about weight and obesity. Yes, there is less stigma today about weight—which is good. But people—including health experts—have stopped speaking out loud about the real health risks of obesity. Take, for example, how during the pandemic our health leaders wouldn’t tell the public that obesity is a high risk factor for contracting Covid, out of a presumed fear of stigmatizing obese people.

In the end, all of this has led to confusion about the real health risks of obesity. Parents, in particular, are left to struggle with how to navigate food and health for their children. They may be left wondering whether the entire idea of a link between weight and health may simply be misinformation. So today, we’re setting the table: Why Is childhood obesity such a big problem in the U.S.? Why is obesity problematic in the first place? What will it take to change the way Americans feed our children? And what’s at stake if we don’t?

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Resources from this episode: