I'm not sure how this is going to work out, but I'm planning on not punishing my kids. That doesn't mean I will let them do whatever they want. When you say you're not going to punish your kids, people think that means you will let them do dangerous things. I won't. I won't let my baby play near the stairs unattended, I won't let my toddler play in the street, I won't let my kid smoke or drink alcohol. But I'm not going to accomplish that by threatening him with any kind of punishment.
When your kid is a baby, you serve one major purpose. You are supposed to keep your baby safe. If your baby tries to climb in the oven, it doesn't make any sense to punish him, because he didn't know he was doing anything wrong. But you have to keep him safe. That's why having a baby is a full-time job. You have to actually watch your baby. This is why people baby-proof their houses, though. Before your baby can walk, it is easy to keep him away from dangerous things. After that, you might not be fast enough, which is why a good parent keeps sharp objects and dangerous chemicals locked up, out of the baby's reach. And you don't put your favorite book on the floor and then spank the baby when he tears it up. The baby has no way of knowing that tearing the book is wrong. You made the mistake by putting the book there.
But during all this time, you should be explaining to your baby why he shouldn't be doing things. Like, if you are playing with him outside and he starts to go into the street, you pull him away and say, "No, baby, don't go in the street, you could get an ouchie," or something. He won't understand what you're saying at first, but if you repeat it every time the situation comes up, he will get it eventually and you won't have to worry. There was a commercial where this parent was telling her toddler son, as he sat in a high chair, about why he shouldn't smoke cigarettes. "It's never too early to start teaching your kids about the dangers of smoking," the voice-over said. He doesn't get it at that age, but by the time it matters, the message will be familiar to him. People know this intuitively. Don't you say, "I love you," to your baby, even though you know he doesn't know what the words mean? It would be silly to wait until he knew the words to say I love you for the first time. You say it all the time, from the moment he's born, and one day he figures out what it means and he knows you've been saying it all along. It must be pretty important if you've been saying it every day for his whole life. You can apply this to anything you want your kid to know.
Most kids won't openly defy their parents. There is a stage where they try to be sneaky because they think as long as you didn't say they couldn't do it, they can do it, even if they know you would says no if you knew. But after you know, they'll bargain with you, and maybe cry about it, but they accept your verdict. They don't realize that it's possible to go against what you say. But they will reach an age where they realize they don't have to do what you say. To prepare them for that day, you really do have to give reasons for your decisions. If you always limited your kid's cookie intake, but never gave a reason, then when he realizes he can make his own decisions, he might just eat cookies constantly and get sick and fat, and if you never gave a reason why he should brush his teeth he might just stop doing it and not realize until it's too late that not brushing your teeth lets decalcification and and cavities happen.
But even if you have explained everything to your kid all his life, there may come a point when he decides to do something you think is dangerous. He might know all the dangers you've told him about but he might decide that it's worth the risk, for some reason. You can try to persuade him not to do it, but in the end you have to respect his rights as an individual. If you were to try to coerce him into not doing it by threatening him or if you were to physically detain him so he couldn't do it, you would be wrong. You would be a bully and a tyrant. Think about what you would want a person to do for you. You would want people to keep you out of danger that you're unaware of, you would want people to inform you of dangers, but if you decided something dangerous was worth the risk, you would want your decision respected. That's precisely what you need to do for your kids. You have years to inform them of the dangers. But your kid might decide the danger of being an astronaut is worth the excitement. Or he might decide that drugs make him feel good enough that it's worth the health effects. And if you want your decisions respected, you have to respect other people's decisions. Or, if you're intent on being a tyrant, you have to make sure you're impervious to attack. But I strongly recommend the former.
But what's so bad about punishment? What harm can spankings and time-outs do? Wouldn't they only re-inforce the messages about the dangers of playing in the street and eating too many cookies? I don't think so. These sentences from Freedom and Beyond by John Holt express two problems with punishment. "A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. [...] To bow to a superior force makes us feel impotent and cowardly for not having had the strength or courage to resist. Worse, it makes us resentful and vengeful. We can hardly wait to make someone pay for our humiliation, yield to us as we were once made to yield" (104).
If you've ever read something and thought, "This sums up my feelings exactly," then you know how I felt the first time I heard The Golden Rule. I felt that "do not unto others as you would not have done unto yourself" was a perfect summary of how I governed my own actions. And the fact that it was this common saying with a name meant that it was agreed upon in our society. I apply this golden rule to my children. It is the very first principle from which all else must flow. If you agree that it is a good rule, then you must teach it to your children through example, in how you treat others but most importantly in how you treat your children themselves.
