I Ain't Scared Of No Kid

Hey John,
I have a brother (“Jimmy”) who has three children, boys 11 and 8, and a little girl who is 3. He and his wife seem to be good caring parents except in controlling the kids. Even though the behavior of the boys is usually pretty good, Jimmy seems to be almost afraid of making them mad. A few weeks ago the older boy, “Ronnie” rode his bike pretty far away from their house without permission. When he came back my brother told him he was grounding him from his bike for 2 days. The next day I overheard he and his wife debating the punishment. They knew that if they followed through with the bike grounding, Ronnie was going to make their life hell. Rather than spoiling the weekend, they decided to give him his biking privileges back. When I asked my brother about why he didn’t follow through with the punishment, he said something like: “you know, what he did was on one day, and punishing him the next two days was only going to make him mad and not help with the problem”. Even though it looked like to me that he was just scared to mad his son mad, I didn’t say anything else. Is there anything I can do to motivate him to not act scared of his own kid?
Sister Sally
 
Dear Sal,
The short answer is: probably not. However, the longer answer is that parents must know that the whole teaching process in raising good humans entails the good, the bad, and the you-know-what. Rewarding, or at least noting good behavior helps to reinforce further good behavior. Conversely, proper accountability, that is, punishment is an extremely important part of learning. I’m sure your brother was right: when kids are being punished, they are rarely grateful for it. Every parent is faced with that challenge- do they teach their kids right from wrong or just try to coast through the child-rearing days as effortlessly as possible? Sometimes, as you noted, it’s being scared of your kid. Sometimes it’s crappy work ethic: too much work to suffer through your kid’s stomping around for the weekend. However, it’s important to note that excessive punishment is extremely counter-productive (see the previous Brownwood News column: http://www.brownwoodnews.com/hey-john-advice-column-parenting-discipline/). I spend plenty of my kid-counseling time working with the parents giving ideas on both joyfulness and holding kids properly accountable. If your brother isn’t following through because of lack of parenting/teaching knowledge, the situation is quite changeable. However, if the teaching role is being ignored because of either laziness or chickenshitness, the kids will grow up having to teach themselves rather than being taught properly by their parents. If that’s the case, I guess they’ll just punt them over to a counselor…