Spiritual Parenting- Punishment Doesn’t Work!

Chopra says on more than one occasion that he brought up his children without reprimanding or punishing them:

“We never felt the need to punish them, although we let our children know very honestly when we were disappointed, angry or hurt. This was our way of teaching of teaching by reflection instead of rules.”

On reading this quote it becomes difficult to fathom how one is to bring up children in this way especially if routine and discipline have been an integral part of one’s parenting style for years.

I myself am a fan of Gina Ford, and if you are at all familiar with her advice and thoughts on rules and routine you will realise how defined her views are on early parenting.

I have to say that on first reading of this statement I sat open mouthed at the prospect of doing away with the ‘sad cloud’ (a friendly word for the naughty step!) I simultaneously broke in to a cold sweat at merely contemplating not being able to threaten my son with withholding his Power Rangers the next time he decided to flagrantly disregard my precious rules.

How could you bring up a child in this hippy way? Surely children need to be aware of their boundaries  and what constitutes appropriate behaviour? I feel fairly strongly about this and wholly disapprove of parents who do not challenge inappropriate behaviour.

However, I decide for the sake of this article, to give it a go. An opportunity presents itself when my son decides to call me a ‘poo poo bum bum head’ when he cannot get his own way. (Toilet humour is the order of the day amongst him and his peers at nursery at the moment – they find it incredibly funny.) However I momentarily decide to go with the confiscation threat (because I couldn’t think of what else to do) however I threatened to take his Power rangers with a lot less vehemence in my voice – my threat was almost polite. It worked.

In the Chopra spirit, I decide to do away completely with the naughty step and instead my son and I have ‘time out’ with him, to discuss his behaviour and the reasons for it. I then explain how his actions feel to me and how they might feel to ‘him’ should the tables ever be turned. So far so good. He stops and thinks about it and after about five minutes of struggle – he agrees. (And no, I am not holding a threat over him in case he doesn’t see it from my perspective).

A few days later my wayward son decides to go for a walk as I study the ingredients contained in an organic lavender foot cream in Boots. After a frantic two minutes of looking for him I find him looking at another little baby in pushchair. My natural reaction at this point would be to be ‘very cross indeed’ and moan for at least five minutes (in a quiet hiss – I don’t want to appear like an out of control Mummy – there is nothing more tacky ladies). However using divine power – I squat to his level and say in the most serene voice I have probably ever used: “Mummy is very upset. My heart hurts, I get very upset when you leave my side – do you want my heart to hurt darling? I thought I had lost you and it didn’t feel very nice.”

Okay, perhaps I sounded a tad too new age. My son also looked extremely confused: he was most definitely expecting me to go in to an awesome rage (this did make me wonder whether at his age this would be a deliberate ‘let’s wind up mummy activity’). Unbeknown to me there was a woman in our aisle who actually had the audacity to snort when she heard the “My heart hurts” bit! I have to admit I would have done the same thing before reading Deepak Chopra’s guide to ‘spiritual parenting’.

The point is – I feel that Chopra definitely has an important point. As parents we often have great demands on our time and it is all too easy to discipline children without the necessary conversation that needs to follow punishment. I think that relinquishing all of the tried and tested techniques to terminate the tiresome and terrifying behaviours, would be a tad too distressing from a parental point of view – especially for  a parent (like me) who relies on these old pearls of wisdom to control a four year old boy.

But – by just explaining my feelings to my son when he does something very naughty or socially inappropriate – it seems to have a different effect. I try to get him to ‘think’ about how he would feel if he was on the receiving end of his own behaviour. For a four year old this is a hard task – a challenging one – but one I feel that he ought to get used to. I take him out of the situation and talk. That’s sometimes difficult for me, but I believe that by encouraging children to develop their intuition and feelings of empathy and sympathy, we are helping our children enormously and giving them the necessary tools to deal with other difficult situations and people.

In conclusion, I have taken Dr Chopra with a bucket of the finest quality rock salt. I agree with his principles but I have adapted them to suit my situation. I have done away with the naughty step and as a result of a single piece of advice I feel I am relating to my son on a different level. I will however keep confiscation as a ‘punishment’ under my belt just in case the new age stuff doesn’t work one day!