I LIKE THIS Article About Punishment

There was a pretty good three-part series in the Chicago City Herald on motivating your kids, the most recent of which dealt with when punishment is actually necessary and what kinds of punishment are appropriate.

Oftentimes executing punishment is a visceral thing: One of my kids really pisses me off, so I try to contact some sort of punishment that satisfies my definition of "justice." The author of the series, Rev. Ken Potts, lays out a number of qualifications for appropriate punishment; I follow most of them (no spanking), but I often have to catch myself when I'm in danger of violating his "Resist the temptation to get even" rule.

When I'm able to take a part of myself out of a heated situation with the kids (the part that wants to make a bonfire out of all their toys) and handle the problem with a good deal of logic (e.g., you were supposed to do X, you know that if you don't do X then there will be specific consequences, you didn't do X; therefore, there will be those consequences), I feel much calmer, even when the kid in trouble is whining or otherwise bitching.

In another part of the series, Rev. Potts asks us to consider typical motivation methods we use on our kids if they were applied to us at work:

To motivate us to do better, [the boss says] we will take a $1,000 cut in salary for every percentage point we fall short of our goal. And if we achieve, or even exceed our goal, we'll get to stay at our current salary level.

Faced with such an "offer," most of us would probably start job hunting real soon. Punishment not only wouldn't motivate us, we'd be downright angry as well.

It's a great analogy, even though employees aren't (usually) so whiny to their bosses. Read more...