Using Negative Consequences and Punishments in Parenting: Fears, Facts and Practice

Using Negative Consequences and punishments in Parenting: Fears, Facts and Practice

Article authored by Kirrilie Smout and Rebecca Short.

In the context of parenting, “using negative consequences” (sometimes called “punishment”) refers to a caregiver responding to a child’s challenging or disruptive behaviour by facilitating an ‘unpleasant experience’ of some kind for the child, with the intention that this will reduce that behaviour over time. This article addresses first how the use of parental punishments and negative consequences have been viewed by society and child psychologists throughout history, and second what modern day research may suggest about both the effectiveness of parents using punishments in changing children’s behaviour – as well as the potential harm they may do to children or parent/child relationships.

History of negative consequences and punishments in parenting

The use of punishment goes back centuries. Historical records (e.g., religious texts and early writings on child-rearing) from ancient times through to the middle ages indicate frequent parental use of harsh and physical punishment (including whipping and starving) with this approach widely believed to be an essential part of a parents duty (for example, the biblical reference to “spare the rod, spoil the child”).

By the mid-1800s the concept of “child cruelty” began to be referenced by some writers and some of the most highly punitive practices (for example the “whipping” children with objects) started to fade in popularity. Instead, the concept of “spanking” or “smacking” (where parents used their hands to inflict a brief and more “mild” physical blow) gained acceptance instead. By the early 1900s, some child development experts had started questioning this practice too - although it was still commonly used in most families.

Also during this era, a school of thought within the then newly developing science of psychology called behaviourism began exploring the impact of punishments and rewards on humans’ behaviour. For example a psychologist called B.F. Skinner in the mid-1900s developed a theory called operant conditioning and conducted laboratory studies to show that humans (and animals) are less likely to repeat behaviours if they are followed by an unpleasant outcome (as well as finding they are more likely to repeat behaviours followed by something rewarding). 

In the following years, child psychology started developing as a field in its own right and child psychologists began making recommendations about parenting techniques - using Skinner’s behaviourism as a springboard. For example, these experts began recommending that smacking or other physical punishments for children not be used – and instead be replaced with structured, non-physical consequences such as removing privileges or ‘’Time Out’’ (a brief period in which a child is removed from attention/stimulation following a challenging behaviour). During the 1960s and 1970s these strategies started being incorporated into early behavioural parenting programs.

However, starting during the late the 1970s, and continuing into the 80s and 90s, many writers and psychologists began to steer parents away from not just physical punishment such as smacking but any inflicted negative consequences and punishments. This change in perspective came at least in part from emerging theories on “child/parent attachment” in which three influential ideas had taken hold: first that children required connected and secure parent/child relationships in order to develop positive mental health; second that use of punishments and negative consequences would cause children to experience feelings of abandonment or relationship insecurity which would negatively impact their mental health and third, that much of children’s challenging behaviour was not under their conscious and deliberate control anyway and instead was an involuntary distress/fear response occurring when they feel unsafe, threatened or overwhelmed.  These three ideas led to the then radical concept that a key part of parenting was to support children’s emotional health and to maintain positive and connected parent/child relationships. Note that this doesn’t sound radical to us today but was a very different approach to how parenting had been thought of prior to that time – which was primarily about “discipline” and ensuring children fit in with society.

Debates about Time Out demonstrated some of the change in thinking and so might be instructive for us to take a closer look at.  Initially developed in the late 1950’s by a psychologist called Arthur Staat, Time Out was designed to be a safe and effective way of reducing aggressive behaviours and non-compliance in young children (usually 8 years and under), it consisted of removing children for a short (one minute per year of age) period of time from any attention and stimulation.  In practice this meant placing them in a safe, boring space with no interaction with parents during that time and this strategy was a very commonly recommended to parents from the 1970’s onwards. However from the 1990’s some psychologists and writers started suggesting Time Out could damage a child’s well-being– for instance influential psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel and his colleague Dr. Tina Payne Bryson argued in an online article in 2014 that Time Out removes the child from parental connection, increases the child’s emotional arousal and stress, is felt as a deep disconnection from their parents, and thereby damages their mental health.  This article got a lot of attention and was debated by other psychologists who argued that when used calmly, briefly and predictably in an otherwise warm and connected parent/child relationship context, would not harm the parent–child relationship and instead (partly due to its effectiveness in reducing certain types of challenging behaviour) would in fact strengthen these relationships.  The debate was fiery and intense and still continues today. Interestingly, some of the authors (for example Daniel Siegal) who were initially perceived as critical of Time Out later publicly clarified their view that Time Out, when used in a regulated, occasional, connected and non-shaming way, could be an acceptable and sometimes helpful strategy, provided it was combined with approaches that support emotional connection and skill-building.  Other writers however (such as well-known parenting writer Alfie Kohn) continued to claim Time Out is a form of “love withdrawal” which has negative impacts on children in the long term.

Regardless of the varying opinions on Time out as a specific parenting strategy, from the nineties onwards and until today, there has been a clear societal movement away from the use of harsh and physical punishment for children. The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was a defining moment during this era and contributed to global efforts to reduce parents using physical punishment. The principles of attachment as described above continued to grow in influence over the last 20 years with much research, many parenting books, and articles in mainstream and social media during this time focussing on understanding children’s mental and emotional health needs and the need to build strong parent–child relationships rather than on the use of negative consequences and punishments.  In fact, many parenting writers and psychologists during this time (and still some today) expressed views that any form of rewards or punishments are a form of control which damages relationships, leads to high levels of distress, undermines children’s genuine desire to act in positive ways and leads to longer term difficulties in mental health and emotional regulation skills.

Research suggests parents across the globe have been influenced by the attachment movement. In most countries parents report significantly less use of smacking and physical punishment than parents in previous generations.  Research also shows that parents of the last few decades show increased use of warmth in parenting (including empathy, discussion and time spent with children). However, the widespread belief (often held by older parents, and some – again often older - health/educational professionals) that “parents today are softer” than previous generations only has mixed evidence. While there has been reduction in physical punishment and increase in warmth, we don’t have much research showing any other significant changes in parents expectations and use of negative consequences compared to previous generations.  Research we do have indicates parents/caregivers use of negative consequences is still relatively commone - for instance 60% of today’s parents say they have used time out with their children, 80% of parents of younger kids say they have used loss of privileges for difficult behaviour, and although some small studies suggest some parents do this revoking of privileges less often than previous generations of parents – other studies do not find any intergenerational changes.  It is also worth noting that around 50% of parents in Australia in 2024 still report they have used physical punishment with their children at least once.

And finally, in the most recent few years there has been even more muddying of the waters whereby some psychologists and parenting writers (in books, article and social media channels) are again shifting back to recommending to parents that they consider the use of punishments and resist “gentle parenting” (e.g. see approaches such as “FAFO” parenting which stands for “F&^# around and find out (what happens)”). 

As you can see, there have been many schools of thought over the last several hundred years about whether negative consequences are essential, effective, useless or harmful – as always with parenting, it seems there are no shortage of opinions and advice!

Do we have any research to guide us on the use of negative consequences for children?

Let’s move now to examine the research we have on a) whether parents use of punishments and negative consequences are effective in changing their children’s behaviour, and b) whether they are harmful to children or parent/child relationships.

An important note that from this point on, we will only consider research into non-physical, non-verbally abusive negative consequences and punishments – given the strong and consistent evidence which shows that smacking, physical punishment and harsh verbal criticism are not only ineffective in helping young people make long-term behaviour changes but are also linked with significant harms to both children and child/parent relationships.

Are parents use of negative consequences effective in changing children’s challenging behaviours?

As stated above, the initial ‘operant conditioning’ studies (mostly from the 60’s and 70’s) were unequivocal in their findings – in laboratory settings, when a controllable behaviour (for example someone making a choice to press a certain button) is followed by a negative consequence, people consistently and significantly decrease this behaviour.  However, there are significant doubts as to whether the results of these studies can generalise to home and family settings where behaviour is more complex, less controllable and influenced by multiple factors.

So, let us start to consider other research done in applied settings. Although this article is only focussed on parent use of punishments in a home context, it might be instructive to look at the large body of research we can refer to as “token economy” experiments done within (usually primary) classroom settings (and sometimes specific settings such as with children with ADHD). These studies were mostly carried out in the 1970s–1980s (although some are still being conducted today) and include experiments whereby classroom teachers are trained to apply calmly and consistently apply “small” negative consequences (usually the taking away of points or tokens) from children following their disruptive or non-compliant behaviour  - and usually to calmly and consistently give points for “appropriate” behaviours.  These studies usually find that these programs consistently decrease children’s negative behaviours - and interestingly often found that including a “response cost” element (i.e. punishments) often makes the program more effective compared to when only rewards are used.

This might give us some clues that for many children, at least in a classroom setting, use of consequences seems to effectively reduce challenging behaviours.  These studies have their critics however – who often point out that these programs are only monitored for typically short (weeks to months at most) periods of time and so we don’t know if any behaviour change initially found lasts over the longer term.  For parents,  we might also reasonably ask whether programs in classrooms programs are generalisable to parent/home settings (where perhaps behaviours might be more complex and the additive effects of a whole complying peer group are not present). 

However we do have research studies in home settings which might provide information about the effectiveness of negative consequences – those which evaluate parenting programs such as Triple P, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, The Incredible Years, and Parent Management Training Oregon Model. These parenting programs have been amongst the most well studied psychological interventions in the last 50 years (even if you include the research on adult directed therapy interventions) and studies find they significantly reduce children’s challenging and non-compliant behaviour (with effects often lasting for years after treatment) for most children. Importantly for our purposes here - each of these programs explicitly teach and support parents to use negative consequences (including loss of privileges and Time Out). Some might conclude therefore that this body of research shows negative consequences are an effective and key strategy which reduces tricky behaviours in children. However, critics might reasonably point out that these parenting programs include a range of elements (including connection and coaching strategies just to name a few) and so we can’t be sure it is the negative consequences per se which reduce the problem behaviours (and in fact some people might suggest the effectiveness of these programs occur in spite of the inclusion of negative consequences, not because of them).

Another area of research which might give some clues about whether negative consequences are effective comes from the literature on parenting styles. This research (originally developed by Diana Baumrind) examines the different patterns or “styles” in which parents respond to children and then measures these parents’ children’s outcomes over time. Three main styles are consistently described in this literature: authoritarian parenting which involves high levels of control, strict rules, and frequent use of punishment, often with an emphasis on obedience; permissive parenting (in some studies called indulgent parenting) which involves high warmth parenting (love, affection, empathy) but very few limits/boundaries and almost no use of consequences and authoritative parenting – which consists of both warmth AND high expectations (including the use of negative consequences).

Most studies suggest that both authoritarian (harsh/punitive) and permissive parenting (warm, lenient) styles are linked over the long term with more difficulties in the behaviour of children of these parents – in other words parents who are harsh and punitive and those who have few limits or expectations of their children – both have children with greater difficulties – including higher levels of impulsivity, more difficulty with self-control, lower social skill, lower academic achievement, more mental health difficulties and more behavioural problems. 

As a result, we might say that the fact that permissive parenting is linked with more child problems tells us that when parents lack expectations and fail to implement any negative consequences – that this is likely to be linked to worse child outcomes.  However again, this conclusion is not accepted by all. Critics suggest that this “correlational data” doesn’t prove causation (for example - perhaps permissive parents have children with more difficulties which causes the parent to be permissive – not the other way around). Furthermore this “parenting style” research doesn’t examine the use of negative consequences specifically (perhaps there is something else about permissive parenting which is problematic rather than their avoidance of consequence use).  Some writers might also point out that the fact harsh parenting is also linked to more child problems could be used to come to the opposite conclusion - that punishments are in fact dangerous (however this argument is dismissed by those who say that harsh/punitive parenting is *not* the same as the use of consequences by an otherwise warm parent). 

One final point about parenting style research - there have been a smaller handful of studies which do NOT find the above ‘permissive=worse outcome’ findings – and instead, find links between permissive parenting and better emotional health of children. These studies however seem to use a different definition about what makes a parent permissive compared to the original studies.

Perhaps the most helpful research might be the small handful of studies which have examined the use of negative consequences specifically. Many of these studies have used Time Out as the negative consequence to study, supported parents to implement this strategy and measured changes in problem behaviour over time. It is important to note these studies have all focussed on children under twelve, and mostly those under seven.  These studies have largely found time out is an effective strategy, at least with these aged children. For example, a study by Fabiano et al. 2004 found that (6- to 12-year-old) children who received Time Out in addition to other behavioural strategies showed greater reductions in non-compliance than those who received the same program without it. Similarly, a large meta-analysis by Kaminski et al. 2008 meta-analysis found that parenting programs (usually focussed on up to 7-year-olds) which included Time Out were associated with larger improvements in child behaviour compared to programs which did not use them.  A study by Eisenstadt et al. 1993 study found that families (of children up to 7) who began with discipline strategies (including Time Out) showed earlier improvements in child behaviour and higher parent satisfaction compared to those who started with relationship-building components first (both groups improved over time). Outside of time out, there have also been a couple of other studies (from the 80’s) examining negative consequences specifically (ie rather than parenting style/parenting programs generally) usually these studies taught parents to implement response cost strategies (usually losing “points”) for challenging behaviours at home in their primary aged children – and also showed this strategy as effectively reducing challenging behaviours (although none of these studies had control groups). 

Does the use of negative consequences harm children – or our relationship with them?

Regardless of their effectiveness or otherwise, perhaps more important is the second question – does the use of consequences by parents harm their children? There are three major concerns raised by child psychologists and parenting writers for how punishment may cause harm to children. These are as follows:

a) Concerns that parents’ use of punishments or negative consequences will impact a child’s emotional and mental health – specifically that punishment will increase a child’s anxiety, depression, aggressive behaviours, decrease their ability to regulate their emotions, reduce self esteem, and reduce their sense of autonomy and control over their lives.  There are many theorised mechanisms for how these harms might occur. For example, one theory is that punishing a child will increase a child’s general level of perceived threat (sometimes called a reduction in “psychological safety”) which subsequently decreases their ability to learn and function over the long term. It has been suggested that this is particular relevant for children who have already experienced significant increases in threat (ie children with trauma backgrounds).  Another theory is that punishment leads to a paradoxical increase in a child’s need for sense of control and freedom (sometimes called “psychological reactance”). Other theories which link punishment to decreased well-being outline how punishment theoretically might impact physiological systems in the brain – for example those systems associated with physical pain, threat and danger neurochemical and neurostructural activation – with concern that all of this will damage a child’s brain and long term well-being.
 
b) Concerns that the provision of external rewards such as punishments (and although not the subject of this article - also rewards) will reduce a child’s own self-propelled (intrinsic) motivation and “internalisation”. In other words, this concern is that externally controlling children via punishment and reward doesn’t just damage well-being but impairs a child’s self-directed genuine desire to do certain behaviours or follow certain rules. This theory largely comes from self-determination theory which posits that feeling in control of one’s life is one of the most important predictors of well-being, and that punishment (and rewards) leads children to feeling like they have no agency or control over their own lives. This lack of agency is proposed to not only lead to distress but also to a disinclination to want to do desired behaviours or care about the rule.

c) Concerns that the use of punishment will negatively impact on children’s relationships with adults (i.e. parents or teachers).  This is, as stated above, is a proposal which emerged from attachment theory which suggests that children need to feel safe and cared for by adults, and if punishment occurs, they experience this as “love withdrawal” or “conditional loving” which makes them feel insecure and disconnected from their most important relationship – which then in turn leads to emotional health damage.

Each of the above three concerns have been written about extensively by professionals in the field of psychology, psychiatry, education and parenting.  However unfortunately direct empirical research examining these claims is lacking. This makes sense of course - ethic committees in this era do not allow researchers to randomise children to experiencing a possibly harmful intervention. Furthermore, doing research which “rules out long-term harm” is by definition going to need to have very long-term follow-up periods and require extensive measurement which is not feasible for most researchers.  So to evaluate these concerns, we need to look at related research from which we might infer harm.  It seems there are three main categories of studies cited by those concerned about negative outcomes from parental punishment.

The first category is research which examines what happens to children’s brains and bodies when they experience emotional stress, rejection, or pain. For example, studies show that when children experience relational or emotional distress, the same brain pathways, systems (eg amygdala activation), and stress hormones (eg cortisol) involved in physical pain are also activated by emotional distress. Other studies also show that children who experience repeated relational or emotional stress have long term differences in various brain structures compared to those who do not experience this. These studies are interpreted by some as suggesting that when children are punished, they experience relational or emotional stress and subsequent pain pathway activation, elevated stress hormones, and long-term damage to brain structures.

However critics of this conclusion raise two points:  First they state that many of these studies (e.g. those which show damage to certain brain systems and structures) have actually been conducted with children experiencing very intense emotional pain or relational rejection (e.g. abusive behaviour, or long term rejection – e.g. children in orphanages) and quite reasonably claim these intense experiences are not the same as children experiencing much milder negative consequences such as short time outs, or response costs.  Second critics state that even if these physiological reactions do occur when children experience time out or the revoking of privileges – like raised cortisol levels – that this is a normal and expected human experience and that there is no evidence these physiological reactions are harmful over the long term.

The second type of studies which might give us clues about harms associated with punishment are those which punish or reward children for doing tasks in laboratory settings and then examine these children’s internal motivation for these tasks at a later point. For instance, the classic form of these experiments is one where children are given rewards or punishments for doing (or failing at) certain tasks and then later assessed for the degree of motivation they have for doing this task again later.  Generally, these studies find that children’s internal motivation, interest in and voluntary time spent on tasks reduces after they are rewarded for doing them (the “over justification” effect).  There are fewer studies on the use of punishments on the impact of motivation – but the ones which do exist find a similar result - if children are punished for failing at a task, they are less likely to want to do it try it later compared to children who just fail at the task without being punished.   

Another type of study which also looks at internal motivation are those which examine parents (or teachers) who have been taught an “autonomy supportive style” of parenting/teaching. These studies usually get parents/teachers to reduce the use of rewards and punishments and instead increase strategies thought to increase internal motivation.  These strategies vary but usually include explaining rationale for requests and providing children choice and control. These studies generally find these programs result in positive outcomes for children (reduced challenging behaviours, increased well-being) compared to treatment as usual conditions.

The studies described above raise the possibility that trying to control children’s behaviour with external rewards or punishments instead of helping them understand the benefits to them of acting in certain ways, means children don’t learn to value certain behaviours themselves and lower their motivation. 

Critics of this interpretation counter by making three points. First almost none of these studies directly evaluate the use of negative consequence (mostly it has been about use of rewards or in the case of programs to increase autonomy supportive parenting/teaching – they increase a range of caregiver behaviours and don’t just decrease negative consequences). Second many of the autonomy building studies do not compare the programs to any other comparable condition, so it may well just be expectancy effects which produce positive outcomes. Third - in the real world, parents usually provide both external control (rewards and punishments) and autonomy supportive strategies (rationale and support for children to internalise reasons for desired behaviours).  In other words, it is possible to use both autonomy supportive behaviours to help children increase their own motivation AND use consequences to reduce problematic behaviour.

The third types of studies cited as evidence for punishment=harm to children are those which are large scale surveys of parenting style which consistently finding that harsh parenting, low autonomy parenting styles (i.e. low control and choice for children) and parents who show only “conditional love” or “conditional regard” (children feeling as though they are only loved if they follow instructions or achieve highly for example) are linked with a plethora of later poorer outcomes for children’s health and wellbeing.  However, critics counter that these studies cannot be used to suggest negative consequences are harmful as they state there is a world of difference between harsh/low autonomy and conditional love parenting (for instance, usually defined in these studies as behaviours such as “the restriction of movement; patterns of belittling, blaming, threatening, frightening, discriminating against, or ridiculing; and .. rejection or hostile treatment”) and a loving, warm parent using a negative consequence such as “no iPad tonight.”

Finally, there are a few studies on the use of consequences specifically to look for harm – in other words studies which investigate families who use consequences and follow them up over time to try to find harms. Generally these studies have failed to find any evidence of harm. For instance, a large longitudinal study by Knight et al. in 2020 found no link between the use of Time Out and negative emotional outcomes in children. An Australian study by Roach et al. 2024 Australian caregiver study found that when Time Out was used appropriately, it was associated with better mental health and stronger attachment (noting however that “poorly implemented” (unpredictable, angrily applied) Time Out was linked with worse outcomes). Research by Xu & Dadds 2022 study found that adults who recalled appropriate use of Time Out in childhood reported better mental health later in life. Interesting one study found that young adults who reported being punished as a child were more likely to have positive mental health in adulthood but only if they reported the punishments were for behaviours which impacted on others – and punishment was linked to poorer mental health in adulthood if they reported it was for behaviours they felt only impacted on themselves. 

While some writers might suggest these studies prove that mild punishments such as Time Out are safe therefore, critics of this conclusion might say a) that these studies rely heavily on recall, b) that they only considered a narrow range of outcome measures and c) suggest “poorly implement” time out (associated with harms) is the most common form of time out in the real world anyway.

What can we conclude from the research we have?

As you can see, in our view, unfortunately the research remains somewhat inconclusive. In terms of punishment effectiveness – while on balance it seems the research leans slightly towards a reasonably confident “yes, carefully applied punishment (at least as it has been applied in the literature) does usually reduce children’s challenging behaviour” conclusion, it does appear that most (although not all) of the applicable research has come from examining groups of parenting behaviours. Again, this makes it hard to definitively say the specific use of consequences independent of other parenting behaviours is what makes all the difference.  It should also be noted that there is little to no research which examines whether consequences are effective in changing behaviour for particular groups of children (including those with additional challenges or needs) and finally we don’t know for sure if any behaviour change which results from consequences lasts in the long term. 

In terms of conclusions about (again- non physical) punishment related harm, summing up the research is even harder.  It seems that the use of negative consequences in the context of loving parent relationships has not been definitively linked to any (motivational, relational or mental health) harm in children, however we acknowledge that definitively ruling out this harm over the long term is a pretty tough ask experimentally.
 
What does this mean for parents?
It seems to us that therefore, that whether or not individual parents choose to use punishment or not might be best seen as a risk/benefit decision.  In other words, if you are a parent who is disinclined to use punishments or negative consequences and you feel your approach is working for you and your child – it would seem sensible to carry on as you are.  Well-meaning parenting advice which suggests that every parent must use negative consequences if they want their child to be a well-adjusted adult – does not seem to be supported by research in our view.

On the other hand, if you feel your child (or your family) is already experiencing (or likely to experience) harm caused by a child’s challenging behaviours – and you feel as though “everything else” has already been tried -  it is not unreasonable in our opinion to trial the use of negative consequences. In other words, you might feel the (arguably relatively low risk) that your child may be adversely impacted by punishments is a lower risk than the harm associated with the challenging behaviour.

Of course we have just distinguished between parents who want to use consequences and those who do not – but this might be a moot point given most parents ARE already using negative consequences and punishment in some form!

Practical ideas for using consequences and punishments.

If you are a parent who would like to try to implement the use of negative consequences into your tool box or you are one who already uses them and you want to ensure you are doing so effectively and (hopefully) safely, here are some principles for doing this which we think are research based. 

First, before punishments are considered, these four factors must be in place:

1.       As parents we must be providing significant warmth, connection, skill building and autonomy support to our children. The overall “emotional climate” or in other words – the overarching relationship between parent and child - may be one of the most significant (environmental) determinants of a child’s long-term well-being. We won’t go into detail here about warmth, connection, skill building and autonomy support (covered in other articles) but usually means behaviours such as thanking, acknowledging and showing love for a child, showing empathy for their struggles, allowing them as much choice and control as possible, ignoring transient and mildly challenging behaviour where possible, prioritising parent/child time, coaching children to better manage situations and feelings and spending time and effort asking about and trying to understand a child’s perspective.     

1. As parents we should be making (at least some) attempt to understand behaviour before punishing it. Human behaviour always serves a (often multiple) purpose. For instance - a child’s verbally aggressive response to an instruction – might serve a purpose for the child of avoiding having to do something difficult, a way of seeking connection, to meet a sensory need, and a way of coping with a feeling they do not yet know how to manage.  It is important for parents try to consider these purposes because this helps them know whether the use of consequences will effectively reduce the behaviour.  For example, if a child pushes their sibling partly because they are seeking connection from a parent (even if they also do this because they think nothing bad will come of it) – and they have no other way to obtain that connection – then punishment for this behaviour may not change (because seeking connection is hard wired into us and almost impossible to stamp out entirely).  Now of course, being aware of the purposes of behaviour is easier said than done. But at least asking the question “what does my child need or is trying to achieve when they do this tricky behaviour” can be useful and important where possible.

2. We should by trying to work out whether tricky behaviour is under a child’s control. Negative consequences and punishments can only change behaviours if a child can effectively control that behaviour. If we punish a new soccer player for missing the soccer goal, this will not reduce the poor kick rate. This means we need to attempt to distinguish, for example, between behaviours a child is choosing to do and those behaviours which are instinctive or reflexive behaviours (including those which occur in the context of high distress and overwhelm). Of course, we know that working out what is an “under control behaviour,” and what is a “reflexive /overwhelmed /distressed behaviour” is not easy. For example, is a child swearing at a sibling “on purpose” and could easily make a different language choice, or are they flooded and cannot cope? Is a child choosing to not pack up, or are they highly anxious about what is coming next and cannot think about where to even start? This is the basis of different approaches by psychologists and parenting writers – some suggest that all (or almost all) challenging behaviour in children is uncontrollable, distress orientated behaviours not under their conscious control. Others suggest this is unlikely to be true, and suggest an element of control is present for many childhood tricky behaviours. Unfortunately it is hard to know for sure what or how much control a child has over a behaviour but at least some consideration of the question “could my child control or change this behaviour if they really wanted to?” is important before using consequences for that behaviour.

3. We should (usually) try to reach co-operation via discussion first. This means (brief) explanations for requests/rules (at least initially) which explain impacts of the child’s behaviour, seeking the child’s views/perspective and spending time brainstorming solutions to problems.  This is important because we want children to eventually value themselves the behaviours we are trying to get them to do.
   
   If parents have invested time and energy into warmth, connection, autonomy support, understanding of the purposes of behaviour, checking of controllability of behaviour and discussions and problem solving – and challenging behaviour continues, consideration of negative consequences may be reasonable.  Here are a few steps to ensure any use of consequences is most likely to be effective and least likely to cause damage.

1.       Choose specific behaviours to link with consequences – not general behaviour “sets.”  Punishment is a tool designed to help children learn exactly what not to do or what to do. If we try to punish a “set” of behaviours at once, the child is unable to learn exactly what the problem behaviour is and what to do instead. In other words, less desirable is a statement like “if you are naughty after school you can’t go on your iPad at bedtime, and usually more desirable is something like “if you don’t empty your bag and put your uniform away after school, you cannot have your iPad time that night”.  Usually less effective is “if you are mean to your brother then you don’t get to play with him anymore” and usually more effective is, “if you use insults with your brother like “you are a… or you are….” you have to stop playing and do chores with me for 15 minutes”.  This importance of choosing specific behaviours means (without the use of exceedingly long spreadsheets and particularly good memories) families should only focus on two or three tricky behaviours at a time. While this can feel like a drop in the ocean to parents managing lots of these behaviours, it is usually better to start with a small number of specific behaviour and then expand.

1. Consequences ideally should be a) “mild,” b) able to be applied quickly after a challenging behaviour and c) logically related to the behaviour.  Let’s take these three elements of consequences most likely to be effective in turn. First, “mild” means choosing the least distressing consequence which still has the power to change behaviour.  This means consequences should never threaten a child’s physical safety, humiliate or shame a child or make children feel hopeless or frightened – these types of consequences are likely to increase distress to the point that learning cannot occur, and are more likely to cause damage.  Of course this is not to say consequences should be so mild they are not unpleasant for the child at all– unfortunately if consequences are not unpleasant to some degree they are unlikely to result in behaviour change (the classic example of “punishing” a child by making them go to their room where they watch their iPad and get out of unpacking the dishwasher” comes to mind).  However keep in mind that the studies we cited above which have examined effective consequences have used short term loss of privileges and short time outs so long term loss of highly valued and highly personal items (your phone is gone for two weeks) or experiences (no Father Christmas for you), or long periods of isolation (your room for the rest of the night) are well outside the research literature. The second aspect of an effective consequence is that it can be applied quickly after behaviour whenever possible. This is because the shorter the length of time between undesired behaviour and negative consequence the more likely it is that a child will effectively learn the link between the behaviour and the consequence. For instance, a child missing out on being on the trampoline after school because they didn’t do their agreed upon chores that morning is more likely to help children learn than “you now can’t go out on the weekend because you have not been doing your chores during the week” (can they even remember what happened on Monday?).  The third aspect of a punishment least likely to cause harm is that it is somehow linked or related to the problem behaviour (sometimes called a logical consequence). For example – logical consequences might include removing iPad privileges if a child doesn’t follow the rules about turning it off at a certain time, requiring a child to spend time repairing something they have deliberately damaged, requiring a child to make a ‘’relationship repair’’ (kind or restorative behaviour) attempt with a sibling before being able to go out on a family outing with their siblings.  The reason logical consequences might be less likely to cause harm is that research suggests that they often feel more acceptable to children and young people and therefore may be less damaging to parent/child relationships. By the way, one type of logical consequence is a consequence which is a form of skill practice. For example, having to miss the first few minutes of an enjoyable activity to instead practice using their calm words in a roleplay with a parent, or having to write out a morning routine list before they get time on another preferred activity - are both examples of a type of consequences which might are logically related to the problem behaviour AND also serves as a learning practice opportunity.

2. Plan ahead and communicate to the child the consequences of the specific behaviour so the child feels the punishment is entirely predictable. Predictability matters because punishment is effective not because it causes pain but because it provides information to a child about what happens when they do certain things. Therefore, punishments can only be effective if children have the information they need to make that choice – and to have it ahead of time. This means we should communicate planned consequences to children well before the problem behaviour situation and ideally have it in visual form to ensure there is no misunderstanding from the child’s perspective, not just the parents. For example this might be something like “I’ve written down our iPad rules – the iPad gets turned off straight away when the timer goes, and if it does you get to play it the next night as well – and if you don’t, you don’t”. As well as this well ‘’in advance communication’’, ideally children are additionally provided with a warning and opportunity to change their behaviour immediately before the consequence is implemented (“oh I just noticed we have 30 minutes for you to clean your room so we can go to training, let me know if you need any help”) or gently reminding the child of the Ipad rules when they first get it out.

3. We should have plans to manage distress which happens when a) children are told (and reminded) about consequences and b) when consequences are implemented. Most children will experience negative emotions both when a negative consequence is implemented – but also when told about (or reminded of) the plan for the consequence (this latter distress is sometimes called psychological reactance – a feeling of being controlled).  It is important parents expect (both forms of) this distress and have plans to calmly and empathically respond to it rather than feeling surprised by it or annoyed at the child for experiencing it.  Some ways to minimise this distress might include ensuring information about consequences is provided in a short, empathic and calm way– in other words we would, as stated above, tell the child clearly in advance about the planned consequence and remind them about it as needed (because distress associated with unpredictability is likely to be worse in the long run than psychological reactance distress) and the reason for it but we would ideally avoid long, angry conversations about why it is happening (and definitely avoid telling them they should be happy about it).  We might even ask children if they would prefer nonverbal reminders (a beep, or code word, pointing to a poster) about the planned consequence if they would prefer this to verbal reminders. It might involve empathy when the consequence occurs (“I know you feel so disappointed, missing out on your screen time feels really awful”), being present during distress (“I am going to be here with you while you have to look at your calm sentences poster”) or moving away if needed (“to keep myself safe and to give you a chance to calm down, I am going to go into my bedroom, but I will be back very soon”). It might require ensuring a second adult is present to assist to keep children safe (“your grandma and I are going to be here to make sure you do not hurt yourself”) and it might also involve a plan to reconnect and move on as quickly as possible after the consequence implementation. It is important to note that unfortunately there are no guaranteed ways to avoid all distress associated with punishments, but it is important for parents to at least consider if there are ways, they can respond to it which may support the child’s well-being.

5.       Implement consequences only for a short period of time before reviewing them. It is worth noting that all of the research we have on consequences is from studies which use short term implementation of consequences – in other words punishments and consequences are used within the literature as a brief strategy to change behaviour in the short term, not as a long term way of responding to ongoing behaviour.  This matters - because if a gentle, logical, quickly applied, specific consequence is applied for a specific behaviour consistently, calmly and predictably does not reduce the challenging behaviour relatively quickly – it might suggest that the behaviour is NOT actually under the child’s control and therefore the use of consequences should perhaps be reconsidered.  Knowing that consequences should ideally only be used in the short term can be helpful for parents are nervous about implementing them. For instance, if you are worried that implementing a “reduced after school screen time if you didn’t get morning jobs done on time that morning” consequence is going to be impossible to do, it can be helpful to tell yourself that you will trial this for one or two weeks to see how your child responds, how distressed they are, how you feel it is working or whether you think it is safe for them (note - we might not necessarily tell some children about the short-term nature of a consequence trial in case the child just chooses to wait it out)

6.  Be careful about punishments for children older than about eleven or so. Most of the research on consequences has been done on children aged twelve or under (and often the research has been with children aged 7 years and under). Research also suggests that a sense of autonomy and freedom is increasingly important for teens well-being compared to younger children.  It’s not to say that using negative consequences is less helpful and more damaging as children get older – it’s just that we do not really know for sure. Therefore, a safer alternative to logical consequences and punishments for older kids and teens might be what are called “natural consequences” – in other words punishments which are not directly applied by a parent, but occur via the situation itself.  For example, a parent might say– “if you are late waking in the morning, I cannot take you to school because I will be late for work and you will have to walk there yourself (and be late/get a detention at school)”. Or “if you yell at me again, I’m going need to go out and cool off, which means I unfortunately won’t be home to drive you to the party so you will need to get yourself there”.  This is all easier said than done too of course, and there are a variety of ways different parents manage this – but this article feels quite long enough as is! So sufficient to say, we are on safer research grounds with punishments with younger children and teens might need some different thinking.

Hopefully, this article has been helpful in thinking about if and how you might use consequences with your child if you feel this is important for your family. At the risk of repeating ourselves, it is important to reiterate that factors one through four above - warmth, connection, autonomy granting, discussion, understanding behaviour purpose and checking behaviour controllability - these are the “basics” of supporting children to act in helpful ways and the addition of consequences or punishments should usually be considered the second type of toolbox, not the first.  But on the other hand, the use of negative consequences might just be a final and important tool in helping children stay safe and well over the long term.

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