Y’all know I’m a La Leche League dad if you’ve been reading for a while.  Caroline doesn’t receive physical punishment from us, and she won’t (except in extreme cases, and my wife doesn’t agree on that stipulation.)  Gerald over at The Cafeteria is Closed has now posted asking for input regarding how we discipline our kids.  Remember that Gerald’s recently married and has no kids yet…2 kid-related posts in a day sure makes me wonder, but alas, he denies it.

To clarify a little more on the LLL principle for discipline:  LLL stresses that a key part of parenting is “loving guidance.”  Strict physical disciplinarians are of course paying perhaps too much attention to the word guidance.  On the other side of the spectrum you have the parents who want to be their kids’ best friends, and let them get away with anything and everything, sitting and smiling at their precocious youngster while he drives everyone else in the room up the wall – they are paying too much attention to the word loving, but no guidance is going on.  Loving guidance means shaping the child’s behavior while not reacting violently in the heat of the moment – responding to the negative behavior rather than the anger you’re feeling as a result of the negative behavior.   That said, I do believe that when a child is out of control and being belligerent, endangering himself or someone else, etc., and there’s not any other way to get the situation under control, that is when physical discipline could be appropriate.

The thing is, I have seen several kids whose parents are very strict, always chastising, physically removing their children from a situation rather than guiding them verbally – and those kids are just as out of control as the ones whose parents sit around and let them do whatever.