I read about "hot saucing" on the internet

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
I assume by "natural consequences" you mean positive reinforcement-?

No, natural consequences include both positive and negative consequences.

If you act like a jerk, people avoid you. If the child acts in socially 'jerk' like behavior, you remove them from the social contact for the appropriate amount of time, you don't give them the negative attention of spanking. If a parent is busy and doesn't have enough time for a child, and the result is the child acts out to get attention, you remove them from social contact in the short term, but your responsibility is to provide the attention they need when the bad behavior ceases provided you can make the time.

If a child doesn't eat healthy food, you withhold desserts, you don't spank them and threaten them with fear and pain. The list goes on.

The problem is, out of a tradition of spanking from one generation to the next, many parents do not realize one doesn't need spanking. A wide variety of things motivate children besides fear and pain.

...The rest of your post was mostly absolutes and oversimplifications; there is no "the" way to raise or discipline kids. If positive reinforcement works, great. The key is that it works, however. What if it doesn't? What if a kid is belligerant/out of control (PS that doesn't automatically mean he/she has "ADD" etc ) ie all the cuddly touchy-feely "intellectual" stuff doesn't work? Some kids are more headstrong and need a firmer hand. Sadly, many alleged parents today are so emotionally fragile and afraid or uneasy about the slightest confrontation that they just avoid it, which of course only makes it worse. Or they assume their kids are as fragile and will fall apart at the slightest confrontation, so just keep using methods that clearly aren't working, or worse, don't do anything and just let the kid run out of control. IMO not enough discipline is every bit as much child abuse as too much, but only the overly harsh parents are demonized, while the morons spoiling their kids rotten and not giving them the discipline they are desperately crying out for are pitied. Most kids are a lot tougher than I think most parents realize. They aren't going to fall to pieces or be "emotionally scarred" unless they are raised that way. But the tendency now largely is to spoil and over-protect. It's all quite nauseating, if not practically insane.

I guess my main point is that again no one way or method is right; it varies from kid to kid and situation to situation. You have to take all that into account and act accordingly, using the minimal amount of discpline necessary that works. Again key point being that it works.

You started with a false assumption about what positive discipline is about. You continue that false assumption in these examples.

Because [X] has failed to develop good behaviors in a child does not mean [Y] is the only other option.


I don't think anyone would say I was an over-permissive parent. Sometimes I felt a tad guilty for being a bit too controlling. But I never needed to hit my son. When he misbehaved as a young child, I was bigger, stronger and in charge. No need to hit him. And by the time he was bigger than me, he had learned how to behave and was motivated to do so without external coaxing, except maybe a bribe here and there when a monetary reward seemed appropriate. I started giving him money when he got his flu shot without fussing, for example, so I kept that up through his teens. And there is nothing wrong with rewarding good grades, another example.