Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, Research-based Parenting Ideas To Help Kids Thrive

Ditch Punishments and Rewards for Respectful Parenting Do you hate punishing (with Time Outs, withdrawing privileges, or even yelling at) your child?   Do you feel guilty after you punish them, wishing there was a way to just get them to listen?   And do bribes ("If you brush your teeth now, you can have 5 minutes of screen time...") feel just as awful?   But what other choice do you have? Your kids don't listen now, so how could not rewarding and punishing them possibly help?   That's what parent Dr. Houri Parsi thought when I first met her. (Houri's doctorate is in clinical psychology, focused on behaviorist-based reward and punishment systems.) She wasn't ready to believe that abandoning the tools she'd been trained in would create a better outcome, when she measured her success as a parent by whether she got immediate compliance from her children.   She ended up not completely abandoning these tools - because they still fit within her vision and values for her family (he