While research studies strongly support that democratic families do provide an interpersonal climate conducive to healthy, creative, and fully functioning youngsters, how does it happen? What goes on that makes these families different? The research studies give us some clues, but we’ve learned much more from parents who have taken our P.E.T. course.
Probably the most common characteristic of what I’ve been calling democratic families is the absence of punishment, physical or otherwise, as a method of dealing with unacceptable behaviors. In the traditional family, power-based autocratic control, as we have seen, requires the frequent use of punishment to try to bring about compliance and obedience.
And, because punishment by definition often results in humiliation and deprivation of children, the ensuing frustration is bound to be damaging to their psychological and/or physical health.
Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of the large international Association of Humanistic psychologists, stated this principle strongly and clearly:
Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or hurt unnecessarily or dominate or reject another human being, they become forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them recognize that every man who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically democratic, affectionate, and warm is a psychotherapeutic force, even though a small one.
Parents who treat their children as Maslow describes, who make a practice of using the nonpower-based methods that are taught in P.E.T., and who respect the equal rights of all family members to get their needs met, will have children who won’t have to use self-harmful coping mechanisms.
This is not to say their lives will be a bed of roses or that they will not run into problems or experience disappointments. But as I distill my years of professional work with families in therapy or in parent training and read the growing body of research evidence on what makes kids healthy or unhealthy, effective or ineffective, winners or losers…
I’m convinced that those who are brought up with warm, accepting, and nonpunitive parental leadership will have sufficient resources (their own, plus the support of their parents) to deal constructively with the usual out-of-home problems, conflicts, and disappointments they encounter.
*This blog is created from excerpts from Discipline That Works, by Dr. Thomas Gordon