This Mum NEVER Punishes Her Kids and Here’s Why...

Real Fix

Credit: SWNS / Hannah Canavan  Meet the single mum who has never punished or rewarded her kids and says she never will.  Hannah Canavan, 33, decided to have a gentle approach to parenting after working in a pupil referral unit for troubled children.  She said that giving natural consequences rather than punishment to those kids helped their behaviour.   Hannah - who home educates her daughters Esmae, 11, Eira, nine, and Elfie, seven - chose to adopt the same technique when raising her brood.   Rather than shouting and taking away their iPad or a treat for doing something wrong she will calmly explain why something isn’t right.

Transcript

00:00 should they listen to me? It's a relationship not a dictatorship so that

00:03 respect needs to go both ways. The reason I don't use punishment with my children

00:07 is because I don't think it's effective. There have been studies done on

00:10 punishment and it shows that if you use punishment it only really work in a very

00:15 narrow context if you do things in a very specific way. When we talk about

00:20 discipline if you look at the root of the word discipline coming from

00:23 disciple it actually means to follow, it doesn't mean to do things to people to

00:27 manipulate their behaviour. So I guess there are four principles I'm bearing in

00:31 mind when I'm talking to my kids or when we have a situation where they need to

00:34 learn something. The first is modelling. If I'm not modelling a behaviour I can't

00:38 expect my kids to do it. The second thing is listening to them and I think this is

00:42 very important because if I'm not going to listen to them why should they listen

00:45 to me? It's a relationship not a dictatorship so that respect needs to go

00:48 both ways. The third thing I bear in mind is consequences. There are consequences

00:53 to actions. I'm going to have less time to play with them because I'm not going to be trying to fix

00:55 whatever mess has been created. The fourth thing is individual differences.

00:59 So my children are very different I'm sure yours are too. One of mine is autistic

01:03 and so it's about adapting the approach slightly for each child. Very very busy

01:07 day, I'm very tired and the kids are still basically demanding things of me. So here's what I do. I keep my replies as short as possible in a quite calm tone and I lower my voice deliberately.

01:18 And if I find something I don't like I just state it in fact as opposed to a question or telling them to do something.

01:25 So I just walked into my bedroom and Alfie's eating a chocolate ice lolly on my bed.

01:29 If they think I was white they know I'm not happy with that. So I took a deep breath and I just said I don't want ice lollies in my bed.

01:37 And she went okay and she got up and off to have some. So this is in the kitchen. I don't want my kids to think I'm going to pick up after them all the time.

01:43 At the same time I don't need to get mad about it they're only kids.

01:45 Whoever had their yogurt drink and had a green bar with a lolly please can they come clear it up?

01:52 Not you. Hello. Is it yours? Please you can put it in the bin. Thanks Zain.

01:59 If punishment worked our prison system would not be full of second, third, fourth time offenders.

02:04 So when I say I use natural consequences for my kids that's a bit of an oxymoron. Like I don't really do anything I just let their actions be for themselves.

02:12 (gentle music)

02:14 [Music]

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