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Note: I'm not saying punishments are a bad idea. But severity as the variable to tweak, that's demonstrably a dreadful plan.
Violent crimes of all types have trended downwards steeply in the time since those types of punishments stopped being accepted. We are well rid of them.
Personally, when I have kids I want them to respect me, not fear me.
I'm not in favor of physical punishment, but I don't think "as small as" is a good way to think about it. You're teaching them a general pattern (varies by parent, but perhaps "when I require you to do something you have to do it").
If they learn that if they refuse strongly you will just drop it, you'll get a lot of that.
This is how it works for adults too: if you are involved with the legal system on a minor matter, and then start disregarding the courts requirements ("contempt of court") they will escalate this quite far, up to jail time.
This is also worth thinking through before you make a demand of your kid: is this really something that you are willing to enforce? Is it that important? Can you start with something weaker than a demand and talk about it first? ("Your room is really messy and I'm having trouble getting to the dresser to put your clothes away.")
I don't think that forever escalating punishment is an effective strategy. If your child won't listen to you after punishment one step below physical violence, going further probably isn't going to help. Continually escalating the situation to enforce something feels like a very one dimensional approach.
It seems like you agree with me, given that in your article your said "even better, though, is avoiding commands and threats entirely".
Sidenote: I really hate "when I require you to do something you have to do it" as a reason. Always hated it as a kid, still hate it as an adult. I hope I only use it very sparingly when I have children.
> My point was that physical violence is a severe punishment and not cleaning up after yourself does not seem like it warrants such a severe punishment.
I understood that to be your point when I wrote my response, fwiw.
> If your child won't listen to you after punishment one step below physical violence, going further probably isn't going to help.
Maybe your objection to physical punishment isn't "it is too harsh a punishment for refusing to clean up" but instead "I don't think it will work"?
> I really hate "when I require you to do something you have to do it" as a reason. Always hated it as a kid, still hate it as an adult. I hope I only use it very sparingly when I have children.
Agreed! It is a a very large exercise of authority to require someone to do something regardless of whether they agree. So I rarely require the kids to clean up, even though at this point my oldest is nine. Instead, it's usually something like not being willing to help them start something new until they have cleaned up what they were already working on.
Definitely both. I believe that it's ineffective, but even if it was effective I wouldn't be inclined to use it.
I feel like punishment in general is thought of as a very one dimensional thing, but in reality people have much more complex motivations.
You kind of get at that with "it's usually something like not being willing to help them start something new until they have cleaned up what they were already working on". It's not really punishment, but it's still a motivator for them to do the task.
I feel like you can teach kids the general pattern like you mentioned without "punishing" them per se.
> Also, "because I say so" is the truth and the reason
I have understood that since I was a child. My point is that it's an extremely poor reason. You are relying entirely upon your authority as a parent/boss/whatever and not providing any real rationale.
Relevant (Specifically "formal authority is a blunt, fragile instrument"):
"As an engineer, if you really feel strongly about something, you just go off and do it yourself. As a manager, you have to lead through influence and persuasion and inspiring other people to do things. It can be quite frustrating. “But can’t I just tell people what to do?” you might be thinking. And the answer is no. Any time you have to tell someone what to do using your formal authority, you have failed in some way and your actual influence and power will decrease. Formal authority is a blunt, fragile instrument."
The second part is teaching the child to externalize value systems so that they never develop healthy ones for themselves.
I hope you are just speculating and don't really have kids.
The thing about children is: they are already people when they exit the womb (i.e. agents, at least in the ways we talk about LLMs today if not more than that), then they become adults with more or less consistent modes of being and acting, and then they get to exert their own influences on the world (read: other people). The duty of a parent is not to make their own lives easier or to assuage themselves that they "did everything right", but to create net-good lasting change through their parental legacy, whatever the cost to themselves. The choice to have a child has already been made -- the rest is owning up to that choice.
Of course, what's "good" is a personal matter, but suffice it to say that we can all agree that the good that is created by parenting exists far past immediate vectors of control and into the psyche of the child. So to treat children as anything less than agents in and of themselves is to instill in them a dangerously false ideology from the very beginning that morphs into antisocial pathologies as their belief systems and worldviews ossify in age. This lesson can be impressed on them in myriad subtle and apparently "correct" ways of parenting, in ways that the parent believes are backed by only the best intentions, but that ultimately harm the child and perpetuate their capacity for harming others.