Punishment

If you feel deserving of punishment you won't feel deserving of love. The two are mutually exclusive feelings. If you repeatedly teach a child that he or she deserves to be punished, they are likely to feel unworthy of love later in life. This will have serious consequences for their romantic relationships.

Practical Problems with Punishment

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.- Plato

One of the serious practical problems with punishment is that the fear of it often makes people afraid to tell the truth. In other words, using punishment encourages dishonesty rather than honesty. Obviously, when someone is on trial and accused of something for which they could be punished, there is a big incentive to lie.

Here is a summary of several practical problems with punishment

- It encourages people to lie - both to protect themselves and to protect others

- It does not teach someone what to do instead

- It hurts a person's sense of self-worth

- It does not produce restitution

These are discussed in more detail below, starting with some examples.

Imagine a high school student who starts to visit her English teacher at his house. At first it is just to talk. He is a good listener, unlike her father who is often drunk or stoned. Her mother has died of drug complications. The teacher and Tara start to hug as friends. Then later they begin kissing. Tara feels comfortable with all of this because she feels safe, secure and cared about with the man. These are feelings she does not get at home so she has been in need of them for a long time. Then one night the teacher talks her into sex. She was not ready for this and she feels hurt and used. She is also afraid he will do this to other girls. But she does not report the incident because she is afraid he will lose his job.

Now what if Tara knew that instead of punishment, her teacher would get counseling? And what if she knew she could also get counseling without anyone being punished. What if both the Tara and the teacher were helped to speak honestly about their respective needs and feelings? Wouldn't Tara and others be much more likely to talk about it? Then others could help her and the teacher see what the possible natural consequences of their relationship could be. And they could be helped in finding ways to fill their own needs in a healthier way. Possibly, a good counselor could help the teenager get the love, security and understanding she needs and also help the teacher see that girls like Tara might agree to something but then feel bad about it after they do it, which is not good for their self-esteem. While I am sure that there are some teachers who really don't care how the girl might feel, I am equally sure there are others who would care if they knew the truth.

In another case of being afraid to tell the truth, I once had someone tell me that her father was physically abusive. Her mother was aware of it but her mother told her that if she reported it her father would go to jail, lose his job and they would lose their house.

Here is another scenario to imagine:

A girl gets raped by three other teens from wealthy families. She refuses to report it. She says she is afraid they will hurt her or kill her if she reports it. She also says she is also afraid she would not be believed. She is afraid they would hire lawyers and defend themselves and attack her character by calling her a liar, saying she is promiscuous etc.

In this case there would be less for defense and physical or character attacks if the teens who raped her were not so afraid of punishment. If you take fear of punishment out of the equation you will get much more honesty and cooperation, not to mention empathy from those responsible.

Next is a true story, to the best of my knowledge.

Several adolescents come to me and tell me that they and others are being sexually harassed by a teacher. They are afraid he will lose his job if they tell anyone. They tell me that he has a wife and children. They tell me that his wife doesn't make very much money and won't be able to support the family if he loses his job. They tell me that his children did nothing to deserve going without food. In this case I was able to persuade them to tell me who the teacher was and to agree to let me tell the appropriate people, but for weeks they had been keeping this inside themselves. Had I not happened to give a talk on abuse that day they may never have reported anything. The teacher might have moved from sexually harassing to actual sexual abuse. I tried to assure them that the teacher needs help, not punishment, but they know how the system currently works and how many people would pressure the school to have him removed if they knew the truth.

Here is another true story, I read from the newspapers in South Africa when I was traveling there.

A girl is raped by several members of a gang in South Africa. She reports it to the police. A trial date is set. Before the trial she is killed. It is suspected that the gang killed her to prevent her from testifying in court. This girl would be alive today if it were not for rapists' fear of punishment.

There are many examples like this. In homes everyday children are taught to lie in order to protect themselves from being hurt and punished. Children are not born liars. Liars are created by the fear of punishment. "Johnny, do you know where all the cookies went?" "No, Mommy." The emotionally intelligent child will lie more quickly in the face of possible punishment. The emotionally intelligent child will see the signs of his mother's disapproval, he will hear it in her tone of voice. He will quickly process all the information he knows about her, for example, whether she has punished him or others in the past. He will make a decision based on his own survival instinct. If it were not for the fear of punishment, this child would have no reason to lie.

In the above examples we see two categories of problems. One is lying to protect oneself. The other is lying to protect someone else.

Here is another practical problem with punishment. There are two boys in school who don't get along. Boy A provokes Boy B. Boy B expresses his feelings by using the "F" word. Boy A knows that the school punishes people for saying this particular word. Boy A reports the incident, so Boy B will be punished. Boy A has figured out how to use the system to his advantage in hurting someone. (See http://eqi.org/puni2.htm)

Another, more general problem with punishment is that it tends to diminish one's sense of self-worth. A person who is convinced they are worthy of punishment finds it difficult or impossible to feel worthy of love and caring. People who have been excessively punished while growing up have been groomed to be victims of abuse later in life. They lack the self-esteem to assert themselves and set healthy boundaries. They feel deserving of the abuse, just as they felt deserving of the punishment when they were young.

One more problem with punishment is that it does not teach any preferable behavior. For example, forcing a child to write "I will hit people" does not tell the child what to do instead of hitting.

A final problem with punishment is that it does not produce restitution. Restitution rebuilds a person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem, where as punishment diminishes it.

(See Norma Spurlock page for discussion on restitution.)

See more on understanding and punishment