‘Verbal reasoning’ with unruly child can sometimes backfire
Most parents know that child behavior experts recommend against spanking, but new research suggests that so-called “positive” discipline methods don’t always work either.
For example, the common tactic of “verbal reasoning” with an unruly child “was associated with a mixed bag of outcomes, some positive and some negative,” said study author Andrew Grogan-Kaylor. He’s a professor of social work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
“It seems to have a lot to do, as you might suspect, with affect [emotion] and context. You can deliver verbal reasoning in a blaming and shaming and angry way, and that’s not going to be successful. But delivering in a loving and supportive way, that still seems to be successful,” he explained.
So, what’s a parent to do when kids misbehave?
Child psychologists have different theories.
Grogan-Kaylor suggests that the key is structure, open communication and developmentally appropriate removal of privileges. Another experienced child psychologist suggests it’s practicing the behaviors that you want to see in your kids.
Grogan-Kaylor’s team studied the issue by analyzing different forms of punishment for child behavior in a global sample that spanned 62 countries.
The findings confirmed that spanking was not associated with children getting along with others and also led to increased aggression and distraction.
As for verbal reasoning, the negative effects included increased aggression, likely in cases where parents used harsh tones and language, according to the study authors. A positive effect of verbal reasoning was that it promoted getting along with others.
The study also found that another discipline option, taking away privileges, led to higher levels of aggression and distraction.
It’s not discipline at all that makes the biggest difference, Grogan-Kaylor said, but providing structure, communicating with your child and removing privileges in a developmentally appropriate way.
“Telling children you love them, making it clear that you want to spend time with them, providing them structure, making it clear that you value their point of view and that you want to listen to them and you want to work with them, rather than simply telling them how to behave,” he added.
Spotting your children being good and then praising them for it is very powerful, he noted.
Alan Kazdin’s experience in child psychology has led him to an approach that doesn’t focus on discipline.
“If you use corporal punishment, that’s going to have horrible side effects. If you use time out, fewer side effects. If you take away privileges, even less. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t teach the behaviors you want,” said Kazdin, an emeritus professor of child psychology at Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut.
Instead, he said, focus on practicing the behaviors you want before the behavior happens; for example, a tantrum.
Kazdin suggests families have kids practice a “good tantrum,” which might be one in which the child throws the fit but without hitting a family member. Then, praise the child effusively in this practice. And encourage practicing again, but without nagging. Also, notice when the kid has that “good tantrum” in real life.
Kazdin said it’s like playing an instrument: The more you practice, the better you get at it.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t reason with your child, but don’t view it necessarily as a way to change behaviors, he added.
“One of the weakest ways of changing human behavior is reasoning. To make sure the message is clear, it’s really important for parents to explain things and reason with their child,” Kazdin said.
Reasoning with a child “teaches thinking. It teaches vocabulary. It teaches self-control. It teaches restraint. It teaches abstract reasoning,” he said, but “it doesn’t change behavior.”
How do you measure the risks of pandemic travel, and when will the time be right to go again?
We asked five infectious disease experts. The first thing we must do, they agreed, is stay close to home for at least several more months, get vaccinated and watch virus transmission and ICU numbers closely. Putting down the pandemic, they said, will depend on how faithfully we use masks, keep our distance and wash our hands — habits that will remain vital as authorities strive to vaccinate 300 million or more Americans by summer.
“I will never get on an airplane again without a mask,” said Dr. Kimberly Shriner, an infectious disease specialist at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, California.
“Now is not the time to be traveling. For leisure or business,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious diseases at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston.
If you fly now, said
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli in Charleston, South Carolina, “you can almost guarantee that there are going to be people on the airplane with you who have COVID.”
These experts all are wary of new variants of the virus. None is flying now. But their perspectives vary.
Ostrosky, born in Mexico City, has a lot of family there. So when his grandmother died recently, he thought about making the trip south. Mexico is one of the few countries Americans can visit without a mandated quarantine.
But after much talk, he stayed put in the U.S. because of the pandemic. Before he resumes travel, he said, he’ll ask several questions.
What’s the positivity rate? “I would avoid traveling to any place that has a positivity rate over 5%,” he said. Above that, “you dramatically increase your chances of exposure.”
How full and how capable are the hospitals? Scores of U.S. hospitals are at surge capacity, with shortages of ICU beds. Because most county governments report COVID-19 information daily, Ostrosky said, “it’s actually pretty easy” to find data. As for capability, any hospital with a Level 1 trauma center (the most comprehensive trauma care) would satisfy him, Ostrosky said. The American College of Surgeons maintains a database.
Does this destination require testing to enter or leave? Many travelers might hope for that, but “I just don’t want to get stuck somewhere,” Ostrosky said. “People can test positive for a long period of time without being infectious.”
This is now a factor in any flight to the U.S., including returning roundtrip flights. As of Jan. 26, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires all air travelers to show a recent negative
COVID-19 test result before they can board any flight heading to the U.S.
Shriner, who also is a tropical disease specialist, has been vacationing in Europe for years and has spent more than 20 years making regular visits to a medical project in Tanzania.
But at Huntington Hospital, ever since the holidays, “we’re just absolutely getting hammered with cases of people who traveled,” she said.
Outside the hospital, Shriner has done some driving around California but hasn’t flown since March. Like her colleagues, she believes that driving (especially if you bring food and avoid public toilets) is safer than flying and much safer than cruise ships (most of which are idle now).
Like Ostrosky, she wants to see a positivity rate of 5% or less at her departure
point and at her destination. For data, she recommends the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
Shriner likes the idea of airlines and destinations requiring negative test results or vaccination. Whether or not those are required, Shriner said, people should get vaccinated, wait at least four weeks (to allow resistance to strengthen) and consider their age and immunity history before making travel plans.
In darker moments, she said, she worries that “this could just go on for another year or two if people don’t widely accept the vaccine.” She also shared a recent nightmare: She was on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland (which remains closed) surrounded by unmasked strangers.
On the brighter side, she’s hopeful that travel might be safe as soon as late summer or early fall. “But it is all dependent on human behavior,” Shriner said, “and we know how unreliable that is.”
Kuppalli moved in August from the San Francisco Bay Area to Charleston, where she is an assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina. She grew up in the Bay Area and had planned to visit her parents there this month.
Then the numbers surged. “I decided not to travel,” she said in mid-January. “I haven’t left my house in the last four days.”
To assess risk, “you can’t look at one particular piece of information,” she said. “You have to look at the entire thing. I totally get that this is hard for everybody. But this is not the time to travel. We all need to be thinking not just about ourselves, but everybody.”
Before Dr. Nancy Binkin became a professor at the Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California, San Diego, she lived for 12 years in Italy, doing epidemiology training for the Italian National Institute of Health.
So when that country’s fatalities soared in the early weeks of the pandemic, followed by escalating U.S. numbers, “it put fear into me,” Binkin said. “I have not been out of San Diego County since March.”
One pandemic number she watches closely is the adjusted case rate.
That count measures the seven-day average of daily new cases per 100,000 people ( jails and prisons excluded). Any number above seven per 100,000 puts a county in the state’s most dangerous category, the purple tier.
When it comes to flying, she worries about jet cabins and tiny bathrooms, but perhaps even more, she worries about the lines of people and gathering points at airports, she said.
“Would I feel comfortable going down to
Mexico? No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”
Dr. W. David Hardy, former director of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s infectious diseases division and adjunct clinical professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, has mixed feelings.
He’s angry about “rampant disregard for science” and inconsistent messaging under the Trump administration. But Hardy sees great hope in the vaccines.
When he was treating HIV patients during the grimmest years of the 1980s, Hardy recalled, there was no such cause for encouragement.
“To have a vaccine that prevents 90-95% of people from getting sick is amazing,” Hardy said. He suggests that the vaccines are “going to be the final answer,” especially if the vaccines thwart transmission of the virus.