Discipline without Timeouts

It seems like timeouts are in vogue as a method to discipline kids. Since spanking has fallen out of favor, the society seems to have come up with a new method of punishing kids. It is fairly common for popular parenting books such as 1-2-3 Magic or Have a New Kid by Friday, to recommend a system of using rewards and punishments to entice good behavior. In fact they seem to break down parenting into an algorithm – if you don’t listen to me three times – you can go into the other room and cry. It seems more like they are intent on building obedient pets or servants fearful of their masters (parents) rather than loving children.

In my opinion, timeouts and bribery are a completely inappropriate method for disciplining kids. When I was young, as far as I can remember, I was never subject to timeouts or other forms of punishment, or even bribery. And I have done fine – at least no drugs, no homicide, no running away from home – and have been reasonable successful in life. If I could have been raised without having been subject to timeouts or spanking, why can’t my daughter?

The reason I believe that punishment and rewards don’t work as discipline is that they are externally imposed. It implies the existence of an authority figure who the kids are supposed to obey to. The problem is what happens in the absence of such a figure, when the kids are alone – or at school – or with friends? If there is no one to reprimand them or reward them will they behave the way you expect them to or will they just do what they’ve always felt like? My belief is that unless they have an intrinsic value system which will help them choose between good and bad they will no doubt misbehave. That is where, externally imposed discipline fails – in building an internal value system.

The other problem with an authoritarian approach is that it creates a distance between the child and a parent and instead of the parent child relationship then based on mutual respect and love it becomes a relationship based on fear and conflict. At some point when the kids will grow they are bound to rebel. And at that time timeouts or rewards will not work.

So if there are no timeouts how do you teach a kid good behavior? I am still looking for a good solution. In order to explore this subject further I decided to read through the following three books on the subject:

• Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child – John Gottman
• Kids Are Worth It! : Giving Your Child The Gift Of Inner Discipline – Barbara Coloroso.
• Raising Your Spirited Child Rev Ed – Mary Kurcinka

Another book that I didn’t buy but is recommended is – How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. As I finish reading these books, I’ll add more in depth reviews for each book and what is the plan they outline and if their advice is something reasonable that can be followed.

One thing that I was really glad with is that our daughter’s new school does not use timeouts. In fact, all of the schools we talked with claimed that they do not use timeouts to discipline the kid. That at least tells me that there are people who will inculcate good behavior in kids without resorting to punishments.

I am a Mac but OS X was not my idea

I just got my third Mac in the last two years. Now, I am not an Apple fanboy – I don’t even own an iPhone or an iPad – but I absolutely love my Mac. All of my Macs have been through work, but had my latest job not given me a Mac, I would have been forced to buy one – and yes they are quite expensive.

My affair with Macs started when I joined Blist and they gave me an option of a Mac/Windows/Linux machine. I ended up choosing a Mac just because it wasn’t something I had tried before. It did take a while to transition – the philosophy is quite different from Windows – and there are still some things that I don’t like, such as missing Home/End keys, Cmd-Tab not showing all open windows etc. But now, I am addicted!  I had withdrawal symptoms for the two weeks I had to spend without one after my last job. I wished that they had let me keep my laptop instead of the 30in monitor that I got instead.

Nowadays, I see a lot more Macs on the bus or in flights, and there is always someone or the other claiming they bought a Mac on Facebook. So the measly 5% market share that Macs have does not do justice to the popularity of Macs.  Macs have always been popular with artists, writers, journalists and the kind, but recently they have started to gain popularity amongst geeks.  This is the third company that I am working at where all developers have a Mac. And for good reason, Macs give you the best of both the Windows and Linux world. Instead of carrying around a Windows laptop for checking mail and Linux desktop for writing code, you can have a Mac on which you can do both – check mail and write code – now that’s what I call genius!

I believe OS X has been primary driver behind getting these tech companies to use Macs. OS X did what the Linux community had been trying for years and hadn’t really succeeded at – building a GUI that your grandma can use on a Unix based platform.  Now, I can have all my favorite tools – vi, zsh, grep, awk, perl etc and still get a great UI. Heck, this blogpost is written in vi (well Vim actually, but whatever). Moreover everything is pre-installed – anyone who has tried to use terminal utilities in Windows through Cygwin or otherwise knows what a nightmare they can be.

The one big drawback I see for Macs, and the reason I think they are not mainstream, is the lack of business productivity tools. There is no Outlook on the Mac! Microsoft Entourage is just a poor man’s substitute. In fact Apple Mail has much better integration with Exchange than Microsoft’s own client. And Office for the Mac is nowhere close to that on Windows. Of course, there are multiple other alternatives, such as iWork or OpenOffice, but none of those are as mature as the products for the Windows platform.

But, hey I am not a banker or a sales & marketing guy – so a Mac works great for me. I only wish they were a bit cheaper.