Punishment--What Alternatives Do We Have?

Today, my youngest and I were in the car listening to a CD of a book by the German author Otfried Preussler, one of my favorite childhood authors to read.  The book, Die kleine Hexe, is about a witch and her friend, the talking raven Abraxas.  The little witch secretly tries to attend the ball of the big witches, gets caught, and punished (her broom gets thrown into the witch pyre and she has to walk home, three days and nights.  It's a great story, unfortunately, never translated into English, to my knowledge.

As we both were listening, Gabriel for the first time and I for the umpteenth time, Gabriel asked me to stop the CD.  What, he asked, is "Bestrafung?" (Punishment).  I explained it in German, but he didn't understand.  So, I told him the English word and, here is the amazing thing, he didn't know the meaning of it either.  The stunning fact is of course not that he didn't know the words.  It is that he doesn't know "Strafe" (punishment).  In his six and a half years on this earth Gabriel had not encountered punishment.  And he still hasn't, really.  He now has an abstract understanding of what it might mean, but he has never experienced it.  Will he soon learn more practical meanings of punishment?  I really hope not.  But a part of me is wondering, if it's important to know about it.

Gabriel is such a friendly boy with an easy disposition. He does, of course, go overboard at times, gets too rambunctious, loud and sometimes annoying.  But when we show him our frustration and annoyance he easily gets very sad about it.  He gets so hurt by it, is in tears and really needs an affirmation of our love and "friendship" (I often tell him in those situations "Wir sind immer noch Freunde") that nobody would even think of punishment or consequences.  He is quite remorseful on his own.

What this means too, of course, is that Gabriel has, as far as I can see, never done anything mean or sneaky.  He has, so far, never tried to get away with something.  This doesn't mean he just agrees when we tell him "no" about something.  He has the capacity to go for quite a while, asking "why" and wondering if he can, perhaps, still do what he'd like to do, even though we said no. But once that conversation is finished he will go along with  it.  Yes, he gets angry, sometimes he will stomp to his room, slam the door shut or throw something in his room.  Other parents may opt to punish their children at such a point.  We don't.  He needs to be angry and, sometimes, when we ask him if he is done and would like to come out of his room, he quite decidedly tells us "no" he is not yet ready.

Our experience with Gabriel, but also with our other two sons, keeps bringing me back to this question: Is punishment necessary?  Do we need to punish our children?  Are there, maybe, better ways to help them find a path that is respectful of others yet also free and open to them?  How about listening to them, how about really understanding their perspective? How about validating their feelings without judging them?  How about looking at our children and their "misbehaviors" without constantly fearing they'll turn into criminals, terrorists or worse?

I admit that Gabriel's personality makes parenting him quite easy (so far).  His oldest brother has a very hot temper and we have punished him (taking away privileges).  But the effectiveness of these measures is extremely limited.  Noah has a strong personality.  Punishment does not deter to him.  Often his anger and need to express it are more important to him than the use of the computer, x-box, etc.  What we think of as a trump really, in the long run, is not a trump at all.  Conversations, on the other hand, do work with Noah.  They're hardly easy conversations.  But once any notion of an imbalance is removed, once he knows that he is not being talked down to and/or lectured to the dialogue can begin.  Perhaps, as parents, when we're in the middle of a crisis with our children, we can remember to first think about fostering a dialogue before we think of ways to punish them.  We will find, I think, that more often than not, punishment won't be necessary anymore once the dialogue has begun.