The Effects of Discipline Responses in Delaying Toddler Misbehavior Recurrences

ABSTRACT

To compare the effectiveness of maternal punishment (e.g., time out, spanking), reasoning, and the combination of the two, 40 volunteer mothers recorded their responses to incidents of toddler fighting and disobedience in a structured diary for 4 weeks. Punishment frequency correlated positively with misbehavior frequency, but non-punishment responses correlated even more strongly with misbehavior. The mean delay until a misbehavior recurrence was significantly longer after a punishment-reasoning combination (e.g., 20.0 waking hours until a fighting recurrence) than after punishment alone (9.3 hrs.), reasoning alone (8.8), or other responses (9.4), P <.001. The results are discussed in terms of cognitive developmental and behavioral perspectives of parental discipline. Corporal and non-corporal forms of punishment are also compared.