Discipline That's Actually Backed by Research

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A lot of parenting advice online and on social media tells parents what not to do— such as don’t rush your child, don’t use time-out, and don’t tell your child that you are proud of them and I’ve written a lot in previous newsletters about how most of these prohibitions are not evidence-based. However, I find that there is a lot less guidance on what parents actually can do. Although most parents understand that the big picture of parenting advice is something along the lines of showing love and affection while also setting reasonable and firm limits, it is often unclear how to put these general principles into practice. For example, you might understand that you should have empathy for a child who wants more autonomy, but how do you get your child to listen when you really need them to do something? Similarly, you might understand that you shouldn’t guilt and shame your child, but how do you respond when they blatantly break the rules? Moreover, how exactly do you set limits and follow through on them? Whether you call it discipline, setting limits or boundaries, or teaching, parents need some concrete tools for getting through the day and this type of specific guidance isn’t often provided through mainstream parenting advice.

Despite the lack of guidance readily available to parents, the research actually provides a lot of concrete parenting strategies that are backed by research. I recently came across a review of reviews for discipline strategies (translation: a review paper is a summary of all relevant research on a topic and review of reviews is a summary of all of those review papers so it is a very comprehensive overview of a topic). This paper included 3,921 research studies from 223 reviews published between 1999 and 2018. The researchers identified over 60 discipline strategies with moderate to large amounts of evidence showing positive impacts on children and/or parenting skills (translation: at least one review or meta-analysis found overall positive impacts of the strategy and at least 10 studies showed positive effects). Of course, reviewing all of these strategies would push the limits of how long this newsletter can be (and probably the limits of your attention span as well) so I chose six strategies that I think might be helpful and easy to implement in your everyday lives.

Research-Backed Discipline Strategies

Without further ado,