Have you ever learned a new way of thinking or behaving – of relating to yourself or other people - that just flips a switch in your mind and really changes things? You tend to forget that there are still people out there who haven’t made that change yet - and for some reason it’s surprising...even though you were them just a short time ago.

This is Speaking of Teens, the podcast that helps parents struggling to find peace and connection with their teens. My name is Ann Coleman; I’m an attorney turned parent educator and a mom who has been there - and I’m on a mission to help you build a stronger relationship and decrease the conflict with your kid so you can help them grow into the young adult they’re meant to be.

Thank you for being here for our weekly bonus episode, if you’re tuning in for the first time today, we do two episodes a week: on Tuesdays I take a deep dive into a single topic and Friday’s episode is a quick take on something I’ve been thinking about or something I’ve read lately – all of it of interest to you, as the parent of a teen or tween.

Today I’m talking about punishment, “tough love”, intimidation tactics, “putting the fear of God” into kids and teens.

This has been top of mind for me because I belong to several Facebook groups for moms of teens and tweens and I’ve been more active in them the past few weeks.

And what surprises me so much is the lingering pervasiveness of this authoritarian mindset despite years of educational effort from researchers, pediatricians, therapists, and other experts…medical, psychological, and psychiatric associations and so many other organizations...to try and explain how damaging to kids this parenting style is.

If you’ve never heard the term authoritarian parenting, it’s just a way of parenting where the parent generally insists on blind obedience to strict rules, it may involve physical punishment like spanking or hitting, usually harsh non-physical punishment (like taking property or privileges for long periods of time or for the slightest infraction), and psychological control like shaming, threatening, yelling, intimidating.

On top of that parents who use this style of parenting are usually less warm and less emotionally responsive to their kids, when they’re not disciplining them.

Usually the attitude is “I don’t need to be their friend, my job is to keep them out of trouble and safe.”

Now, I’m really not trying to throw shade on these parents – I was one of those parents for a while. When my son was acting out, I turned to a lot of yelling and punishing to try and “bring him under control.”

Which is another point here – many parents use these same authoritarian tactics out of fear; the kid acts out; the parent is afraid the behavior will continue unless they take drastic measures. That was me. So, you can either raise kids from day one with this style or it might just take over because of your own anxiety at some point – quite possibly during adolescence.

So, if you’re listening and you’ve been using this style of parenting or you feel like you don’t have a choice because of you’re child’s behavior, I hope I can convince you otherwise. And you can listen to so many of my other episodes to actually understand the alternative.

The hard truth about this “my way or the highway” kind of parenting is that it’s not good for our kids and it doesn’t work in the long term. And that’s not just my opinion, there’s ample scientific evidence to back this up.

Scientists have studied parenting styles - compared and contrasted them and the outcomes of kids and teens parented this way, for decades. Generally, researchers look at 3 different styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. I’ve defined authoritarian.

Permissive is the exact opposite – parents are warm and supportive but have few rules or don’t enforce rules and certainly don’t punish.

Then there’s the authoritative parenting style (which sounds way too close to authoritarian) but this is the middle ground – when parents are kind, warm, supportive but also firm with boundaries, limits.

Authoritative parents don’t try to force kids to comply by using psychological controls like shaming, guilt, fear tactics or withholding love, attention, or affection; they discuss rules, explain rationale behind boundaries, it’s not a totalitarian regime as it is in an authoritarian household. This middle ground is where we want to be – it’s the best place to be according to outcomes with kids.

So, what do I mean by outcomes? Well, how do the kids actually turn out when they are parenting in these different styles? If the authoritarian style (punishment/demanding obedience) works, then when you use it on kids who are acting out (technically called “externalizing problems”) like being emotionally dysregulated, aggressive, defiant, disruptive, tantrums, that kind of thing – if the authoritarian style works, you would expect to see these types of behaviors decrease over time when you use it – when you punish, intimidate, put the fear of God into them, right?

Well, that’s not what happens in real life. Let me tell you about a study from 2017. Researchers analyzed over 1,400 (one thousand four hundred) other published studies and they found that using this type of punishing, controlling type parenting actually increased the kids’ “bad behavior” over time – they developed even worse externalizing behavior problems (Pinquart 2017).

But there are a couple of ways to interpret this study. It could be that the parents had been parenting in this authoritarian manner from the start and over time the kids’ behavior got worse and worse all due to this style of parenting.

But it could also be as it was in my case, where I didn’t start out authoritarian, but my child’s behavior when he reached adolescence, freaked me out and terrified me so bad that I didn’t know what else to do – and in my desperation and fear, I turned to punishment and control and the more conflict it provoked, the less warmth I gave my son. And this scenario happens every day. Desperation, fear for your child can lead you to do some pretty drastic things to try and save them from themselves! And the evidence is that this makes externalizing behavior in kids, worse.

Over the years researchers have found that harsh punishment and psychological control, as compared with the other styles of parenting, is linked with kids having lower social competence (ability to interact well with other people), lower levels of empathy, less resourceful, and less helpful, and less popular by teachers and classmates.

Multiple studies have shown that teens in the US, raised by authoritarian parents, feel less socially accepted by their peers, more likely to stop listening to their parents and more likely to engage in delinquent behavior and less likely to talk to their parents about their problems. And a study conducted throughout various Latin cultures have found adolescents have lower self-esteem when raised this way and that it may linger on into adulthood. Similarly, a survey of Spanish adults showed they were less satisfied with their lives and less happy if raised in authoritarian families. And a behavioral genetics study by US researchers found that this parenting style puts kids at higher risk for depression as adults.

And numerous studies have also linked this type of parenting style to bullying behavior in the kids (we know that people who are bullied end up being bullies – so kids bullied by their parents do this as well). Additionally, research from all over the world has shown that kids parented this way are more likely to have emotional and mental health issues including childhood anxiety, depression symptoms, and poor self-regulation, poor academic performance. And just while we’re in the neighborhood, research also shows that kids who are spanked are more likely to develop anxiety and depression in childhood that kids who are not.

Now, I will add that there have also been studies that show clear cultural or societal differences in outcomes for kids – if authoritarian parenting is the norm in the society in which kids are raised, they are less likely to suffer emotional harm. That’ not the case in the US.

If I haven’t convinced you yet that punishment, scare tactics and bringing the hammer down on your teen will absolutely not give you the results you want and will in fact, do the exact opposite, have a listen to episodes 1 and 10 where I get more into my own personal story. And if that still doesn’t work – reach out to me and let me try one on one.

Well, speaking of listening to me some more, you’ll find a link at the bottom of the episode description where you’re listening for details on the Live (virtual) Training coming up August 15^th 2023 from 11 to 1 (with a Q&A following). Be sure and check it out.

Anyway, that’s it for Speaking of Teens today, you can find my sources right there in the description where you’re listening. If you got something out of today’s episode, please consider sharing it with a friend. And do come join us in the Facebook Group – scroll all the way to the bottom and just click the link.

Speaking of Teens is sponsored by neurogility.com, where I help parents build stronger relationships and decrease conflict with their teens.

Our producer and editor is Steve Coleman; researched, written, and hosted by me, Ann Coleman.