All the books on parenting they tell you what forms of discipline you can use (time out, corporal punishment, loss of privileges and so on) but they don’t tell you how to actually deliver the discipline. How do you inform the child of the discipline and then how to actually execute the punishment.
That is of course a Critical Parent to Child transaction. A very difficult transaction to do well. And such a crucial one for parents to master. Why is it difficult to do? The transaction below shows why. Children, indeed anyone, does not like receiving a Critical Parent transaction from another. It hurts and feels bad.
The Free Child of us all will naturally dislike it, will resent it and feel anger at some level. Even if one knows the punishment is justified, these feeling reactions will still occur. As a result people generally will in some way want to retaliate, as this allows the person to maintain some level of self respect. It is an eye for an eye thinking which we all have in our child like A1 ego state. Of course there may be some who don’t fight back and when that happens their self esteem and self respect plunges further downwards.
