Parenting strategies are shifting as neuroscience brings the developing brain into clearer focus

A friend offhandedly told me recently, “It’s so easy to get my daughter to behave after her birthday – there are so many new toys to take away when she’s bad!”

While there is certainly an appeal to such a powerful parenting hack, the truth is that there’s a pretty big downside to parenting with punishments.

For about the past two decades, scientists have been discovering more and more about the growing brain. This exploration of neurobiology has led to new types of trauma treatments, a deeper understanding of the nervous system and an appreciation of how environmental and genetic factors interact to shape a child’s behavior.

As the science has become increasingly actionable, more evidence-based strategies are spilling into parenting and educational programs. Research offers some useful guideposts for how parents and caregivers can change our adult ways to foster healthy child development.

It turns out that many old-school parenting and educational approaches based on outdated behavioral models are not effective, nor are they best-practice, particularly for the most vulnerable children.

Why old-school methods fall short

I don’t come to this view lightly. I’m a behavioral scientist and a professor of public health with degrees in mathematics and biostatistics. When my children were little, I read all the parenting books and applied a somewhat academic strategy to my job of parenting. I firmly endorsed conventional recommendations from authors and pediatricians: I dutifully sent my children to their rooms to think about their choices and dug in my heels to enforce consequences.

It wasn’t until my children reached middle school and high school ages that I began to see what my approach to discipline was costing us.

Parents and educators have long espoused principles gleaned from experiments by the 20th-century researcher B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist who studied how rewards and punishments could change the behavior of rats, resulting in the classic carrot and stick, reward and discipline strategies. Simply put, rats that behaved the way the researchers wanted – by pressing a lever – were given a treat, and rats that did not were given a light shock.

These midcentury, rat-based experiments shaped a parenting approach that caught on in American culture and quickly became dogma. Generations of parents learned to use rewards such as sticker charts, trinkets or toys, or an extra bedtime story to reinforce the behaviors they hoped to see more of, and to use negative reinforcement such as timeouts and loss of privileges to reduce unwanted behaviors.

But beginning in the early 2000s, many high-profile authors began to theorize that these strategies were not only ineffective but also potentially harmful.

The neuroscience of child behavior

We all have a built-in nervous system response that prepares us for “fight or flight” when we feel that our safety is threatened. When we sense danger for whatever reason, our heart beats faster, our palms sweat and our focus narrows. In these situations, our prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for rational decision-making and reasoning – is decommissioned while our body prepares to fend off the threat. It’s not until our threat response subsides that we can begin to think more clearly with our prefrontal cortex. This is particularly true for kids.

Unlike adults who have usually acquired some ability to regulate their nervous system states, a child has both an immature nervous system and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. A child may hit his friend with a toy truck because he’s unable to manage the scary feelings of being left out of the kickball game. He likely knows better, but in the face of this threat his survival brain responds with a “fight” response, and reasoning shuts down as his prefrontal cortex takes awhile to get “back online.” Because he is not yet able to verbalize his needs, caregivers need to interpret those needs by observing the behavior.

After coregulating with a calm adult – essentially syncing up with their nervous system – a young child is able to return to a calm state and then process any learning. Efforts to change a child’s behavior in a moment of stress, including by punishments and timeouts, miss an opportunity for developing emotional regulation skills and often prolong the distress.

The behaviorist models just don’t work very well for children. The growing understanding of children’s developing brains makes clear that punishing a child for a temper tantrum or for “misbehaving” by grabbing a toy from a classmate makes no more sense than lecturing a man in cardiac arrest about eating less sugar.

Curiosity is the key to connection

Scientists and parenting experts have come a long way toward understanding how brain science can inform child-raising.

While researchers may not all agree on the most effective parenting style, there is general agreement that showing curiosity about kids’ feelings, behaviors, reactions and choices can help to guide parents’ approach during stressful times. Understanding more about why a child didn’t complete their math sheet, or why a toddler threw sand at their cousin, can support real learning.

Attuning with our children by understanding their nervous system responses helps kids feel a sense of safety, which then allows them to absorb feedback. Children who feel this connection and build these skills are much less likely to throw trucks.

For instance, when your child fusses for candy in the checkout line at the grocery store, instead of taking away the afternoon trip to the park, try this instead:

• Stay grounded. A deep breath and a pause signals to your own nervous system to be calmer, which allows you to coregulate with a fussing child.

• Be available. Staying close gives your child the support they need to weather the difficult emotion. Validating a child’s experience can go a long way toward helping them reset to a more regulated state.

• Hold a boundary. By not giving in to the candy purchase, you help your child practice how to handle the emotion of anger and disappointment – called “distress tolerance” – with your support.

• Reflect on the circumstances. After everyone is calmer, you can talk about that experience and also notice the circumstances. Was your child hungry or tired, or perhaps upset about something from their day?

Parenting with the understanding of a child’s developing brain is much more effective in shaping children’s behavior and paves the way for emotional growth for everyone, as well as stronger parent-child relationships, which are enormously protective.

And that definitely feels better than taking away their birthday presents.