It feels like all the parenting advice I see is for toddlers, but my kid is almost 5 now and I’m struggling with discipline. That means I spend a lot of time resorting to threats, and I think she’s beginning to get wise to it. What does the science say are the best ways to discipline a 5-year-old? Are “naughty steps” still a thing?
—Emma
The good news is that approaches to discipline do not differ much for toddlers versus 5-year-olds (when you’re talking about a teenager, it’s a somewhat different story). The toddler years are the start of testing, but not the end of it.
The category of methods that have the most evidence behind them are ones with a defined set of warnings and consequences. Examples include 1-2-3 Magic and Triple P. Exact implementation of these varies, but, broadly, it involves responding to negative behaviors with some type of warning system, at the end of which is a consequence (could be a time-out, a loss of privilege, or similar). The evidence, from randomized data, supports the efficacy of these interventions.
These methods were extremely popular in the 1990s and 2000s, though have become less so as people worry about time-outs. I’ve talked extensively about this before, but there really is no reason to think time-outs are damaging to children. At least reading about and considering one of these approaches seems worth a try.
One thing these books emphasize is that threats are not useful. The idea is to define a set of consequences and then consistently follow through on them. Threats don’t work both because they are erratic — kids do not know what to expect — and because you often will not follow through. In which case they have learned only that the threat means nothing.
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