Family discipline incidents: An analysis of parental diaries

Abstract

This study focuses on day-to-day parental disciplinary techniques, what provokes their use with their preschool children, and their outcome. Two hundred and seven parental diary anecdotes of disciplinary incidents with under five-year-old children, were analysed to determine the sequence of events. Children’s disruptive/aversive behaviour was the antecedent for a parental intervention in one third of the incidents, while making a demand occurred in about a quarter of incidents. Parental verbal instruction was the most commonly used first disciplinary technique followed by verbal warning, time-out and praise. In many situations, parents used several different disciplinary techniques to accomplish a child’s compliance. Children showed the most committed compliance after positive and neutral disciplinary strategies. New Zealand parents were shown to use complex communication, positive consequences, and mild punishment as disciplinary techniques, rather than power assertive or negative methods, and these strategies were on the whole effective.