Immediate and Long-Term Effectiveness of Disciplinary Tactics by Type of Toddler Noncompliance

SYNOPSIS

Objective. To clarify when the disciplinary recommendations of positive parenting and behavioral parent training apply, this study investigated how the effectiveness of seven disciplinary tactics varies by type of toddler noncompliance, using methods to improve the validity of causal inferences. Design. Multilevel modeling and hierarchical longitudinal regression are used to test immediate and long-term effectiveness of disciplinary tactics in a convenience sample of 102 mother–toddler pairs, using coded information from detailed descriptions of a sample of five discipline episodes along with survey measures. Results. Offering alternatives is the most effective disciplinary tactic for reducing noncompliance severity immediately regardless of the type of noncompliance. Reasoning is the second best tactic for immediately reducing noncompliance severity when responding to parent-oriented noncompliance (negotiating and whining), whereas power assertive and punishment tactics are least effective, but the immediate effectiveness of those tactics reverses when responding to parent-opposing noncompliance (defiance and hitting). Long-term outcomes also differ for toddlers whose predominant noncompliance is parent-oriented or parent-opposing. For parent-oriented toddlers, frequently offering alternatives leads to reduced externalizing problems, whereas punishments increase their behavior problems. For oppositional toddlers, offering alternatives too frequently increases externalizing problems, whereas moderate use of punishments (<16% of the time) decreases total behavior problems. Frequent reasoning also reduces subsequent externalizing problems for oppositional toddlers, despite being the least effective disciplinary response for de-escalating parent-opposing noncompliance immediately. Conclusions. Parenting advice should move beyond universal disciplinary recommendations to help parents match their disciplinary tactics to their child’s type of noncompliance.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles: The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Funding: This work was supported by Oklahoma State University and by 25 donors through The Counsellor Foundation and the Narramore Christian Foundation.

Role of the Funders/Sponsors: None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments: The authors would like especially to thank an anonymous reviewer for extensive comments on a prior version of this manuscript. They also thank Vinh Nguyen for implementing many long-term analyses. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the authors’ institutions, the donors, or the funding foundations is not intended and should not be inferred.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Oklahoma State University and by 25 donors through The Counsellor Foundation and the Narramore Christian Foundation;