A longitudinal study of parental discipline of young children.
OBJECTIVE
To determine how discipline practices changed over time for young children.


METHODS
A cohort of parents with young children were interviewed in clinic about a broad array of disciplinary practices at two points in time.


RESULTS
A total of 182 parents were interviewed at Time 1, and 94 were interviewed at Time 1 and 2. Mean age of the child was 16.2 months at Time 1 and 35.8 months at Time 2. Monitoring, verbal communication, and distracting were the most common types of discipline when the children were one year old. Corporal punishment (P < 0.05), verbal communication (P < 0.001), timeout (< 0.0001), removing privileges (< 0.0001), negative demeanor (< 0.0001), and sternness (< 0.0001) increased significantly from Time 1 to Time 2. Distracting (< 0.001) decreased significantly and positive demeanor also decreased.


CONCLUSIONS
Most discipline practices increased in frequency over the 20 months of this study. The increase in parental negative demeanor seems particularly important and worthy of further study.
Socolar
Rebecca R S
RR
Department of Pediatrics, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7225, USA. rsocolar@med.unc.edu
Savage
Eric
E
Evans
Hughes
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000786:Anger; D002668:Child Rearing; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014705:Verbal Behavior