Fshould he put the child back in the corner? The controversy over the “time out”, this educational method consisting in setting aside the child for a limited time, revealed a broader confrontation: on the one hand, the defenders of an education assuming the need for limits children, and of which the psychologist Caroline Goldman has become the figurehead; on the other, the proponents of positive or benevolent education, embodied in France by the pediatrician Catherine Gueguen and the psychotherapist Isabelle Filliozat. But what exactly are they thinking? Here are their main arguments.
This is the very essence of positive parenting and, to understand it, you have to go back to the origins: after the war, in the United States, several books of advice for parents appeared. Among them, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, by Benjamin Spock, which sold more than 750,000 copies. This movement was then nourished by research in psychology, then at the turn of the 2000s by neurosciences. It is now a certainty: to develop, the child needs a loving, secure and non-violent environment. The WHO, Unicef, the Council of Europe subscribe.
In 2008, the latter published a brochure on “positive parenting” specifying that corporal or psychologically humiliating punishment should be “excluded”. Carried by this current, France is legislating in 2019 against spanking and other ordinary educational violence. Everywhere, without having completely disappeared, intra-family violence is decreasing.
Hard to find fault with it. Caroline Goldman reminds us at the start of her podcasts: “I won’t go into what everyone knows here. You won’t hear me praise love or condemn abuse. These truths seem to me today accepted by all, I am delighted and I think I have nothing to contribute in these registers. Like the clinician, the psychologist Didier Pleux also says he is “in agreement” with what the Anglo-Saxon world has conveyed about positive education. What is problematic, he says in his book Benevolent education is enough! (Odile Jacob), it is the translation of this current in France by the pediatrician Catherine Gueguen and the psychotherapist Isabelle Filliozat. Because in their reading, the limits are totally forgotten.
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Abuse and its consequences
According to these two specialists, love and empathy would be enough to make the child grow. Conversely, violence can be harmful to a child’s brain due to the stress it causes. To support their argument, they appeal to neuroscience. In his bestseller For a happy childhood (Robert Laffont, 2014), Catherine Gueguen writes: “When its rate reaches very high levels or if it is secreted for a prolonged period, cortisol has very toxic effects for certain developing brain structures. Citing several studies, she claims that early childhood stress can even “cause neurons to be destroyed.”
But what violence are we talking about? The studies cited do not say so and the pediatrician remains evasive. In The world, she is content to say that “everything that frightens, threatens, punishes the child is educational violence” and that this violence can be “verbal, psychological or physical”. Putting her child in the corner, she says, “is part of it.”
For Caroline Goldman, what is abusive, on the other hand, is not setting limits. A poorly limited child would live through hell, made up of reproaches, disappointments and rejections, she explains in her book. Go to your room! (InterEditions, 2022). According to her, these children would also have more difficulties at school and may be the subject of an erroneous diagnosis of attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity (ADHD) or high intellectual potential (HPI).
Why does a child do stupid things?
For supporters of benevolent education, the child does not seek to trap or test his parents, he grows up, that’s all. In I have tried everything (Marabout, 2011), Isabelle Filliozat develops: the child does not oppose, “he differentiates”; when he types, “he experiences”; and if he does not react to a repeated request, it is because “his brain does not make the link between the word heard and the action requested” or because the prohibition is “poorly formulated”. Faced with this type of behavior, the only attitude to have, according to her, would be that of a loving and empathetic accompaniment, which would help the brain to mature and the child to calm down naturally.
On the other hand, for Caroline Goldman, a child with such behavior is in search of limits. To make herself understood, she compares the child to a cauldron inside which is his psyche. It would begin to be shaped from the first seconds of life by all its sensory experiences and attachments. All of this constitutes the anchoring of the child in reality, his self-esteem and his emotional security. But it will be useless, she adds, if there is no container capable of “disciplining” this base and offering it a “socially adequate” format. This container is the “well-defined” limits, which should be put in place from one year on.
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Teaching the limits
Convinced that most transgressions are due to brain immaturity, nurturers are tight-lipped about the enforcement of boundaries. Time, explains in substance Catherine Gueguen, will do its work, if the entourage remains empathetic and loving. On the question of punishment, Isabelle Filliozat nevertheless advocates “understanding”, “explanation” and “the search for alternative solutions” while integrating the offspring into this reflection. Thus, when there is a natural consequence (shells thrown on the ground because he had fun spilling them), the child must participate in the repair. Because the negation would be misunderstood by the immature brain of children, care should also be taken to formulate its prohibitions in a positive way: “Stay on this side”, rather than “Don’t cross the road”; “Speak softly” rather than “don’t shout”; say “stop” rather than “no”.
“Surreal”, comments Caroline Goldman in her book. For her, it is through “the experience of frustration” that the child will integrate the limits. For this, “you have to pass a fairly uncomfortable moment so that it does not start again”, she writes. And because this frustration must not become violent, the time-out method appears ideal, provided it is “clarified in a firm way” and “calm”. In Go to your room! she details: “If the prohibition has already been explained, warn the child with a simple: You stop or you get out. If he continues, immediately exclude him to his room or any other secure room […]close the door. […] Go get it after a time proportional to the transgression. »
Getting a child used to frustration
For proponents of benevolent education, crises – baptized “emotional storms” – would be the normal expression of frustration in children. This is due, again, to the immaturity of their brains. “The neurons of the prefrontal cortex, where a large part of the rational control of emotions takes place, only reach maturity at the start of adulthood”, indicates Catherine Gueguen. Faced with this, there would be no other solution than to reassure your child by cuddling him in order to “recharge” him with soothing oxytocins and opioids. This affectionate behavior will also have “a considerable positive impact on the maturation of the child’s frontal lobes. He will then be able to manage the invading emotions more quickly.
For Didier Pleux, this type of response “is what is called in behavioral psychology a reinforcement”. Even Dolto would not have dared, he quips. According to him, the anger made by the child is the sign of a lack of education in frustration. Its mastery is nevertheless necessary to be able to live in a world where the unpleasant is just as present as the pleasant. His proposal? Getting children used to doing things from an early age that they don’t want to do: setting the table before dinner, tidying up their room, putting up with other people’s music… and regularly increasing the tolerance threshold for frustrations such as a muscle that we would work.
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It remains to be specified that the child does not grow above ground, that he is a singular and complex being, the result of a story. He forms a unique bond with his parents. “The psychic construction is based on these links, which depend on many factors, often unconscious. It would therefore be very ambitious to want to find a precise attitude for each situation”, recalls Linda Gandolfi, psychotherapist specializing in parental support. A way of saying, perhaps, that there can be no “good” educational recipe.