Immediate antecedents of caretaker's methods of discipline.

The interactions of children's behaviors and caretakers' disciplinary practices were studied. Mothers of one- to two-year-old children were trained to report parent-child interactions involving negative emotions. Mothers' observations thus provided data on sequences of child behaviors and parental discipline methods in affective encounters. Mothers' most frequent initial responses to children's misbehaviors were verbal prohibitions. Discipline methods less commonly used were explanations, restraint, instruction, physical punishment, and love withdrawal. Mothers made greater use of this range of control methods following children's noncompliance to discipline. Types of discipline were used differentially following noncompliance, depending upon the form of misbehavior. Children's harms against persons were associated with psychological discipline methods, such as reasoning and dramatization of distress. Destruction or property and lapses in self-control in children were associated with parental power assertive techniques, such as physical punishment and love withdrawal. These associations between child behaviors and parental discipline methods illustrate the interactive roles of child and parent in mediating parental attempts to control, teach, and punish their children.