Discipline That's Actually Backed by Research

A review of the research on discipline finds over 60 discipline strategies that actually work

Jan 09, 2025

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A lot of parenting advice online and on social media tells parents what not to do— such as don’t rush your child, don’t use time-out, and don’t tell your child that you are proud of them and I’ve written a lot in previous newsletters about how most of these prohibitions are not evidence-based. However, I find that there is a lot less guidance on what parents actually can do. Although most parents understand that the big picture of parenting advice is something along the lines of showing love and affection while also setting reasonable and firm limits, it is often unclear how to put these general principles into practice. For example, you might understand that you should have empathy for a child who wants more autonomy, but how do you get your child to listen when you really need them to do something? Similarly, you might understand that you shouldn’t guilt and shame your child, but how do you respond when they blatantly break the rules? Moreover, how exactly do you set limits and follow through on them? Whether you call it discipline, setting limits or boundaries, or teaching, parents need some concrete tools for getting through the day and this type of specific guidance isn’t often provided through mainstream parenting advice.

Despite the lack of guidance readily available to parents, the research actually provides a lot of concrete parenting strategies that are backed by research. I recently came across a review of reviews for discipline strategies (translation: a review paper is a summary of all relevant research on a topic and review of reviews is a summary of all of those review papers so it is a very comprehensive overview of a topic). This paper included 3,921 research studies from 223 reviews published between 1999 and 2018. The researchers identified over 60 discipline strategies with moderate to large amounts of evidence showing positive impacts on children and/or parenting skills (translation: at least one review or meta-analysis found overall positive impacts of the strategy and at least 10 studies showed positive effects). Of course, reviewing all of these strategies would push the limits of how long this newsletter can be (and probably the limits of your attention span as well) so I chose six strategies that I think might be helpful and easy to implement in your everyday lives.

Research-Backed Discipline Strategies

Without further ado, here are six of the discipline strategies that this paper found to have a moderate to large amount of research backing up their effectiveness. Check out the full paper here if you want to read about all of the discipline strategies backed by research.

Behavioral momentum: This is a strategy in which you ask a child to do something they are likely to do before asking them to do something they are less likely to do (such as “get yourself a snack” and then “come get in the car”). In other words, you ask them to do a few easy or fun tasks before you ask them to do a hard or boring task. Basically you are creating momentum for following your directions. Don’t believe this would work? Think of the game “Simon Says” which works in the same way— once you get in the habit of following directions of another person it can be hard to stop. This strategy will be even more effective if you praise children immediately after they comply to give them an immediate reward. You can also make this fun by providing silly directions before the task you want them to do (such as “make a funny face,” “do the chicken dance,” and then “put on your shoes”).

Differential reinforcement: To practice differential reinforcement, parents first identify a behavior that they would like to see less frequently (such as whining) and then they identify a replacement behavior that achieves the same goal (such as asking for something with a calm and normal voice). Parents then make a conscious effort to avoid rewarding the negative behavior (in this case, this would involve ignoring whining and not giving the child what they are whining for) and to reward the replacement behavior (in this case, this would involve praising your child and responding to their request whenever they use a calm and normal voice). Here’s another example— let’s say you have a child who hits other children when they want a turn with a toy. Parents may decide that the replacement behavior would be asking for a turn with the toy. Parents would try to make sure that the hitting is never successful in gaining access to the toy, while the asking nicely is successful. You may have heard that you shouldn’t use consequences like this to shape your child’s behavior yet we have no evidence that consequences have any negative impacts and when you don’t intervene your child will still experience consequences yet they will be encouraging unwanted behavior. For example, if you don’t intervene when your child hits to gain access to a toy, they receive the positive consequence of gaining access to the toy which may increase hitting.

Choice: The power of giving children choices cannot be overstated. You can increase your child’s likelihood of listening to you and respecting your limits by giving them a choice in activities (“You cannot play outside right now. Do you want to color or play with blocks?”), clothing (“You have to wear a jacket. Do you want to wear the blue or green one?”), rewards (“When you earn 10 points, do you want a dollar or special activity?”), or the order of events (“It’s time to go to bed. Do you want to brush teeth or put on pajamas first?”). Giving children a choice of what food they eat may also help with pickiness (see here for more). Research finds that giving children choices not only improves listening but also improves children’s moods, intrinsic motivation, and self-confidence.

Emotion socialization behaviors: This term refers to a set of behaviors that aim to teach children about emotions. Although you might assume that these types of strategies are only important for emotional development, research finds that these strategies actually improve children’s behavior and parenting skills as well. Emotion socialization behaviors include labeling emotions (“It seems like you’re frustrated right now”), asking your child questions about their emotions (“What made you feel this way?)”, validating their emotions (“I can understand why you would feel angry. It can be really hard to change our plans”), and pointing out emotions in others (“The boy in that book really seems sad. What do you think he is thinking right now?”).

Precorrection: This strategy involves reminding children of the rules and expectations before entering a particular situation. For example, before going to a restaurant, you may tell your children: “We are going to a restaurant which means you need to sit with your bottom in the seat and use an inside voice. I will tell you when it’s time to get up.” Often as adults, these reminders seem obvious and unnecessary but they are essential for young children who may have simply forgotten (or never learned) the expectations for different situations. Research finds that this strategy helps to prevent problem behaviors and increase the likelihood of appropriate behaviors. Research indicates that the key component here is being very specific about expectations.

Prompting: Prompting is a way of teaching your child a new skill or behavior in a systematic way that reduces frustration for you and your child. Let’s say you want to teach your child how to put on their own shoes. If you just handed them their shoes and let them figure it out on their own, it would probably be a frustrating experience for both you and your child. Yet, if you always put their shoes on for them, they would never learn this important skill. Enter prompting. You first begin with full physical prompt, meaning you physically move their hands to go through the motions of putting on their shoes. You then move to a partial physical prompt in which you guide their hands in completing this task. Then you move to modeling, such as having them watch you put your shoes on. Finally, you would move to a verbal prompt (telling them how to put on their shoes). You can also use this “prompt hierarchy” to help a child who has already learned a skill but doesn’t seem to be following through with it. If your child already knows how to put their shoes on and isn’t doing it, you wouldn’t want to just do it for them but you would want to give them the least support possible to continue to encourage their independence, so you would follow the hierarchy in the other direction. First you would use a verbal reminder of how to put on their shoes then you would model it and then only if necessary would you physically help them to complete the task. Another slightly more complicated example would be teaching your child to say “thank you.” You might start with modeling the exact words you want your child to say and asking them to repeat you, then you might use a verbal reminder (say “thank you”), then a more subtle reminder (perhaps simply pointing out what another person did for your child), and then an even more subtle reminder (such as a facial expression or a head nod). Then, when you are reminding them to say “thank you,” you go from most subtle to the least subtle reminders.

Overall Translation

A lot of the parenting advice online and social media seems to involve vague, theoretical ideas about parenting and a lot about what parents shouldn’t do. However, when you turn to the research itself, there are actually a lot of concrete tools that parents can use. A recent review of reviews found over 60 discipline strategies with moderate to large amounts of evidence (read the full paper here). I reviewed six of these strategies for this newsletter, including behavioral momentum, differential reinforcement, choice, emotional socialization behaviors, precorrection, and prompting

However, it is very important to mention that these strategies may not work for every child or every family. Just because these strategies are backed by research, it doesn’t mean that they will work for your unique child or that they will fit with your values as a parent. Research is based on what works for the average child, not what works for your individual child. For example, some children thrive when given a lot of choices and some children may become overwhelmed. Some children may respond to behavioral momentum and some children may do better with fewer instructions. It is also important to reflect on whether a particular discipline strategy fits with your family values. In summary, it may take some trial-and-error to determine which discipline approaches work best for your child and your family, but these evidence-based strategies may be a good place to start!

Please give me some feedback if you have the chance! Do you want to hear about more research-backed discipline strategies from this paper? Or would you rather hear about discipline strategies that don’t work? Or both? Let me know below!

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