When someone punished me, all it did was harm my relationship with that person. I didn't ever do anything wrong on purpose (except some rare exceptions involving peer pressure, which I always regretted), so by definition when I was punished, from my point of view I was being punished for doing my best, which I considered a grave injustice. The fact that they assumed that I did something bad on purpose deeply offended me, and damaged the trust in the relationship, and bred resentment and bitterness.
I'm autistic so perhaps this is an atypical perspective—from
what I've heard we seem to have more of a thing for justice.
I understand there are some naturally naughty kids out there. But I genuinely believe that most kids want to be good, where "good" is defined as "behaving in a way that I get approval from my parents". The question is to what degree those ethics are actually internalized rather than just performed when someone is looking...
When someone punished me, all it did was harm my relationship with that person. I didn't ever do anything wrong on purpose (except some rare exceptions involving peer pressure, which I always regretted), so by definition when I was punished, from my point of view I was being punished for doing my best, which I considered a grave injustice. The fact that they assumed that I did something bad on purpose deeply offended me, and damaged the trust in the relationship, and bred resentment and bitterness.
I'm autistic so perhaps this is an atypical perspective—from what I've heard we seem to have more of a thing for justice.
I understand there are some naturally naughty kids out there. But I genuinely believe that most kids want to be good, where "good" is defined as "behaving in a way that I get approval from my parents". The question is to what degree those ethics are actually internalized rather than just performed when someone is looking...