When parents advocate using harsh punishments, Miller asks them to reflect on their own experience of these methods.

Reader, if you spank your child, shut them in a room isolated, or withdraw love from them to punish them, ask yourself and reflect on Miller’s questions.

Specifically, Miller asks:

Did adults treat you like this when you were young?
What did you learn from such punishments?
When parents reflect on questions like these, they can draw personal insight.

Other ways to spark self reflection are:

Reading Alice Miller’s books with their many accounts, explanations and consequences of abuse can bring about insights too, as readers have told her.

Taking the ACES test can also alert a person to their own mistreatment (ACES=Adverse Childhood Experiences). Awareness is the first step toward NOT automatically behaving the same way with one’s own children.

Link to full article.

Note:If you know of any great articles to and for parents, please share for the Parenting with ACEs group as I'm putting together a list. Thank you!

Image from article and attributed to www.ParentingAsAHerosJourney.com