What if the best proof that compassionate discipline works… is 15 years of real life?
In this special celebration episode, Wendy and Terry mark two huge milestones: the official release of Fresh Start Your Family and 15 years of no punishment in their home.
Together, they reflect on what it has really looked like to raise kids without hurting, harming, or shaming them, and why compassionate discipline has become one of the most life-giving parts of their family legacy.
Wendy shares honest stories from the messy middle, including moments when her nervous system reverted, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and the long-term fruit they now see in their relationship with their kids. From emotional safety and honesty to self-motivation, confidence, and strong connection, this episode offers a beautiful real-life picture of what becomes possible when parents trade punishment for teaching.
If you’ve ever wondered whether this way of parenting really works, this conversation is your crystal ball moment.
Episode Highlights:
- Compassionate discipline teaches life skills without hurting, harming, or shaming kids
- Punishment may control behavior for a moment, but it rarely creates long-term growth
- Natural consequences often teach more effectively than parental force ever could
- Logical consequences work best when they are respectful, related, reasonable, and responsibility-building
- Parents do not need to be perfect for this approach to work, they just need to stay committed to repair and growth
- Kids thrive when they feel emotionally safe, deeply connected, and guided instead of controlled
- Long-term results include honesty, self-motivation, emotional health, and strong family relationships
- Building a family legacy without punishment is possible, and deeply worth it
Unable to listen, or prefer to read along? Here’s the transcript!
Absolutely. I kept this one close to your original and mainly focused on smoothing the flow, removing restarts and filler, and tightening a few spots for readability without stripping out the conversation.
Wendy Snyder:
Looky there. Okay. It goes away on its own. Hello, test. Hello. All right.
Okay, ready?
Well, hey there, families. Welcome back to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. We are so happy you are here.
Today is a bit of a celebration episode because, Terry Snyder, Fresh Start Your Family is officially out in the world. It is release week. It is ship date. The day we have been waiting for, for years, is finally here.
This book is shipping into the hands of families all across the world. It’s so real. It’s so amazing. It’s all those hours and all those years and everything put into one thing that you can hold in your hands and hand to somebody else to bless somebody else in their house. It’s here. The day is here.
Terry Snyder:
It really is here.
Wendy Snyder:
And I thought since we were in celebration mode, it’d be fun to also celebrate 15 years of no punishment in our home. We’re going to talk about compassionate discipline today. That’s going to kind of be our theme.
My goodness, 15 years, Terry Snyder, that we have been really applying these strategies. We don’t always get it perfect, especially me. I feel like I’m the one who messes up the most in our home. But we sure have believed in these strategies for 15 years now.
We found this work when Stella was three, and by the time she was three and a half, it took us a good six months to really understand things and start rolling with them. She turned 18 in November, and she’s about 18 and a half now. She’ll be 19 this fall as she heads off to college. But yeah, 15 years that we have successfully been able to teach our kids important life skills without hurting, harming, or shaming them. And hurting or harming meaning physically, spiritually, mentally. God, that feels so dang good.
Terry Snyder:
Yeah. For listeners who might just be like, what? That’s crazy. I remember when we first got introduced to this type of parenting, or even just this way of looking at having a relationship with your child, it felt radically different. A little confusing. Countercultural. I had more questions than answers.
I think you always just wanted to know, is that going to work? You wish you could just look into a crystal ball and see 15 years out into the future and ask, how did it go?
Well, here we are. We’re the crystal ball vision coming out of the crystal ball. It went freaking great. It was awesome.
Tracking every bit of the journey, and then also seeing how you, Wendy, decided to dedicate your life and your work and all the learning around it, everything just comes back to all of this that’s in the book and everything that we put into our family. We can tell you wholeheartedly, it’s been an amazing 15 years.
I think it’s just a pat on everyone’s back here. It’s tough to be faced with this question of, how are we going to do this? when your kids are little, and you just hope that you do it the right way.
Wendy Snyder:
The air quotes “right way.”
Terry Snyder:
Right way. And we’re just glad you’re here.
Wendy Snyder:
Yeah, we are.
And I love that you say “we” because this community really is one of the biggest reasons why we were able to apply this work so diligently. Me becoming a teacher and leading this community for the last decade now, Fresh Start Family turns nine this year, I think. But leading this community, when you become a teacher, and we have our next high-level certification program, our full mastery program, or Become a Parenting Coach, launching in September where we’ll have a new cohort of parents go through that and become certified in the Fresh Start Family approach, one of the coolest things is that when you become a teacher, you apply the work in your own home so much more because you have this extra level of accountability.
If you’re going to share this message with the world, whether you’re sharing it in a volunteer format, maybe volunteering at your church or in your school system, or you’re really taking private sessions or creating a program where you’re going to teach other families this body of work, it really keeps you accountable.
This community has held us up. Every time we’ve fallen backwards or made a mistake, which again is mostly on me, I come right into the community and tell them, “Hey, gosh, I reverted. I went backwards.”
I can think of a few moments where I did revert to the threat and the punishment. I never really followed through, which is kind of funny, because it goes against everything I stand for. But there was one in particular when Stella was about 12 that I’m thinking of. I got to come into the community and go, “Guys, let me share this story with you because I want to remind you, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I still have a nervous system that reverted back to, I’m just going to punish and that’s going to fix this.”
And then it went horribly wrong. I was able to stop myself, thank God, before I truly followed through with it, and then repair the relationship with Stella.
So yes, being able to share in the journey with the community has been huge. Thank you, listeners. Thank you to our Fresh Start Experience students and our Foundations Course students and our highest-level full mastery students. You have really been part of this journey.
I do think back to those early days. We were actually just talking about it today because Stella played in a volleyball tournament with one of her best buddies, who she’s been best buds with since birth, TT. Her name’s Taryn, but we call her TT. We shared a nanny when we first had Stella and I was still in corporate.
I remember saying this week how wild it is that TT’s parents were actually the first people who introduced us to this style of parenting, firm and kind, connection-based parenting. They had TT in this little, I think it was a one-day-a-week school program called Hannah Fenichel in Solana Beach, California. They had a teacher come in and teach Redirecting Children’s Behavior.
They brought home this flyer, and it was about praise versus encouragement. I remember reading it and they were like, “Hey, we’re taking this program and it’s so cool.” They gave it to our nanny and to us to read through.
And we laughed at it. Do you remember?
Terry Snyder:
Oh yeah.
Wendy Snyder:
We were like, “What do you mean? You’re not supposed to say to your kid, ‘Good job’?” We thought it sounded kind of stupid.
Then as time went on and we dove into the work and took our own classes, and then I became certified, I realized that particular concept, learning to encourage your kids versus praise them, is one of the most important concepts and tools that we teach.
As we’ve watched our kids grow up, if they get straight A’s, they’ll say, “Mom and Dad, guess what? I got straight A’s. I’m so proud of myself.” Or they’ll say, “I’m so inspired by myself.” They don’t look to us for approval. They don’t wait for us to be like, “Good job, you’re such a good girl. Now you get a $20 bill.”
You can tell they really do pull on their inner confidence and their own drive and motivation, which we call intrinsic motivation, instead of external approval from others.
So it’s funny to think back to those early days.
Terry Snyder:
Yeah, it would have been 17 years ago actually.
And we both had a similar reaction. So wherever listeners are at in their journey, maybe you’re seeing the title of this episode and that’s your reaction. Like, “What do you mean? What? No punishment for 15 years?” Maybe you’re new on the journey and this is still a radical concept, but you’re doing it. Or maybe you’re a little further down the road and you’re nodding your head like, “Yeah.”
We’re here 15 years in to say it’s like a language. At first it’s clunky. You feel a little insecure. You wonder if you’re ever going to be fluent.
We’re here to tell you, 15 years later, speaking the language, it’s wonderful. Our kids are great, self-motivated, not perfect, but very close to us. We are absolutely on the speed dial of people to talk to about both celebrations and hard things.
There’s no real subject that’s taboo for our kids to bring to us. The relationship is super strong. The grades are great. The health is great. The mental health is great. And we’re just doing life together.
I think that’s the most important part. We feel connected doing life together. That doesn’t mean it’s always perfect. There are messy things and awkward moments and attitudes. Teenagers be teenag-ing. Mamas be mom-ing. Daddies be dadding. We all have our things.
But at the end of the day, we know we’re going to be okay because at the root of it all, we’ve got such a solid relationship.
It’s amazing to see the courage it took back then to say yes to this, and then for you to double and triple down and keep learning and not just be a casual observer of it all. It’s all in this book. So here we are.
Wendy Snyder:
Yeah.
Today, we’ve kind of jumped forward to section four of the book, which is all about compassionate discipline. Part four is called Grace-Based Discipline.
The opening quote of this section is from Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
I love that quote so much because I have the honor of helping so many families, and parents in their third and fourth decades of life, do so much repair. Especially with the high-level clients in our full mastery program, but really all our clients are doing it to some degree. There is so much repair happening of their souls when they were raised with any type of autocratic, authoritarian parenting, which again is how most of us were raised.
There are different levels of that, of course. But if you had punishment, if you had shame, if you had disconnection when you made mistakes, if you had reactive parents, that was the way growing up.
One of the biggest paradigm shifts when parents fully step into this system is completely dissenting from punishment. That is really a necessary component, or else you will struggle to see results.
So I thought it would be powerful for people to hear a few of our stories today. I tell so many in the book, but maybe I’ll pull out one or two here where we want you to understand that culture, and literally everyone around you, will look at you like you are taking crazy pills when you decide you are no longer going to punish your children.
Again, there are going to be days when you revert. I remember one in particular where Stella was having a meltdown over not buying her friend a cupcake. She was maybe 10. Her friend Avery was sick, and she was freaking out that I wouldn’t buy the $6 cupcake for Avery. She had this full-blown meltdown and I was like, “That’s it. I’m returning your Lululemon sports bra.”
She was old enough to stay by herself at that point, so I literally took it from her. I had hidden it in her closet because she was going to get it for her birthday in a couple weeks or something. And I reverted to punishment.
I got in the car. I drove away. She was shaking and screaming, “No, Mama, don’t, please.” I never followed through with it. Of course, we did all the repair. But that’s an example of reverting. Your body just goes, “I’m going to punish. I’m going to do it.”
But stopping yourself and making amends is what matters. That week she ended up getting sick, I think she got pneumonia, which honestly has often been part of our kids’ stories. They will have the worst behavior right on the brink of getting sick.
So yes, that’s an example of reverting. But when I talk about 15 years of no punishment, what I mean is that we fully decided to dissent and believe that we could teach important life skills with dignity and grace instead of thinking we needed to punish.
Most of the people around you, nine out of 10, are still going to be punishing. If you look at our kids and their friends right now, it feels like nine out of 10 are. If they get in trouble, they get their phone taken away. If they make a mistake, they’re grounded, or they get their e-bike taken away, or they’re not allowed to go out all weekend.
Our kids are older now, but then we look at our neighbors with little kids. When they get in trouble, they get yelled at, threatened to be spanked, or actually spanked.
In general, most people around you are going to be punishing their children the entire season that you’re raising your kids. So it really takes confidence.
As you read this book, and as you read section four where I teach you how to replace punishment with discipline, and I teach you the three steps to building a compassionate discipline toolkit, which is self-calming, natural consequences, and logical consequences, just know it takes confidence to say, “We’re really not going to do that anymore.”
Because the other stuff just won’t work if you’re still consistently going back to punishment. That includes timeouts, groundings, taking things away, and a lot of the classic strategies.
One of my worst moments as a mom, which I write about in the book, was throwing away one of Stella’s precious toys that she had won from a grabber. To this day she says, “I have trauma from that, Mom.” We kind of giggle about it now because we’ve done so much repair work, but I know that left a mark on her little three-year-old body.
Taking stuff away, and then these days especially using technology as punishment, is so common. We introduce kids to these devices, we pay for the internet, we pay for the iPads, and then maybe we use them at dinner or in the car. The child falls in love with the device, gets the dopamine hits, builds a low-level addiction that often turns into a high-level addiction by the time they’re 10, and then we yank it when they do something wrong.
They squirm and squeal and beg, “Please don’t take it away.” It creates such a gnarly nervous system spike. Parents do it because they think that’s what will make a child learn the lesson.
What I want everyone to understand is that when you step away from punishment, you’re really giving yourself more options. More tools. More ways to communicate. More ways to be firm in your boundaries.
Instead of every single mistake turning into a hostage negotiation, you have other tools to teach and build relationship and create real change.
Sometimes it’s not even corporal punishment, which is basically spanking. In a lot of homes, punishment shows up as shame, an intense tone of disappointment or disgust, the silent treatment, grounding, long lectures of “What is wrong with you?” Isolation. That’s the punishment.
What compassionate discipline offers is something different.
When it comes to natural consequences, one example I love is with Stella and Invisalign. Our girl is strong-willed, and thank God we built that up instead of breaking it, because that strong will has done wonderful things in her life.
She wanted Invisalign. The dentist said, “I would not do Invisalign. A lot of kids end up hating it.” We all tried to talk to her about just getting clear braces and being done sooner, but she was firm. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Because we had this work under our belt, we realized she gets to own this. It’s the same cost for us either way. So she did Invisalign and ended up kind of hating the experience.
She has said now, “I just wish I had made a different decision. I wish I had gotten braces. I’d be done by now.”
That’s such a great natural consequence. We didn’t have to make her feel bad. We didn’t have to force the lesson. Life did the teaching. And now she has this learning experience where she might be more open next time to slowing down and considering other perspectives.
That’s one of the best kinds of consequences, when life does the teaching.
Logical consequences are when we step in more directly, but in a way that still teaches instead of punishes.
We teach that if you’re going to use a logical consequence, it has to follow the four R’s. It must be respectful, related, reasonable, and responsibility-based.
If you wouldn’t do it to your grandma or your pastor, don’t do it to your child. It needs to be related to the actual mistake. It needs to be reasonable, and it has to teach responsibility, because you’re trying to build intrinsic motivation, not just train a child to submit to authority.
One of my favorite examples is when Stella crossed the street the wrong way on the way to band practice. Most parents would have gone straight to punishment. “You’re not going to pizza with your friends again. I can’t trust you.” Or “You’re grounded.” Or “I’m taking away your phone.” Or they’d go into ridicule or embarrassment or make them write lines a hundred times.
Because we were further into the work by then, when I saw her cross the road like that, I was definitely triggered, but I was able to calm down.
That night, I sat down with her and we had this beautiful, teary-eyed discussion about safety. I held space for her. I had empathy and compassion for her because all she wanted was to fit in. It feels like death when you’re a tween to be the kid who uses the crosswalk when everyone else cuts through.
I let her cry. I let her talk about how hard it is to have a family that feels “strict” with safety. And I let her know, “You’re not in trouble. We’re going to practice.”
The next week, we went back and did a redo. I dropped her off again and we practiced exactly what she should do. I parked far away so her friends wouldn’t see me, and she did it perfectly.
A few days later I came home from a speaking engagement, and you said, “Wendy, Stella left you a note on your nightstand.” It was one of the most beautiful notes I’ve ever gotten from her. She basically said, “Mama, thank you so much for teaching me the way you do. Thank you for helping me learn how to help myself and others. I want to be just like you when I grow up.”
That’s the end effect of this kind of discipline.
And then a little later, you had that experience at the stoplight. Tell that story.
Terry Snyder:
Yeah, she was on her bike, and some kids were crossing the road the wrong way. They were just going to go for it. It would have been so easy for her to follow them.
And she didn’t know I was watching. She couldn’t see me. But I remember thinking, “Come on, come on, let’s do it.” And she hung tight. She followed the traffic laws. She waited. She crossed the right way.
It was one of those moments where you just realize, wow, it stuck.
Wendy Snyder:
Yes. That was on El Camino, too, which is a super dangerous part of the road. We’ve literally had teenagers lose their lives within a half mile of that spot over the last few years. So this was not a small thing.
And that’s what I want people to understand. She learned the lesson because we taught it with compassion and dignity, not because we threatened her, shamed her, or punished her.
That same thing applies to all kinds of situations.
I tell a lot more stories in section four of the book, but I just want you to hear this from us as clearly as possible. It is so effective when you become a teacher in your home instead of a correctional officer.
It feels so good to know we’ve stacked 15 years of doing that kind of teaching in our home.
Our son has experienced the same thing. His stories are different, but there are some big mistakes he made where, thank God, because of this work, we were able to come beside him and build him up.
Listeners, go get the book. It is officially shipping. It is ready to get into your hands. You can buy it anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org if you want to support local bookstores.
Thank you so much. We are so excited for you to get into this book. Every single chapter comes with actionable tips and journal prompts for you to apply the concepts and strategies into your own unique parenting and home.
We’re just excited for you to get your hands on it and get your eyes reading it.
Terry Snyder:
Yeah. Easy to remember because you’re watching the Fresh Start Family Show, but the name of the book is Fresh Start Your Family: Powerful Parenting to Restore Peace in Your Home.
And Wendy, I’m just so, so, so proud of you. Thank you so much for leading the way down this path. Our crystal ball image of 15 years later has huge smiles on our faces, tears of joy in our eyes, and our kids are wonderful.
They give me so much hope for the next generation. When I look at each one of them and the light they radiate and the ripple effect they have outward, it’s amazing.
And all of you listening right now, you are also a source of that light. Your ripple effect through your family and your communities matters. Our community is badass. So hold your head high.
We thank you so much for tuning in and listening and following along.
Wendy Snyder:
Yeah. Thanks, listeners. We’ll see you in the next episode.
