In "A Good Enough Parent" He described typical impediments to productive parent/child relationships, autobiographically borrowing from his own upbringing, and deftly advancing selected psychoanalytic principles he hoped would harmonize parent/child interactions. Among other themes, he chose to write
about the important theme for modern American parents, namely, the difference between discipline and punishment... His view of discipline was based, in
part, on the dictionary definition that reveals the word’s origin in disciple, meaning student. Bettelheim wrote that proper discipline educates the child and sets his energies free to develop productively on his own. This, then, has the happy effect of bettering parent/child relationships. Punishment, on the other hand, ‘doesn’t work,’ according to Bettelheim. ‘There is a world of difference between acquiring discipline by identification with those one admires [the parents] and having regimentation imposed on one—or sometimes painfully inflicted [...] As for punishment, it may restrain the child, but it doesn’t teach him self-discipline [...]’.

He observed that children cannot be fooled, and that they pay attention to our behavior as much as, or more than our words. He wrote that the punitive parent who is carried away by emotions rather than choosing to educate the child, fools only himself/herself and not the child.

The meaning of play is a second important theme discussed by Bettelheim (1967) in his parenting book. Like Piaget (1962, 1969), Bettelheim viewed the playing child as attempting to bridge his inner reality and the world around him. In early childhood, play is the primary modality within which children develop themselves and communicate with others. Quoting Montaigne, Bettelheim wrote, ‘Children’s play should be regarded as their most serious actions.’

Play is an outlet for emotional expression, but it also serves to resolve conflicts and enables the child to cope better with the world. While Piaget documented the intellectual aspects of playing, Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic perspective focussed on the emotional and social benefits of play, especially those that accrue to a healthy parent/child relationship. He viewed the child’s play as nothing less than the route to identity. Drawing on Freud’s insights,
Bettelheim wrote that play is the means by which ‘the child accomplishes his first great cultural and psychological achievements [...] This is true even for an infant whose play consists of nothing more than smiling at his mother as she smiles at him.’

Bettelheim, who had been immersed in the history of ideas at least since adolescence, welcomed the idea that a child’s spontaneous, playful activity was analogous to the great cultural achievements of our time. He enjoyed, rightly so, elevating the minutiae of the child’s behavior to the heights it deserved.
In "The Uses of Enchantment" (1976), his prize-winning treatise on the uses of fairy tales in the child’s upbringing, Bettelheim poignantly described how the child’s imagination is served by romantic stories, especially those told to the child and, in the telling, elaborated by the child’s freely created variations. Again, Bettelheim emphasized the collaboration of parent and child in sharing fairy tales to enhance the child’s developing sensibilities. The child needs
not only those coping skills that are fostered by didactic parents, but also, Bettelheim wrote, a moral education communicated not through abstract (ethical) concepts but through fairy tales that deal with what is tangibly right and therefore meaningful. He likened the child’s understanding of fairy tales to the psychological insights gained long ago by poets. The German poet Schiller wrote: ‘Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life.’

From an article by Karen Zelan that appeared in "Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education" (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. XXIII, no. 1/2, 1993, p. 85-100. ©UNESCO: International Bureau of Education, 2000. This document may be reproduced free of charge as long as acknowledgement is made of the source.