Years ago I had a great mentor define for me what I was doing when I was disciplining a child:
The root of the word discipline is Disciple, which means: to teach. You are trying to teach a child something.
Typically, you are trying to teach them how to be successful in society and life. If you keep this in mind, you will be teaching the child, not punishing. You are not allowed to slap a teacher! Now, you can make him sit in the corner where he will just get madder and madder and learn that you are the mean guy and to stay away from you; or you can teach him that when he hurts someone he needs to take care of that person so that next time he will be less likely to hurt.
I can't explain it as well as I would like in this short post, but hopefully you will see these natural disciplines as I give more examples on this blog site. Punishment is appropriate at very limited times (and typically at an older age); in preschool, we are still teaching the children how to function and succeed.
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