Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone has ignited a significant conversation about parenting and childhood discipline by sharing a personal anecdote from her upbringing. The actress, who welcomed her daughter, Dua, with husband Ranveer Singh in September 2025, recently revisited her own childhood experiences during a public appearance.
The Storeroom Discipline: A Childhood Memory
On The Kapil Sharma Show, Deepika Padukone recounted how her father, the legendary badminton champion Prakash Padukone, enforced discipline when she was young. She revealed that if she neglected her homework or misbehaved, her father's chosen method was to send her to the kitchen storeroom in their apartment. He would then lock the door from the outside and turn off the lights, leaving her in isolation.
This revelation adds a personal dimension to insights she previously shared at the Abu Dhabi Forbes Summit in March 2025. There, she reflected on her father's profound influence, particularly recalling a vital piece of advice he gave her: that people will ultimately remember you for the kind of person you are. Deepika stated that this principle now guides her own approach to raising her children.
Beyond Fear: The Lasting Impact of Isolation Tactics
The actress's story highlights a common yet controversial disciplinary practice in many Indian households. Sending a child to a separate room for 'time-out' is often intended to make them reflect on their actions. However, experts argue that such isolation, especially in dark or confined spaces, primarily instills fear rather than understanding.
This fear-based approach can have long-term consequences. Children may internalize a need for constant perfection to avoid punishment, leading to anxiety and a fragile sense of self-worth that persists into adulthood. In stressful situations, these ingrained stress responses can resurface, affecting decision-making and emotional well-being. While effective for immediate compliance, this method fails to equip children with the emotional tools needed for long-term resilience and healthy relationship building.
Building Better Strategies: From Punishment to Guidance
Modern constructive discipline focuses on teaching and connection rather than fear. Effective alternatives include:
- Calm-down corners: Instead of a dark storeroom, a well-lit, safe space where a child can voluntarily go to regulate their emotions.
- Natural consequences: Allowing children to experience the logical outcome of their actions, like tidying up scattered toys before the next play activity.
- Positive reinforcement: Acknowledging and praising good behavior is far more effective in encouraging its repetition than punishing missteps.
- Clear communication: Establishing simple, understandable rules and explaining the 'why' behind them fosters security and understanding.
- Empowering choices: Offering age-appropriate options helps children develop decision-making skills and a sense of autonomy.
These strategies, backed by child development research, aim to build confidence and intrinsic motivation.
Breaking the Cycle: Reflecting on Inherited Patterns
Parenting styles are often unconsciously inherited. Under stress, people frequently revert to the methods used by their own parents, even if they found them distressing. Deepika Padukone's openness about her 'storeroom' experience represents a conscious step toward breaking such cycles.
By sharing both the hardship and the values learned, she normalizes parental vulnerability and encourages evolution. Disrupting these patterns requires self-reflection—through journaling, conversations, or therapy—to understand one's own childhood and consciously choose a different path. Effective parenting blends accountability with empathy, transforming past lessons into tools for building healthier family legacies for the next generation.
