[quote=Phoenix]
I agree with you, but there are some things were discipline is difficult or impossible to enact due to the nature of the misbehavior. This is why I specified the social and emotional mores and taboos which might call for punishment rather than discipline. It's difficult to make a child feel a certain emotion and furthermore to make them realize that other people even have emotions (considering how socio or psychopathic the child). Also, if they purposefully spill something and know that their discipline will be to clean it up, they might learn that they can spill it whenever they like as long as they clean it up, resulting in wasteful and counter-productive behavior. That's stretching for a counter-argument, but something I just thought up that might be legitimate >.> I dunno...
[/quote]

There's other discipline methods that can be practiced first.
Losing access to the milk (Make sure they still have access to something to drink though), all spill able glasses locked away and they now have to work with sippie cups.
They now need to ask their parents to get the stuff for them (Move the Milk and glasses out of the child's reach).

Also doing any kind of discipline or punishment only once or twice rarely stops the child from doing it.
Repetition is needed, you may need to have the child clean up their own spill over a dozen times before they stop. But they'll stop.

Also with most children the ability to relate to other's feelings is something that happens developmentally over time.
Before hand is known as "Egocentric", it's not a form of selfishness or greed. They just literally can't comprehend yet that people outside of them have feelings.

[quote=Vanq]
Verbal/psychological/emotional abuse is recognized much the same as physical abuse, yet we aren't talking about bringing in parents who yell at their kids or tell them they did something "bad." (Side note, I have known people who were very against using any negative words to their children. They created little monsters.[/quote]

This is true, verbal/psychological/emotional abuse can be just if not more harmful to the child than physical abuse.
Like when I was growing up as a kid my Mom yelled at me and we got into arguments every day for one reason or another (and being the adult, whenever we told others like family or teachers they'd always side with her cause "she's the adult, she must be right") and unsurprisingly as a result today, I don't really have much feelings for her or care at all about what she thinks of me or what I do.

Though I do need to ask Vanq, can you clarify what you mean when you say negative words?