Some Thoughts About Discipline
(A word of caution: I am not a trained psychologist or a trained psychiatrist. I am a former high school English teacher, a blog writer, a former public speaker, a former HR leader and office manager for a large commercial real estate firm, a present Target employee, and the mother of seven grown children. I was very fortunate to have had a good mother and father. My own children benefitted from the parenting I received as a child and from my years teaching English to tenth graders. Presently I get to observe lots of parents and children interact at Target. I do not think I am an expert at anything, but one of my sons-in-law, Marco Maida, told me I should share some of my observations on child rearing. You can take all of that into consideration as you read these thoughts.)
Love, Leadership, Teaching, Consistency, Training, Consequences, Mercy and back to Love…when we talk about discipline, we are really talking about all of these things.
The reason homes often are places of unrest is due to conflict between family members over control. Let us think of “Leadership” rather than “Control”, because good leadership maintains control. A lack of leadership results in a fight for control.
Establishing a good order within the home means that people should be able to function within a system that allows for peace and love and mercy to be extended by members to one another, but when any one person expects to rule the others by force, unrest follows.
There are a few “rules of thumb” (meaning well-established ideas that over time and through experience have proven true) that can be applied to family leadership.
Parents have the right to lead their children. They are more experienced in life and they are supposed to be able to control themselves. (This rule becomes void if a parent can not control him or her self due to issues such as immaturity, substance abuse, poor self-esteem, or the like.)
Two parents should agree upon how they will approach things like finances, how disagreements will be resolved within their partnership (central leadership issues), having or not having children, discipline of those children, where to live, and such things without the involvement of small children. Involvement of children too early will undermine parental oneness and thus their ability to lead the family. It is super important for the parents to be a team and to present a united front.
Single parenting means taking all responsibility to lead upon one’s self. Do it. Don’t make a parent out of a child. The child may seem to like to be consulted on all things, but they really are not ready for such decisions, and it will ultimately undermine their sense of security.
My mother used to tell my two brothers and me that “a well disciplined child is a happy child” whenever she had to discipline us. Often she would go on to say that a child who acted well around others would be well-liked by others, which would make them happy, while a child who acted badly would not be liked by other people and would thus be unhappy. We children disliked her thought process during that time because we were always receiving discipline, but I think she was actually right.
Often disciplining a child makes life harder for the parent at the time. It is a bitter pill for a parent to swallow to have to leave a restaurant or store or social gathering with a child who is out of control, but if you ever want to get that child under control, it has to be done. Putting a child in “time out” or a firm tap with you hand on the bottom of the child, or whatever method of discipline seems to work best for your child is bitter also. Parents dislike disciplining children because it is no fun. But living with an undisciplined child becomes almost perpetual “no fun”.
Discipline of children is actually about leadership. A new baby gets his/her needs met through crying. It is the only mechanism that a baby has at first to get the attention he or she needs and deserves. As the baby grows, he/she continues to expect to get his/her needs (and now “wants”) met through demanding. Now the discipline must start, because the child has to learn how to live without demanding and how to wait and how needs are different from “wants”.
Proper leadership will take into account the child’s age, temperament, and general approach to things. Some children are easy. They roll with the parents as the parents apply leadership (teaching, rules, etc.). Some children are strong-willed and will fight the parents for control. Leading the compliant child will be a snap compared to leading a strong-willed child. Never judge another parent until you have had to “walk in their moccasins”.
Good discipline starts with good teaching. If a child has not been taught what is expected, then any expectation must be scrapped. Truly good teaching should be applied three times for each and every topic before discipline can begin, because the child has to first hear the teaching once, then understand the teaching, and then be able to hear it again. It is easier to learn through repetition, and before we require that a child do what we have asked, we should make sure he/she has understood what we are asking of him/her
After good teaching has been given three times, a child can be expected to do what he has been taught. Now the trick is to give the child a chance to do what you have asked before you apply whatever type of discipline you think is successful with your child. I used “counting to three”. If I had a disobedient child on my hands, and I knew I had taught that child three times as to how to act in a given circumstance, I would say in a very firm (think Teacher of tenth graders) voice, “Betty (Name of child), I am going to count to three!” My children knew that if I got to three, they were in trouble! Trouble ALWAYS had to follow. THIS is the key!!! Discipline MUST BE CONSISTENT to be effective!!! I can’t stress that enough! If you waffle, if you give in because you are on the phone or you are out at a restaurant or you are tired, or, or, the next time you say you are going to do something, your child will not believe you. Counting is wonderful because once the children know that getting to three means UH OH, they will obey you at one or two. Pretty soon you never have to use UH OH, whatever that is in your house. I use to take six or seven children ages eleven and under to church with me, put them in the row with coloring books and some little bags of Cheerios, and I could hold up fingers 1. , 2. I did it with the tenth grade teacher face, and quiet reigned. But it took some wild doing to get us to that point. I have hauled children out of restaurants and stores more times than I can remember. I have turned the van around and gone home as we were headed to a very exciting outing because the crazy behind my driver’s seat was getting out of hand. I have had to miss many events and many things that I dearly wanted to attend because a child needed discipline or needed my care. But here’s the thing, IT IS WORTH THE EFFORT!!!
My seven children were not angels, but they weren’t out of hand, either. And when we got to the teenage years and beyond, they were able to handle themselves in a way that made my husband and me proud. They were able to self-discipline. They stood up to their peers when the going got tough. They had good heads on their shoulders. They did their homework. They graduated from college. I don’t take credit for any of that. They are super adults today, and that is totally their doing, but the discipline they received as young children may have given them some tools.