Discipline Your Kids — Methods For The 21st Century

Discipline Your Kids — Methods For The 21st Century



Discipline Your Kids — Methods For The 21st Century



“We
have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren’t firm enough with
their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their
resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have
imposed on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of
intentions. We didn’t realize until it was too late how our know-it-all
attitude was undermining the self assurance of parents.”


Do you know who said this? This is a famous passage from a Redbook
interview with Dr. Benjamin Spock in his later years . The irony of
this is that Dr. Spock himself, in his book, “The Common Sense Book of
Baby and Child Care” had recommended the relaxation of parental
authority and the accommodating of a child’s feelings, to allow
children to express themselves. In fairness to him, he wrote at a time
when parenting had likely been overly strict for generations, rarely
accommodating the child, and some of his ideas were good.


Unfortunately, his writings ushered in an era of permissive parenting
that has swung the pendulum so far the other way that it has completely
transformed society. Some of the changes, to be sure, are good. But
overall, I do believe that we have done a disservice to our children
and to ourselves by abstaining from the kind of discipline that will
produce a healthy adult when we are done raising the child. We worry
that discipline will alienate our children, but on the contrary, good
discipline, understood and applied well , will endear us to our
children and cement that relationship into adulthood.
Huh? How is this possible? First, let me give you a new definition
of discipline. When we think of discipline, many of us think of it this
way: our child does something wrong in disobedience of the rules, we
naturally become angry, and punish the child–we take away TV for a day,
ground them, or we may even lash out at the child — spank them and send
them to their room until we can cool off . But this is not good
discipline — often it’s just blowing a gasket, and it is typically
counterproductive.



Here is my own definition of discipline:


“The process by which a parent wisely and lovingly uses whatever
effective means he chooses, to discourage undesirable behavior, and
redirect his child’s actions to those which are desirable. This process
is rooted in love for the child, with the practical aim of getting the
child to conform to the rules governing his household, for his own
welfare, and never out of sheer anger or cruelty.”


It’s important to lay the foundation of good relations with your
kids early. Here are some points that may help you in your quest to
raise wonderful kids that you really like, and who like you, even
through the teen years:



1. Don’t take your child’s disobedience in their early years personally.
This guiding principle has absolutely saved my relationship with my
children. As we already know, children are born a blank slate in lots
of ways. While they do have their very own unique temperament that will
not change much in the course of their lives, their habits, attitudes
and overall approach to life are very malleable early on. How do they
learn about life? By emulating others, and experimenting with actions
to see the results. This is GOOD and with the correct response by those
around them, young children can be taught to adopt the correct
attitudes and habits. If we realize this, and don’t see our children’s
disobedience as something personal against our authority, we can stay
objective enough to carry out true discipline in a calm, even loving
way. In those early years, when they disobey, they are actually
watching you, to see what you will do. Your response, especially during
those early days, plays a key role in molding their future actions. If
you do your job in these early days when their actions are not yet
malicious, you will end up with a child later that does not purposely
and willfully disobey defy you much. This is why I say, “Don’t take
your child’s disobedience in the EARLY years personally”. If you don’t
do your job at this stage, you will definitely find yourself taking
your teen’s willful defiance VERY personally, because it will be
intended as such.


2. Carry the long-term view with you when you discipline your child.
One of the most important jobs as a parent, of course , is to prepare
you child to enter the world later on. Each task that you carry out
day-to-day with your child prepares them for this. When you are tempted
to take the easy road, and just let your child do as he likes, rather
than confronting the issue, please remember that each action like this
is a building block of his approach to life when he reaches adulthood .
Certainly you don’t have to be the perfect parent, but the vast
majority of your actions should be in support of your long-term goal of
producing the kind of adult that YOU would like! Let me build on this
idea now:



3. Model the response that the world will have towards your child during adulthood. Your child must learn that every act will have a result throughout his life.
In the world, there will be negative consequences to negative behavior
that do not exist for your child today. For instance, if your child
assaults someone as an adult, he will probably end up in jail.
Obviously this is not going to happen to your little cherub today, when
he scratches or hits another child on the playground. But it is
important to prepare him for life’s consequences down the line, by
modeling them through the use of an appropriate consequence today. To
fail to give him the consequence today is to show, erroneously, that
the world will not mind if he misbehaves in society later. Indeed, no
parent does his child a favor by withholding the discipline that will
help the child learn what will be expected of him in this life. As
parents we must model a similar intolerance to misbehavior that the
world will, as uncomfortable as it may be to us when we love our little
ones so much. It is better for your child to learn his lessons now, at
the hands of a loving parent, than to suffer much more later on, in a
world that will chew him up and spit him out for not having learned
those lessons.



4. Help your young child understand the other side of the unkind things he may do to others.
So many times we see our children do mean things to other children, and
we wonder why they would do that. Often, they are simply curious, or
because they have not experienced the receiving end of an unkind act,
they don’t understand what they are doing. A simple example of this is
the issue of biting in toddlers. My boy was a biter, but not for long,
I can tell you. I hear parents often debating about biting the child
back to get him to stop. My response? Absolutely bite him back!
The few times my son bit his sisters, it was clear that he found their
response (crying, wailing, and running to mama) hilarious. He had
absolutely no idea the pain he had caused. How could he, when he had
never been bitten himself? So I simply helped him to understand this,
and nothing more. The very FIRST time he bit one of his sisters, I
calmly put his little finger in my mouth and slowly brought my teeth
down, just until his sweet little face wrinkled up, starting to cry,
then I stopped. As his cries faded in a moment, I said, firmly, right
in his face, eye-to-eye, “Don’t bite”. Well, he bit them exactly two
more times, with the same consequence, and then it stopped. Don’t feel
guilty about helping your child to experience the other side of his
unpleasant acts. This is the loving thing to do, and will
produce empathy in your child, when he sees how it feels himself. The
mystery to me is how so many parents pass up these golden
opportunities, thinking that it will be cruel. What is cruel is NOT
helping them to understand.



Please know that I am not advocating “doing something mean back to
the child in revenge”, and I say this because I know that some would
view an act like this exactly that way, and would say that this teaches
a child to do mean things back. But retaliation is NOT the goal – curbing negative behavior while creating empathy
is the goal, and your child can be made to understand this, believe me.
They are smarter than we give them credit for, and they can see the
difference between someone just being mean, and your showing a
consequence to their negative action, provided you are responding in a
calm, even friendly way.


5. Don’t assume that your children cannot understand the long-term goal of discipline.
This is another key misconception among parents that pits the
generations against each other. I know this sounds odd, but make your
child part of your team on the subject of his own discipline.
It is possible, even desirable. Perhaps the easiest way for me to get
this across is to give you an absurdly simple monologue of what you
might say to your child when they have grievously misbehaved. First, as
mentioned above, don’t take it personally. See it for what it is — an
experiment in seeing what society’s response will be (i.e. your
response at this stage). So compose yourself before talking to your
child, and be matter-of fact.



“Little Mary, you know you are not allowed to slap your baby brother
when he tries to take your toy. He is a baby and doesn’t know any
better. When you go to school, the teachers will not allow you to do
that — you’ll be punished and made to stay in the classroom, while
everybody else is outside playing. You don’t want that, right?” (This
appeals to little Mary’s natural sense of self-gratification, a trait
that will never go away and can be capitalized upon.) Of course, little
Mary doesn’t want this, even though it may not happen for a while, if
ever.
But she does not see this time gap now. All she knows is that she
doesn’t want to experience missing out on play time.
Continuing…”Because I love you, I don’t want to see that happen
either, and it’s my job as your mom to help you understand that when
you do something mean like that to someone else, things may happen back
to you that you don’t like. So right now, I’m going to ______________
to help you to understand this. (Fill in the blank with your preferred
method of unpleasant consequence.) I’m not mad at you, I just don’t
like to see you doing mean things that will hurt others, because that
will make things harder for you too! And being kind to others will make
them want to be kind back to you.” (Again, appealing to her sense of
fairness and self-gratification, a concept brilliantly encapsulated in
the good old-fashioned Golden Rule.) Then, of course, you must calmly
carry out the discipline, comforting where necessary.
This is a simple version of the meaningful conversations I have had
with my own children many, many times.

When these words are said
lovingly, and the consequence is carried out with understanding between
parent and child, it really can be a very beautiful experience for
both. Personally, these episodes have produced some of the most
touching and meaningful interactions between my children and me. I know
this sounds counter-intuitive, but I am telling you that your child
really can understand what is going on, if you give him the chance.
There is simply no reason that good discipline should put a wedge
between you and your child. In fact, my children would joke about the
consequence that I gave them regularly — they didn’t like receiving it,
of course, but they truly understood why I did it, and that if they
stayed within the confines of what was allowed, the whole family was
happy. They liked this, and became almost willing partners in the quest
for a peaceful household, through following the rules.


Give your children plenty of love, and plenty of discipline. They
will grow into people that you will love and enjoy spending time with —
important during the teen years.



Copyright Susan Sylvia 2010
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Discipline Your Kids — Methods For The 21st Century By house | January 24, 2010