Discipline Your Children -- They'll Love You For It!
Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009
by Susan Sylvia
Ram in the Thicket
"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."
Huh? How is this possible? First, let me give you a new definition of discipline. When we imagine discipline, many of us think of it this way: our child does something wrong in direct defiance 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 regroup. But this is not good discipline -- often it's just blowing a gasket, and it is usually 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. Never 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 many ways. While they do have their very own unique temperament that will not change much over their lifetime, their habits, attitudes and overall approach to life are very malleable in the early years. 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 guided into adopting the correct attitudes and habits. If we realize this, and don't view 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 literally watching you, to see what you will do. Your response, especially during those early days, plays a key role in molding their future actions.
Please understand that I do not believe that children are born all good and sweet and that they tend not to intentionally disobey. They are the most selfish little creatures on earth, and they will not hesitate to run roughshod over you if you let them. They really can be nasty little things! But the fact is that they do spend a lot of time simply experimenting in the early years, trying out actions and words from sheer ignorance of what is expected, or out of curiosity. If you do your job in these early days when the actions are not yet malicious, you will have a child later that does not purposely and willfully defy you much. This is why I say, "Don't take your child's disobedience in the EARLY years personally". If you do not do your job at this stage, you will certainly 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, naturally, 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 do everything perfectly, 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 undesirable behavior that do not exist for your child today. For instance, if your child assaults someone as an adult, he will likely end up in jail. Obviously this is not going to happen to your little darling today, when he scratched or hit another child on the playground. But it is vital to prepare him for life's consequences down the line, by modeling them through the use of an appropriate consequence today. You will decide the consequence, and your child, at four years old, will accept it as law from you, the ruler in his young life. To fail to give him the consequence today is to teach him, 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 come to understand 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 seem to us when we love our little ones so much. It is better for your child to suffer a little at the hands of a loving parent and to learn his lessons now, 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.
So I ask you, which is more loving? To teach a child the hard lessons of life at an early age, using discipline that will be unpleasant for both of you sometimes, or to withhold unpleasant discipline, even though the child is obviously out of control, and let him suffer from his actions throughout his life? I cannot help but believe, as difficult as it can be sometimes, that it is much more loving to dole out small consequences early, so that a child learns to avoid them by living within life's limits. This is an example of how retaining the long-term view of his life, rather than focusing on his misbehavior today (and the irritation it caused you) should guide your response.
4. Help your young child understand the other end of the unkind things he may do to others. So often 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 other side, 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) quite amusing. 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 did it, 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 subsided 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. I have known several mothers who bemoan their child's habit of biting, and because they refuse to help the child understand how that feels to the person they bite, they are left allowing it to continue, while standing by lamenting each event. 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 bypass 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 retaliation" and I say this because I know that some parents 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. (Remember, you are not taking any of it personally, but you are taking the opportunity, when your child misbehaves, to teach him. This attitude makes it possible to carry out discipline in a positive way, which is the key to getting your child to understand what you are doing.) I have more to say on the topic of letting your child experience negative emotions and actions, but that is another entire article. For now, let me elaborate on helping your child to understand your goal.
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 strange, but make your child part of your team on the subject of his own discipline. It is possible, and very desirable. I think 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 reaches for 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 sit 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 -- another topic for an article, "The Fine Art of Choosing a Punishment That Does the Job.) 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 simplified version of the long and meaningful conversations I have had with my own children many, many (many, many) times. When it is 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 absolutely no reason that good discipline should put a wedge between you and your child. In fact, my children came to joke about the consequence that I gave them regularly -- they didn't like receiving it, of course, but they genuinely understood why I did it, and that if they stayed within the bounds 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
There is so much more to write (a book, in fact) but this is the first installment. 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 2009
Rug Hooking Wool
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)While reading your article, I thought like if your parent punishes you for your own benefit, would you develop perpetual enmity,resentment and dislike for the parent? Of course not. And I thought is it possible that the good and loving God is sometimes making man suffer because He wants to guide man to the right path! And are we suppossed to blame God for such action. Just a thought. 'Welcome to SearchWarp'Hi Salim-- Thanks for the welcome and yours is the first comment I have received as an author -- an encouragement to me!Were I to include the spiritual angle in my article (an important personal component for me, and the foundation for my thoughts), that would certainly be exactly my point as well! We do mirror God's attitude toward us as human beings when we relate to our children. In fact, the book I am working on features passages from the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. The idea of enjoying the good times in life and learning from the hard times (discipline or otherwise) is very much a theme where God is concerned. Thanks again!Oh thanks God! so I have someone who would think like I do. Thanks Susan. May you continue to be a broad-sighted author. Oh and me too. You can see some of my articles if you get time. Nice time.
As a parent - i find it hard to discipline my kids. They just dont believe me when i tell them that 'it is good for you'. This is a good reminder as parents we have got to just do it!
Hi Harveen--Thanks for the comment -- among the first I have received as an author! I, too, find it hard to cause any negative event for my children, because I love them. I try empathizing with them about the unpleasantness of the consequence, (again, getting them on my team) and I am not afraid to tell them that I don't like doing it at all. But I ask them what life's lessons they learn from the good times they have. It is easy to see that they really don't learn too much -- they just enjoy them! The good lessons are learned through difficulty. These times are the building blocks of growing up and maturing into a wise adult who is more successful. This is something that kids really do want -- to grow up -- and I tell them that this is what I want for them, so this seems to be something my kids have been able to appreciate more than a simplified 'good for you' statement that I might make. And I think they appreciate the heart-to-heart approach that I take -- letting them in on some of my strategy. They really have been able to grasp it. Not intending to become an advice columnist, I guess I really have a desire to help wherever I can, because I sympathize so fully with the difficulty in disciplining. Thanks again for the encouragement!
Strongly agrees, you are totally right.
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