“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 an oft-quoted passage from a Redbook interview with Dr. Benjamin Spock in 1974. 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 certainly been overly strict for generations, rarely accommodating the child, and some of his ideas were healthy. Unfortunately, his ideas ushered in an era of permissive parenting that has swung the pendulum so far the other way that it has entirely changed society. Some of the changes, certainly, are good. But overall, I do think that we have done a disservice to our children and to ourselves by avoiding 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 in actual fact, 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 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 cool off . 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 bring up great 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 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 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. If you do your job in these early days when their 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 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 attitude toward life when he is grown. 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 actions 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 darling today, when he scratches or hits 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. To fail to give him the consequence today is to show, erroneously, that the world will not punish him if he breaks the rules 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. Usually, they are simply curious, or because they have not experienced the other side 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) 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. 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 think, 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. I think the easiest way for me to get this across is to give you a very 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 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 unkind 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 applied with understanding between parent and child, it really can be a very wonderful 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 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.
Susan Sylvia is a stay-at-home mom, with a husband, three teens, two dogs, one cat and a busy household! As the kids get older, she is venturing out into the world that awaits her as an empty-nester. A serious illness was a catalyst to getting on with it. She quit her job and started up her own web business selling rug hooking wool — a long-time dream. You can see the fruits of her labor at:
Hand Dyed Wool for Rug Hooking and Penny Rugs
Meanwhile, her success in raising three wonderful kids has made her a source of advice on raising kids among her peers. She is writing a book on the subject, which patiently rests on the desktop of her computer, awaiting completion. In the meantime, please enjoy her articles.
Copyright Susan Sylvia 2010
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