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Lesson One: I’ve Got a Secret!
Chapter 1
What is Discipline?
“The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.”
—Bill Cosby
Whether it is justice or discipline or just plain quiet, all parents are concerned about the behavior of their children. All parents want to know the secret to raising their children to be responsible, productive, and happy members of society.
Over the years, I have created a number of courses about students and discipline for teachers. In researching and writing those courses, I learned a great deal about children and behavior. I have learned what works and what does not work. I am writing this to share what I have learned.
When my children were growing up and I had to deal with their misbehavior, I remember asking myself, “Am I doing the right thing?” I didn’t have a course that taught me about children and discipline. I had to learn from experience, and learning from experience is tough on children and on parents.
The goal is to give you the information, language, and skills you need to guide your children toward appropriate, responsible behavior. Hopefully, what you learn will make your job as a parent less stressful, more rewarding, and, ultimately, more enjoyable.
In this first chapter of lesson 1, you will learn a very important so-called secret about children and discipline. Then, in the four chapters that follow, you will learn how to use this secret to solve discipline problems at home.
To begin, read the following scene, and see if anything in it sounds familiar. You might call this a typical scene, in a typical household, between a typical child and a typical parent:
PARENT: (Enters child's room and frowns in disgust) Jamie, didn’t I tell you to clean up your room?
CHILD: Yeah.
PARENT: How many times do I have to tell you something?
CHILD: I don’t know.
PARENT: What do you mean you don’t know?
CHILD: Huh?
PARENT: You heard me. Now, if you don’t get this room cleaned up right this minute, you’re really going to get it.
CHILD: So?
PARENT: So? You want to be grounded for the rest of your natural life? Now get to work and clean up this room.
CHILD: Later.
PARENT: Don’t you talk back to me. (Now yelling) Now get to work!
CHILD: I said I’ll do it later.
PARENT: (Yelling again) That’s it, you are grounded!
CHILD: For how long?
PARENT: Until I say you are not grounded.
CHILD: That’s not fair.
PARENT: I’ve had it with you!
(Parent leaves the room and slams the door)
What is the result of this brief exchange? The child has avoided doing a job and has been punished, but has learned nothing about responsibility. The parent feels upset, frustrated,and probably a little guilty. And the room still is not cleaned up. The results are not good, but they certainly are typical.
If there is one problem that all parents have in common, it is discipline. Unfortunately, the word discipline has come to mean something that parents do to children. All too often, punishment is what is done to children. You will learn that you do not have to punish children to get them to behave.
Have you ever wondered why children can behave like angels at school but are absolutely uncontrollable at home? If you have, there is a simple answer. Teachers have been trained to manage their students’ behavior. In that training, they were taught a very important secret about children and discipline: You cannot force children (or anyone, for that matter) to do anything they do not want to do. You might be able to gain compliance with the use of threats, punishment, and rewards, but that compliance will be very short-lived.
You cannot force children to do anything they do not want to do. Think about that for a minute. How often have you tried to force your child to do something he or she absolutely did not want to do? And what was the result? An argument? Yelling and screaming? Your child in tears? You in tears?
Have you ever tried to force a two-year-old to take a bath when he or she did not want to? Have you tried to get your fourth-grader to stop playing video games and do homework when he or she didn’t want to? Have you tried to get you teenagers to do anything they did not want to do?
Family therapist Carleton Kendrick tells a story that describes a typical teenager’s attitude and illustrates my point about trying to force children to do anything:
An adolescent girl, who had been moody and glum with her parents for several months, was heading out to the movies with her friends. As she walked out the door, her mom waved to her and said, “Have a good time.” The daughter turned around and snapped, “How dare you tell me what to do.”
Perhaps that story is a bit of an exaggeration, but it does have a good deal of truth in it. Children of any age do not like being told what to do. They do not like being controlled.
If you can’t control your children, does this mean that parents need to step back and just let children do whatever they want to do? Absolutely not. Being too permissive with children is just as harmful as being too controlling. Neither of these approaches teaches children about responsibility, nor recognizes the true meaning of discipline.
The word discipline is derived from the Latin word meaning “teaching.” In the Bible, for instance, a disciple is a pupil, a student, someone being taught. Therefore, when we talk about disciplining children, we should be talking about teaching them. That is the objective: to teach you how to teach your children to behave appropriately.
In dealing successfully with discipline problems, most teachers have something that you don’t have: a plan. They have thought about student behavior and have planned what they are going to do both when a child behaves and when a child misbehaves.
Having a discipline plan has many benefits. Most important, when a discipline problem arises, you don’t have to react emotionally. Losing your temper does not solve a problem. It only makes things worse. If you have a plan, however, you will know ahead of time what you will do when Johnny won’t go to bed, or Amy comes home after her curfew, or Josh won’t do his homework.
Teachers not only have a discipline plan but also teach that plan to their students. They teach their students the rules of the classroom, what will happen when they choose to follow the rules, and what will happen if they choose not to follow the rules and miss out on the good things following rules can bring.
Notice what this use of a discipline plan accomplishes. First, the children know the rules; they know what is expected of them. They know what will happen if they follow or if they break the rules. It is their choice. This is placing the responsibility where it belongs: on the child. Also notice that the emphasis is on positive consequences earned or missed, not on negative consequences. (Throughout this writing, I will use the terms punishment and negative consequences interchangeably because, as you will learn, they are really the same thing.)
This is how children are taught about responsibility. They do not learn about responsibility through punishment, or through rewards. They learn it by making choices and learning to live with the consequences of those choices.
This is the secret of effective discipline. It is not finding better ways to control children and forcing them to behave in a certain way. It is finding ways to help children take control of their own lives and learn to make responsible choices.
At this point, many of you might be thinking, “This is not the way I was brought up. When I was a kid, I obeyed my parents, or else I was in big trouble.”
What has happened? Are today’s children different? You bet they are, and that is the subject of the next chapter.
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