DISCIPLINE-HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH, HOW MUCH IS TOO LITTLE

(These thoughts are changed three times a week and cover a gamut of subjects, approaches and insights)

I used to be perfect. I gave it up. It made people nervous. Needless to say perfection is an impossibility. However, we still tried to teach our 7 children to embrace a self-improvement program. It was sometimes as easy as trying to cram a round peg in a square hole but other times we felt we were actually making progress.

There were certain guidelines we concocted and found worked reasonably well. The first thing we did with each child, as soon as we felt it wasn’t a waste of good breath was to discuss what discipline was, why it was and how we planned on administering it. We ask them to repeat back what we said in their own words which upped the odds that they were understanding at least some of what was being communicated. Not that they liked what they were hearing but that they understood it.

We told them they would always get their day in court once they followed certain ground rules. They could not throw tantrums or give three reasons why the disciplinary action was wrong and in reality it be one excuse couched in three different ways. We set a time limit for the discussion (No longer than five minutes) and allowed them to sit down and plan their verbal debate. When the five minutes was up we sometimes changed our minds but as we had told them, most likely that would not happen.

The rules and regulations we made were few, not so many that no one could remember them all but those we had, once negotiated were written in stone rather than in mush. We explained that overwhelming permissiveness would just succeed in driving all of us crazy. We also knew that children of too permissive parents wonder if they are really loved. More than once I’ve had a teenager say to me, “My parents don’t love me. They don’t care enough to take the risk of me getting mad at them.’

And yes...Love during discipline is always a must. Like sugar it makes the medicine of discipline go down easier.