Dr. Sam Goldstein and I co-authored three website articles during this
past school year in anticipation of the publication of our newest book, Raising
a Self-Disciplined Child: Help Your Child to Become More Responsible,
Confident, and Resilient, published by McGraw-Hill. We
are pleased to announce that the book is now available. In our
previous articles we addressed such themes as: (a) the significance of
self-discipline throughout the lifespan, (b) different parenting and
disciplinary styles, (c) the influence of self-discipline on friendships,
and (d) the importance of adopting a preventive disciplinary approach,
such as by enlisting children to help others.
Not surprisingly, in our parenting workshops we are asked many questions
pertaining to discipline. We have heard strikingly diverse opinions
from parents about what they consider to be the most effective disciplinary
techniques. Also, many parents voice confusion and doubt about
their disciplinary practices. The interest, varying viewpoints,
and confusion expressed by parents (and professionals) served as one
catalyst for us to devote an entire book to the subject of discipline. In Raising
a Self-Disciplined Child our goal was to convey a strength-based
perspective in which discipline is cast as a significant contributor
to the emergence of self-discipline, respect, and resilience rather than
anger and resentment.
The release of Raising a Self-Disciplined Child has prompted
us to excerpt a brief section of the book in our website articles for
this month and next month. Our purpose is to provide an example
of the different views that parents hold about discipline and to illustrate
the ways in which we engage parents to consider and adopt a disciplinary
style that is guided by the concepts of respect, love, and resilience.
We hope you find this excerpt helpful as you reflect upon your own disciplinary
beliefs and practices.
* * * *
The Role of Parents
To
nurture the development of self-discipline in their children, parents
have a key ingredient to contribute: discipline. One of the most
important roles that parents play is that of disciplinarian. However,
parents fulfill this role in vastly different ways, as the following
examples illustrate.
Among the
participants in a parenting workshop we offered were two couples: Bill
and Samantha Ewing and Tom and Jennifer Franklin. Each of the couples
had three children, and in both families, the oldest child was a twelve-year-old
boy. As these parents described their twelve-year-olds, we suspected
that both boys had been born with more challenging or "difficult" temperaments.
Compared with their younger siblings, they were harder to soothe, more
irritable and argumentative, and less likely to be cooperative, especially
when they felt frustrated.
A lively
discussion ensued when the topic turned to disciplinary practices. Bill
Ewing stated, "The only thing that Jim responds to is a spanking.
You can try to reason with him for hours, and he will wear you down.
He never does what you ask. There's always an argument. When I
spank him on the rear, it gets him to do what I want. I don't have
to spank my other kids, because they do what Samantha and I ask them
to do. I guess the only way some kids learn is if you spank them. To
be honest my parents spanked me, and I turned out OK." As Bill
said this, we couldn't help but notice the anger in his voice.
His wife,
Samantha, added, "While Bill grew up in a home where his parents
spanked him, my parents never spanked me. Before we had kids, I would
have sworn that I would never yell or spank my kids, but having Jim changed
all of that. I have to agree with Bill that Jim only seems to respond
to being spanked. The only thing that bothers me is that we've
been spanking him for years and he keeps doing the same things. He's
almost a teenager. I'm
not sure if we can keep spanking him much longer."
Jennifer
Franklin jumped into the discussion. "My parents spanked me, just
as Bill's parents spanked him. I really don't think it did
much good. I still resent what they did. I know I wasn't
the easiest kid, but each time they spanked me, I became angrier. To
this day, I don't have a very good relationship with them. I must
admit that when Stevie was born, there were times I really felt like
hitting him. He made me so mad. But each time I came close to slapping
him or was ready to yell at him, I thought back to what my parents had
done to me. I didn't want Stevie to feel about me the way I felt
about my parents."
Tom Franklin
added, "I feel the same way my wife does. We've read a number
of books about raising kids, but even without the books, we know that Stevie
was born more difficult to raise. We've spent hours thinking and
talking about how to deal with him. We know we have to maintain authority
as his parents. We know that some things are nonnegotiable. But
we've found that if we select our battlegrounds carefully, if we give
him some choice in certain matters, if we speak to him calmly, he's more
reasonable and more cooperative when we ask him to do certain things. It's
still a struggle at times, but things are going more smoothly, and there
are fewer outbursts."
Upon hearing
Tom's observations, Bill replied, "I'm glad how you've
handled Stevie has worked, but it would never work for Jim. He only understands
one thing: that when we spank him, we mean business and he'd better listen
to us."
Applying the Purpose of Discipline
The
Ewings and Franklins both believed they were effective disciplinarians,
but their approaches contrasted sharply. Reflect for a moment on
your feelings about discipline. Which approach feels most comfortable
to you? Which approach do you think would work best for your child
or children?
As parents
consider an array of disciplinary practices, they often ask us, "What
are the best ways of disciplining children?" We prefer to reframe
this question by first reminding parents of the meaning of the word discipline. Discipline
derives from the word disciple and is best understood as a teaching
process. To recognize discipline as a form of education, children should
not associate it with intimidation, humiliation, or embarrassment.
Placing
discipline in the context of an educational process, parents can ponder
the main goals of discipline. Many goals are possible, but we believe
that discipline has two major functions. The first is to ensure that
children have a consistent, safe, and secure environment in which they
can learn reasonable rules, limits, and consequences as well as develop
an understanding of why these are important. The second function, equally
important but not as readily emphasized, is to nurture self-discipline
or self-control.
Applying
discipline to teach self-discipline is often a challenging task. As with
other human qualities or traits, children come to the world with different
predispositions and capacities. Some children easily develop self-discipline,
while others struggle. Some children are responsive to discipline, able
to shift their behavior quickly after a single negative experience or
disciplinary intervention, while others struggle. Still, in either case,
we want children to incorporate rather than dismiss or resent what we
are trying to teach them.
Given these
two functions of discipline, parents may wonder: "What skills must I
possess to be an effective disciplinarian?" "What skills
should I try to teach my children in order to nurture self-discipline?"
In response to the first question, we believe that disciplinary practices
are most constructive when parents display empathy, good communication
skills, the ability to change when their parenting activities are negative,
an appreciation of each child's unique temperament, and realistic
goals for their children.
However,
we have found that many well-meaning parents do not demonstrate these
qualities, so they fail to nurture self-discipline in their children.
When parents are reactive, crisis-oriented, overly punitive, harsh, belittling,
arbitrary, or inconsistent, the positive goals of discipline are likely
to suffer. Ironically, when parents resort to screaming or hitting (as
in the case of the Ewings spanking their son), they are actually displaying
the very behaviors they wish to stop in their children, serving instead
as models of poor self-discipline.
The development
of self-discipline is also compromised when the parents have very different
disciplinary styles or when parents hesitate to set limits for fear that
their children will be angry with them. (Some children take advantage
of this fear by reacting to consequences with the claim, "You don't love
me!") Finally, children will have difficulty developing self-discipline
when parents impose unrealistic expectations for behavior; these children instead
become increasingly frustrated and angry.
Developing Self-Discipline: Focus on Mindsets and Solutions
The
question, "What skills and attitudes are we trying to reinforce
in children when we discipline them?" can also be posed in the
following way: "What do we want to be the end result of our disciplinary
techniques?" We believe the answer may be found within a
concept we proposed in Raising Resilient Children: a resilient
mindset. A resilient mindset consists of assumptions and attitudes
about ourselves that support the development of behaviors and skills
that make us more resilient. In turn, our behaviors and skills
influence our set of assumptions, so a dynamic process is constantly
operating.
* * * *
We will
continue this excerpt next month, but we would encourage you to consider
the following questions before the next installment:
If one of
the main goals of discipline is to nurture a resilient mindset, what
would you list as the main characteristics of such a mindset?
What disciplinary
techniques are most likely to nurture these characteristics in children?
What disciplinary techniques are most likely to work against the development
of a resilient mindset?
If you subscribe
to the belief that a major goal of discipline is to promote self-discipline
and a resilient mindset, what observations and suggestions would you
offer the Ewings who were experiencing a great deal of difficulty and
frustration with their son Jim?
If you were
the Ewings, how might you change your disciplinary approach?
We will
respond to these questions in next month's article.
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