Last week, I took a deep dive into how discipline plays a significant role in raising children. You might instantly think that means, “Kids need discipline to be well behaved,” but that isn’t quite the “moral of the story.” In fact, parents need discipline too!
If you don’t have the discipline to create and follow certain parenting guidelines that you set up for yourself, then your children won’t have the necessary framework needed to develop discipline themselves. If you want to see what I mean by this, please check out last week’s blog. But for now, let’s keep going and dig deep into the role discipline plays in child-rearing!
Children Need Presence, Not Presents
Please excuse the little bit of wordplay there, but it’s very true!
All parents are afraid of spoiling their children or making them soft by giving them whatever they want, whenever they want it. By withholding attention, they rationalize that not spending time with their kids or never buying little treats will make them independent. Instead, they believe that occasionally taking big trips or buying large presents on the winter holidays will make up for a lack of quality time spent together.
Unfortunately, this is flat out wrong. Kids need your presence. They need you to hold space for them big enough for them to explore and find their edge, yet with boundaries to know you are there to catch them if they fall. To do that, you must connect with them emotionally, meet them at their level, and show you understand their world and what they are feeling.
Very young kids especially require connection with you. Please keep in mind that small children can’t regulate their own emotions. Instead, you need to be there to redirect and manage their emotions until they are strong enough to do it themselves.
I’ve found that the magic ratio is 5:1. You need to be present, notice, or compliment kids five times for every one correction you want to make to their behavior. Doing it right is a slow, ongoing process of moving ahead slowly, one step at a time.
Ignoring requests for attention will only create a desire to nag, pester, and escalate the drama until they feel you understand their needs/desires, even if those desires are not appropriate in the moment. They want to be heard. And “hearing” children and what they want is NOT spoiling them.
Reward Honesty and Empathy
Imagine that your boss demands unquestioned obedience daily, no matter how unfair they were behaving. Sounds like a terrible job, right? Well, there are many out there who subscribe to similar parenting tactics.
When compliance is forced through unquestioned obedience, then withholding, lying, and manipulation become the only tools you have to regain one’s personal power in a powerless situation. This is obviously behavior that you want to avoid encouraging in your children.
Teaching your kids to be honest with you is probably one of the hardest tasks of parenting. Kids are going to mess up, get carried away, hurt each other accidentally, break stuff, and push boundaries. Before a child trusts you with the full truth, they need to trust that you are not going to freak out and yell at them in reaction to their situation.
Most parents are like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth.” First, find out what happened. Deal calmly with the situation at hand and worry about using discipline to teach a lesson only after the situation is under control.
For minor infractions, I tell my kids they will always be in a lot less trouble if they tell the whole truth up front instead of me catching them in a lie later. After all, withholding information is also considered lying by omission. If you can connect emotionally with your children, then you can pretty easily tell if they are lying, withholding, or telling the truth (as they perceive it). When I feel uncertain if they are telling the truth, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. In other words, I trust my gut.
I have had good experiences asking my boys to go and “meditate” on the situation. It gives both parties time to cool off (more than just counting to 10). I ask them what was wrong about the situation and how they think the other person in the situation felt?
I practice repeating back to the child what they told me to show my active listening skills. This gives them an opportunity to clarify anything I might have misunderstood or assumed incorrectly. In all situations, especially in conflicts, being heard and understood are the most important parts. Many of the arguments between my boys are due to neither one really listening or understanding the other.
Lead by Example
In the end, I always keep in mind that my kids are like karmic video recorders, imprinting my responses on themselves to learn how to handle and solve situations in the future. Countless times, I have felt myself react in a way that reminded me of my mother or father. However, there are several reactions my father had that I would never want to emulate.
As a child, I remember knocking over a glass of milk and watching it roll off the table and break on the floor. He was furious and upset that I had ruined dinner with a broken glass. I knew in my heart that it was only a clumsy accident and wasn’t malicious in the least. I also knew that I never wanted to act like that when I was older.
And so, I accept the responsibility of setting a good example in my parenting and my relationship with my wife. I know my kids are watching me to learn how to handle conflict, to treat a spouse, and to be a good parent.
While I do not believe there is a mystical bank account recording my good and bad deeds to atone for at some point in the future, I do see how the way I live my life directly affects what my children learn and how they will live their lives. Is this something that you’ve felt as a parent (and spouse)? If so, please feel free to comment with your experiences below!
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