Discipline

Being a parent and bringing up children not easy. It’s difficult, messy and fraught with mistakes that are easy to make if you do not have a sensible head on your shoulders. A refusal to listen to friends and family who pretend to know better than you is helpful. I have the utmost respect for couples who refuse to have children or more than one child, for these or other reasons.

Knowing how to discipline is huge. Too often, discipline is confused with punishment.

Discipline comes from the Latin discuplus, meaning the learner. Disciplining a child is a long-term learning process for both child and parent.

This idea of discipline is different to the one commonly associated in the minds of most Trinis, i.e. that discipline means punishment. Punishment is something external, imposed on the child which may or may not force the child to behave reasonably. Disciplining a child refers to the internal process whereby the child itself acquires self control. Acquisition of self-discipline is a continuous and slow process of many small steps forward and many small steps backward.

It’s easy to forget this and to become impatient when the child tests you, which they invariably do. Patience is difficult in our hurry, hurry society. It is impossible to be patient with a child without spending a lot of time with that child. If you don’t have time, consider not having children.

Example is key. The saying, “Do as I say, not as I do” does not work when teaching children. Children are almost impossible to fool and quick to detect hypocrisy. Parents who tell children what to do and then don’t do what they say, are ineffectual teachers. Their children become confused and they lose trust. Once trust is gone, disciplining is impossible.

The objective of childhood is to become an adult. To do this, a child needs to attach himself to someone who he can trust. He needs to believe in their perfection in order to feel safe and confident in an insecure world. He needs to form himself in the image of his parents or of the people closest to him who protect and love him. It is up to these people to build on this need for attachment, to promote self-control and a lasting inner commitment to become a disciplined person. When he is still a child, too young to understand human frailty, you destroy the image he has of you when you say one thing and do otherwise.

Children see through hyperbole and quackery very, very quickly.

Consistency is essential. You should try to respond to similar situations in the same manner. Children become confused with changing or shifting rules. This easily happens when young parents live with their in-laws and have differences of opinions with them on how to bring up a child. Consistent discipline begins at birth. Set limits and stick to them at least 51 per cent of the time. Your child will continually try to test these limits. This is normal. You do not have to do the correct thing all the time. Mistakes are inevitable but healthy children will adapt and quickly swing back to the norm.

So, successful parenting is about helping children develop self-esteem and self-control. In order to have both, they must be confident and believe they are secure, loved, and of value to their parents. To do that, it’s necessary to build up your child’s confidence. Praise is an important part of this. Too often, the opposite is the norm and whilst most of our children may not be physically abused as much anymore, the amount of verbal abuse they are subjected to in their home, at school and even in public, is astounding.

Unfortunately, a necessary prerequisite for children to develop self-esteem and self-control, is for parents to have developed self-esteem and self-control themselves. That is the foundation of discipline. All other considerations flow from it. There are many families where this is not the case. Dysfunctional families create dysfunctional children. Both seem to be overly represented in public. Many of our local role models, politicians, professionals, businessmen and sportsmen, are obvious examples, saying one thing and doing another.

Parents will complain of being unable to discipline their children and ask for psychological assessment for them. Those of us in the field know the parents are the ones who really need the psychological assistance. That’s difficult to accept. Occasionally, assessing the child helps the parent understand their own problems. An open mind, honest discussion and trust, that remarkably vanishing commodity, helps.

Patience, example, trust, consistency, praise and honesty. These are the keywords which refer to disciplining children. It not easy.

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