Discipline...the very word causes my flesh to tingle!  Why?  Parents in schools expect excellent discipline in classrooms, but they can’t even agree between spouses just what “excellent discipline” methods are!  That’s the very reason students play one parent against the other - usually bypassing the harder disciplinarian and going straight to the “easy mark,” as I’ve heard one student say.

    There’s an old adage that “one teaches as they were taught themselves.”  I’m glad that isn’t reality.  My mother made me go break the branch off a neighbor’s peach tree to bring to her when I broke rules - then she spanked me with it.  Yes, it hurt...it left small welts (for a while), but no...the authorities were not called.  Did I learn a lesson?  Yes!  Behave!

    Today I hear parents trying to be their child’s friend, rather than maintaining their parental role.  In that role, they allow major decisions to be made by the child...decisions that are often life-changing.  This is shocking since the child does not yet have the discernment to weigh the possible outcomes.

    I still have a letter written to me by a former student who really “told me off” for “riding his case.”  When he gave me the note after class, I acknowledged its content, including the foul language.  However, I still made him follow the rules.  Yet, later when he was in high school across town, he showed up in my classroom one day.  I asked him why he wasn’t in school. He told me that another boy with a knife was after him to hurt him over a girl he liked.  I asked why he came to me.  He said, “I didn’t know where else I could go.  I need your help.”  So, I helped.

    I’ve often thought about that incident.  His mother related to me just recently that he always spoke about me.  I believe he knew I followed rules (unless they defied common sense as some do today) and thus, I could be counted upon to help him do what was right.

    So I ask, why are parents surprised when their children who’ve been “in charge” make seriously poor choices, fail to launch, and take sometimes fatal risks?  Hmmm, I wonder.

Parents and schools should promote rules that are positively safety-based.  Then they should hold children “accountable” for failure to obey those rules.  Helicopter parenting, knee-jerk reactions, and allowing the child to be in control all hinder discipline. Children make choices, and they have to be taught which ones are right and which ones are wrong.

-        Kay