Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

If you've ever seen chil­dren who have not ben­e­fit­ted from dis­ci­pline then it's clear to you why it is im­por­tant to "train up a child in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6)." The truth of that prin­ci­ple is not on­ly in the child's wel­fare but the well be­ing of the en­tire fam­i­ly. Dis­ci­pline is not on­ly good for chil­dren, it is nec­es­sary for their hap­pi­ness and well-be­ing and that of the en­tire fam­i­ly.

Among my sib­lings, we are blessed to have chil­dren who are sta­ble and pro­gres­sive and who con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to the com­mu­ni­ty. We in­her­it­ed dis­ci­pline, which I al­ways say was akin to slav­ery since the par­ents, who did their best, knew on­ly the dis­ci­pline of con­trol.

And, in the realm of par­ent­ing I would not be con­sid­ered a good par­ent be­cause my ma­trix got mud­dled with men­tal health is­sues which cre­at­ed a most­ly neg­a­tive– and se­vere­ly crit­i­cised–man­ner of dis­ci­plin­ing. Lat­er, I'd learn the prin­ci­ple of 95 per cent en­cour­age­ment; five per cent pun­ish­ment, and now every­one's amazed at how dis­ci­plined my six pets are (no joke).Yet, the fact that so much dis­ci­pline and train­ing went in­to my child is what makes me to rest com­fort­ably in the knowl­edge that he has suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to make good de­ci­sions. Notwith­stand­ing, be­ing hu­man, I ex­pect, as every par­ent should, that he would err but that should be the ex­cep­tion once we've trained our chil­dren.

It's im­per­a­tive that par­ents dis­ci­pline their chil­dren to avoid hav­ing to blame their chil­dren's out-of-con­trol con­duct on a med­ical con­di­tion. We live in a so­ci­ety where more and more such be­hav­iours are la­belled with one men­tal con­di­tion af­ter an­oth­er.Which is "not to say these con­di­tions don't ex­ist," says child­care­bridge.com. "Ob­vi­ous­ly they do; and mil­lions of kids suf­fer with the con­se­quences of them every­day. How­ev­er, there isn't al­ways a med­ical rea­son for kids' un­savoury be­hav­iours. Some­times the is­sues may sim­ply stem from lack of dis­ci­pline."

Strict par­ent­ing rais­es an­gry kids who lose in­ter­est in pleas­ing their par­ents, while per­mis­sive par­ent­ing rais­es un­hap­py kids who test their par­ents. In both cas­es, the child re­sists the par­ent's guid­ance and doesn't in­ter­nalise self dis­ci­pline.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers

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