The New Dare to Discipline (16 page)
Read The New Dare to Discipline Online
Authors: James Dobson
I have smiled in amusement many times as second- and third-grade children astutely evaluated the relative disciplinary skills of their teachers. They know how a class should be conducted. I only wish all of their teachers were equally aware of this important attribute.
Q
Can you give us a guideline for how much work children
should be given to do?
A
There should be a healthy balance between work and play. Many farm children of the past had daily chores that made life pretty difficult. Early in the morning and again after school they would feed the pigs, gather the eggs, milk the cows, and bring in the wood. Little time was reserved for fun, and childhood became a pretty drab experience. That was an extreme position, and I certainly don’t favor its return.
However, contrast that level of responsibility with its opposite, recommended by Neill, where we shouldn’t even ask our children to water the lawn or let out the cat. According to this recommendation, Junior should be allowed to lie on his overfed stomach watching six or eight hours of worthless television while his schoolwork gathers dust in the corner. Both extremes, as usual, are harmful to the child. The logical middle ground can be found by giving the child an exposure to responsibility and work, but preserving time for his play and fun. The amount of time devoted to each activity should vary with the age of the child, gradually requiring more work as he grows older.
A FINAL THOUGHT
As we conclude this discussion of discipline in learning, I would like to return to an interview published in the first edition of
Dare to Discipline.
It was originally printed in
U.S.
News & World Report,
April, 1965, and featured world renowned criminologists, Professor and Mrs. Sheldon Glueck.
6
The Gluecks are most noted for their longitudinal study of juvenile delinquency and its causes. Note how prophetic their words were as they described the teens of their day and where society appeared to be moving.
U.S. News: What seems to be causing delinquency to
grow so fast
nowadays?
Glueck: There are many causes for this. For the most part, however, what we are seeing now is a process that has been going on since the second World War.
First, you have more and more mothers going to work. Many have left their children more or less unattended, at home or on the streets. This has deprived children of the constant guidance and sense of security they need from their mothers in their early years.
Along with that change, parental attitudes toward disciplining their young have changed quite rapidly. In the home and outside, the trend has been steadily toward more permissiveness—that is, placing fewer restraints and limits on behavior.
U.S. News: How has that philosophy worked out in practice?
Glueck: Not very well, it seems, Life requires a certain amount of discipline. You need it in the classroom, you need it in the home, you need it in society at large. After all, the Ten Commandments impose a discipline.
Unless general
restraints are built into the character of children, you can
arrive eventually at social chaos.
U.S. News: Are you saying that moral values are crumbling?
(Author’s note: This question preceded the so-called “new
morality” by several years.)
Glueck: This is part of the picture. Not only parents, but others are uncertain in many cases as to what is morally right or wrong, and that makes discipline harder to enforce.
For instance, children today are being exposed to all kinds of moving pictures and books. It is difficult to decide what moving pictures and books should be censored.
In a broad sense, actually, you might feel that censorship in general is undesirable. Yet you also know that restraint must be imposed at some point—especially where children are involved. But in trying to decide at what point restraint should be imposed, it very often turns out that no restraint at all results. And it is this lack of restraint in the home and on the outside that is back of so much of our delinquency.
U.S. News: Do juvenile courts tend to be too soft on youngsters?
Glueck: Sometimes, yes, but more often there is inconsistency because judges have wide discretion; and they may rely on intuition and hunches rather than the use of predictive data which their staff could gather for them on each case.
U.S. News: Then is stern punishment a deterrent to further crime?
Glueck: Certainty of punishment is definitely a deterrent. After all, fear is a primary emotion in man. It plays an important part in his training. We have gone rather far in the other direction, in letting the child feel that he isn’t going to be punished for his misdeeds.
Of course, it is wrong to rely exclusively on fear of punishment, but it is equally wrong to do away with this deterrent.
U.S. News: Can schools help in keeping children from developing into
troublemakers?
Glueck: They certainly can. As we have said, there are children whose energies are not suited to long periods of sitting still and whose adventuresomeness has to be satisfied in some acceptable way.
We also think that one of the basic needs of schools, along with other elements of society, is a general recognition that rules must be observed—that, without rules, you drift into chaos and tyranny and into taking the law into your own hands. You see it not only among delinquents, but among young college students, in their demand for more and more freedom from restraints and from higher authority.
U.S. News: Do you look for crime and delinquency to grow?
Glueck:
Probably. Our own feeling is that, unless much is done to
check the vicious cycles involved, we are in for a period of
violence beyond anything we have yet seen
.
All you have to do is to read about the murders and assaults taking place in New York subways. Only a few years ago nobody thought of public conveyances as being unsafe.
We foresee no letup in this trend
. A delinquent child often grows up to produce delinquent children—not as a matter of heredity, but of his own unresolved conflicts which make him an ineffective parent.
Professor and Mrs. Glueck clearly anticipated the anarchy that is now rumbling through the midsection of democracy. Even they, however, might not have expected drive-by shootings, random killings, and murders over minor arguments in traffic. Isn’t it time for us to address the root causes which the Gluecks recognized three decades ago?
W
e have been discussing the importance of discipline in the parent-child relationship, particularly as concerned with obedience, respect, and responsibility. We have also examined the importance of authority in the classroom. Now it is appropriate to examine another aspect of discipline: that dealing with the training of a child’s mental faculties and moral character.
The primary concern will be with the millions of children who do not succeed in school—the “academic casualties” who cannot, or will not, carry the intellectual responsibility expected of them. Their parents cry and beg and threaten; their teachers push and shove and warn. Nevertheless, they sit year after year in passive resistance to the adult coercion. Who are these youngsters for whom academic discipline seems so difficult? Are they lazy? Are they unintelligent? Do they care? Are our teaching methods ineffective? How can we help them avoid the sting of failure in these early experiences?
During my years of service as a school psychologist, I was impressed by the similarities in the students who were referred to me with learning problems. Although each child was an individual with unique characteristics, the majority of failing youngsters shared certain kinds of problems. There were several sets of circumstances which repeatedly interfered with disciplined learning in the classroom. In this chapter and the next, I will describe the three major categories of children who do poorly in school. Parents should look closely for the footprints of their own children.
THE LATE BLOOMER
Donald is five years old and will soon go to kindergarten. He is an immature little fellow who is still his mama’s baby in many ways. Compared to his friends, Donald’s language is childish and he lacks physical coordination. He cries three or four times a day, and other children take advantage of his innocence. A developmental psychologist or a pediatrician would verify that Donald is neither physically ill nor mentally retarded; he is merely progressing on a slower physiological timetable than most children his age.
Nevertheless, Donald’s fifth birthday has arrived, and everyone knows that five-year-olds go to kindergarten. He is looking forward to school, but deep inside he is rather tense about this new challenge. He knows his mother is anxious for him to do well in school, although he doesn’t really know why. His father has told him he will be a “failure” if he doesn’t get a good education.
He’s not certain what a failure is, but he sure doesn’t want to be one. Mom and Dad are expecting something outstanding from him and he hopes he won’t disappoint them. His sister Pamela is in the second grade now; she is doing well. She can read and print her letters and she knows the names of every day in the week. Donald hopes he will learn those things too.
Kindergarten proves to be tranquil for Donald. He rides the tricycle and pulls the wagon and plays with the toy clock. He prefers to play alone for long periods of time, provided his teacher, Miss Moss, is nearby. It is clear to Miss Moss that Donald is immature and unready for the first grade, and she talks to his parents about the possibility of delaying him for a year.
“Flunk kindergarten?!” says his father. “How can the kid flunk kindergarten? How can anybody flunk kindergarten?”
Miss Moss tries to explain that Donald has not failed kindergarten; he merely needs another year to develop before entering the first grade. The suggestion sends his father into a glandular upheaval.
“The kid is six years old; he should be learning to read and write. What good is it doing him to drag around that dumb wagon and ride on a stupid tricycle? Get the kid in the first grade!”
Miss Moss and her principal reluctantly comply. The following September Donald clutches his Mickey Mouse lunch pail and walks on wobbly legs to the first grade. From day one he has academic trouble, and reading seems to be his biggest source of difficulty. His new teacher, Miss Fudge, introduces the alphabet to her class, and Donald realizes that most of his friends have already learned it. He has a little catching up to do. But too quickly Miss Fudge begins teaching something new. She wants the class to learn the sounds each letter represents, and soon he is even further behind.
Before long, the class begins to read stories about interesting things. Some children can zing right along, but Donald is still working on the alphabet. Miss Fudge divides the class into three reading groups according to their initial skill. She wants to conceal the fact that one group is doing more poorly than the others, so she gives them the camouflage names of “Lions,” “Tigers,” and “Giraffes.” Miss Fudge’s motive is noble, but she fools no one. It takes students about two minutes to realize that the Giraffes are all stupid! Donald begins to worry about his lack of progress, and the gnawing thought looms that there may be something drastically wrong with him.
During the first parent-teacher conference in October, Miss Fudge tells Donald’s parents about his problems in school. She describes his immaturity and his inability to concentrate or sit still in the classroom. He’s out of his seat most of the day.
“Nonsense,” says his father. “What the kid needs is a little drill.” He insists that Donald bring home his books, allowing father and son to sit down for an extended academic exercise. But everything Donald does irritates his father. His childish mind wanders and he forgets the things he was told five minutes before. As his father’s tension mounts, Donald’s productivity descends. At one point, Donald’s father crashes his hand down on the table and bellows, “Would you just pay attention and quit being so STUPID!” The child will never forget that knifing assessment.
Whereas Donald struggled vainly to learn during his early days in school, by November he has become disinterested and unmotivated. He looks out the window. He draws and doodles with his pencil. He whispers and plays. Since he can’t read, he can neither spell, write, or do his social studies. He is uninvolved and bored, not knowing what is going on most of the time. He feels weird and inadequate.
“Please stand, Donald, and read the next paragraph,” says his teacher. He stands and shifts his weight from foot to foot as he struggles to identify the first word. The girls snicker and he hears one of the boys say, “What a dummy!” The problem began as a developmental lag, but has now become an emotional time bomb and a growing hatred for school.
The tragedy is that Donald need not have suffered the humiliation of academic failure. One more year of growing and maturing would have prepared him to cope with the educational responsibilities which are now destroying him. A child’s age is the
worst
possible criterion on which to determine the beginning of his school career. Six-year-old children vary tremendously in their degree of maturity. Some are precocious and wise, while others are mere babies like Donald. Furthermore, the development of boys tends to be about six months behind girls at this age. As can be seen, a slow-maturing boy who turns six right before school starts is miles behind most of his peers. This immaturity has profound social and intellectual implications.
One reason an immature child does poorly in school may be related to the absence of an organic substance called myelin. At birth, the nervous system of a body is not insulated. An infant is unable to reach out and grasp an object because the electrical command or impulse is lost on its journey from the brain to the hand. Gradually, a whitish substance (myelin) begins to coat the nerve fibers, allowing controlled muscular action to occur.
Myelinization proceeds from the head downward (cephalo-caudal) and from the center of the body outward (proximodis-tal). In other words, a child can control the movement of his head and neck before the rest of his body. Control of the shoulder precedes the elbow, which precedes the wrist, which precedes the large muscles in the hands, which precedes small muscle coordination of the fingers.
Elementary school children are taught block letter printing before they learn cursive writing because of the delayed development of minute finger control. This development pattern is critically important to the late bloomer. Since the visual apparatus in humans is usually among the last neural mechanisms to be myelinated, the immature child may not have undergone this necessary development process by the time he is six.
A child who is extremely immature and uncoordinated may be neurologically unprepared for the intellectual tasks of reading and writing. Reading, particularly, is a highly complex neurological process. The visual stimulus must be relayed to the brain without distortion where it should be interpreted and retained in the memory. Not all six-year-olds are equipped to perform this task. Unfortunately, however, our culture permits few exceptions or deviations from the established timetable. A six-year-old must learn to read or else face the emotional consequences of failure.
The question may be asked, “Why doesn’t the late bloomer catch up with his class when he matures in subsequent years?” If the problem were simply a physical phenomenon, the slow maturing child could be expected to gain on his early developing friends. However, emotional factors are invariably tangled in this difficulty.
The self-image is amazingly simple to damage but exceedingly difficult to reconstruct. Once a child begins to think he’s stupid, incapable, ignorant, or foolish, the concept is not easily eliminated. If he falters in the early academic setting, he is squeezed by the viselike demands at school and expectations at home. The emotional pressure is often unresolv-able. There is no rationalization he can give parents and teachers to explain his perceived failure. Nor is there a balm they can offer which will help soothe his damaged psyche. His self-concept is often wounded by this tension, and his personality will probably reflect the experience well into adult life.
The solution for late bloomers is relatively simple: instead of scheduling the child’s entrance into the first grade according to his age, the optimal timetable should be determined by neurological, psychological, social, and pediatric variables. A simple screening test could identify extreme cases, such as Donald. The majority of children could begin school at six, although more flexibility would be reserved for the exceptional child.
Regardless of the school’s adoption or rejection of this recommendation, I would suggest that parents of an immature kindergarten youngster have him examined for educational readiness by a child development specialist (child psychologist, pediatrician, neurologist, etc.). This procedure should be a “must” for slow-maturing boys for whom birthdays occur late in the academic year. The consequences of doing this cannot be underestimated. This simple procedure may spare your child many years of grief.
If it is determined that the child is a late bloomer, he can either repeat kindergarten or stay at home for another year or two. Despite common wisdom on this issue, kids who are home-schooled in the first few years of elementary school do not tend to be maladjusted or handicapped when they reenter formal education. Nor are they “unsocialized.” If parents are willing to bring the at-home child into their world, talking to them and allowing them to go to the store, take field trips, help cook and work in the garage with dad, they do not need hour upon hour of formal desk work.
1
Research on this issue has been specific and most encouraging.
2
What happens, then, when the time for re-entry occurs? In most cases, those home-schooled kids catch up and pass their classmates in a matter of months. They’re also inclined to be leaders in years to come
3
because they haven’t been bludgeoned in the early days of vulnerability. In other words, they are less peer-dependent.
4
If that seems strange, remember that Jesus didn’t go to school until He was twelve years old. That was the custom in Israel in those days. Formal classwork for the immature child, and indeed, even for the go-getter, is simply not necessary at the very young ages. I know this fact contradicts what the National Education Association would like us to believe; they recommend mandatory education for all four year olds. It is also unpopular among parents who have two-career families and need some safe, wholesome place for their children. But that effort to take children out of the home at an earlier age simply will not conform to the realities of child development.
This is why the home-schooling movement is growing by leaps and bounds. Our organization, Focus on the Family, recently polled a random sample of four thousand constituents to see what trends and opinions were evident among them. To our surprise, 13 percent were involved in home schooling. Though challenging for mothers (and fathers), this approach to the education of the next generation has been highly successful. It is especially appropriate for kids like Donald, who need some time to grow up before formal class-work begins.
At the time I first authored
Dare to Discipline,
I had never heard of home schooling. I had been taught in graduate school to believe in the value of earlier and earlier formal classroom experience. Now, I am an enthusiastic supporter of keeping kids with their parents for a longer time. Dr. Raymond Moore, author of
School Can Wait
and an early leader of the home-schooling movement, had a great influence on me in the early eighties. Admittedly, home schooling is not for everyone, but it has been highly successful for most who have tried it. I will say this: If Shirley and I had to do it over, we would have home-schooled our two children, at least for the first few years!
Whether you home-school your little “Donald” or simply allow him to repeat kindergarten, I strongly recommend that he be spared academic pressure until he can get his spindly legs stabilized beneath his body.
THE SLOW LEARNER
The “slow learner” is another youngster likely to have great trouble with academic discipline, resulting from his inability to learn as quickly as his peers. Before going further, I must ask the reader to endure a brief technical explanation at this point. To understand slow learners, we must refer to the normal distribution of intelligence quotients representing the general population.
