The New Dare to Discipline (3 page)

This factor is also of vital importance to Christian parents who wish to transmit their love for Jesus Christ to their sons and daughters. Why? Because young children typically identify their parents . . . and especially their fathers . . . with God. Therefore, if Mom and Dad are not worthy of respect, then neither are their morals, their country, their values and beliefs, or even their religious faith.

I was shocked to see this close identification between God and me in the mind of our son when he was two years old. Ryan had watched his mother and me pray before we ate each meal, but he had never been asked to say grace. One day when I was out of town on a business trip, Shirley spontaneously turned to the toddler and asked if he would like to pray before they ate. The invitation startled him, but he folded his little hands, bowed his head, and said, “I love you, Daddy. Amen.”

When I returned home and Shirley told me what had happened, the story unsettled me. I hadn’t realized the degree to which Ryan linked me with his “Heavenly Father.” I wasn’t even sure I wanted to stand in those shoes. It was too big a job, and I didn’t want the responsibility. But I had no choice, nor do you. God has given us the assignment of representing Him during the formative years of parenting. That’s why it is so critically important for us to acquaint our kids with God’s two predominant natures . . . His unfathomable love and His justice. If we love our children but permit them to treat us disrespectfully and with disdain, we have distorted their understanding of the Father. On the other hand, if we are rigid disciplinarians who show no love, we have tipped the scales in the other direction. What we teach our children about the Lord is a function, to some degree, of how we model love and discipline in our relationship with them. Scary, huh?

The issue of respect is also useful in guiding parents’ interpretation of given behavior. First, they should decide whether an undesirable act represents a direct challenge to their authority . . . to their leadership position as the father or mother. The form of disciplinary action they take should depend on the result of that evaluation.

For example, suppose little Chris is acting silly in the living room and falls into a table, breaking many expensive china cups and other trinkets. Or suppose Wendy loses her bicycle or leaves her mother’s coffeepot out in the rain. These are acts of childish irresponsibility and should be handled as such. Perhaps the parent will ignore the event or maybe have the child work to pay for the losses—depending on his age and maturity, of course.

However, these examples do not constitute direct challenges to authority. They do not emanate from willful, haughty disobedience and therefore should not result in serious discipline. In my opinion, spankings (which we will discuss later) should be reserved for the moment a child (between the age of eighteen months to ten years old) expresses to parents a defiant “I will not!” or “You shut up!” When youngsters convey this kind of sjpg-necked rebellion, you must be willing to respond to the challenge immediately. When nose-to-nose confrontation occurs between you and your child, it is not the time to discuss the virtues of obedience. It is not the occasion to send him to his room to pout. Nor is it appropriate to postpone disciplinary measures until your tired spouse plods home from work.

You have drawn a line in the dirt, and the child has deliberately flopped his bony little toe across it. Who is going to win? Who has the most courage? Who is in charge here? If you do not conclusively answer these questions for your strong-willed children, they will precipitate other battles designed to ask them again and again. It is the ultimate paradox of childhood that youngsters want to be led, but insist that their parents earn the right to lead them.

When mothers and fathers fail to take charge in moments of challenge, they create for themselves and their families a potential lifetime of heartache. That’s what happened in the case of the Holloways, who were the parents of a teen named Becky (not their real names). Mr. Holloway came to see me in desperation one afternoon and related the cause for his concern. Becky had never been required to obey or respect her parents, and her early years were a strain on the entire family. Mrs. Holloway was confident Becky would eventually become more manageable, but that never happened. She held her parents in utter contempt from her youngest childhood and was sullen, disrespectful, selfish, and uncooperative. Mr. and Mrs. Holloway did not feel they had the right to make demands on their daughter, so they smiled politely and pretended not to notice her horrid behavior.

Their magnanimous attitude became more difficult to maintain as Becky steamrolled into puberty and adolescence. She was a perpetual malcontent, sneering at her family in disgust. Mr. and Mrs. Holloway were afraid to antagonize her in any way because she would throw the most violent tantrums imaginable. They were victims of emotional blackmail. They thought they could buy her cooperation, which led them to install a private telephone in her room. She accepted it without gratitude and accumulated a staggering bill during the first month of usage.

They thought a party might make her happy, and Mrs. Hol-loway worked very hard to decorate the house and prepare refreshments. On the appointed evening, a mob of dirty, profane teens swarmed into the house, breaking and destroying the furnishings. During the course of the evening, Mrs. Hol-loway said something that angered Becky. The girl struck her mother and left her lying in a pool of blood in the bathroom.

Away from home at the time, Mr. Holloway returned to find his wife helpless on the floor; he located his unconcerned daughter in the backyard, dancing with friends. As he described for me the details of their recent nightmare, he spoke with tears in his eyes. His wife, he said, was still in the hospital contemplating her parental failures as she recovered from her wounds.

Parents like the Holloways often fail to understand how love and discipline interact to influence the attitudes of a child. These two aspects of a relationship are not opposites working against each other. They are two dimensions of the same quality. One demands the other. Disciplinary action is not an assault on parental love; it is a function of it. Appropriate punishment is not something parents do
to
a beloved child; it is something done
for
him or her. That simple understanding when Becky was younger could have spared the Holloways an adolescent nightmare.

Their attitude when Becky rebelled as a preschooler should have been, “I love you too much to let you behave like that.” For the small child, word pictures can help convey this message more clearly. The following is a story I used with our very young children when they crossed the line of unacceptable behavior:

I knew of a little bird who was in his nest with his mommy. The mommy bird went off to find some worms to eat, and she told the little bird not to get out of the nest while she was gone. But the little bird didn’t mind her. He jumped out of the nest and fell to the ground where a big cat got him. When I tell you to mind me, it is because I know what is best for you, just as the mommy bird did with her baby bird. When I tell you to stay in the front yard, it’s because I don’t want you to run in the street and get hit by a car. I love you, and I don’t want anything to happen to you. If you don’t mind me, I’ll have to spank you to help you remember how important it is. Do you understand?

My own mother had an unusually keen understanding of good disciplinary procedures, as I have indicated. She was very tolerant of my childishness, and I found her reasonable on most issues. If I was late coming home from school and I could explain what caused the delay, that was the end of the matter. If I didn’t get my work done, we could sit down and reach an agreement for future action. But there was one matter on which she was absolutely rigid: She did not tolerate sassiness. She knew that backtalk and what she called “lip” were a child’s most potent weapon to defiance and had to be discouraged.

I learned very early that if I was going to launch a flippant attack on her, I had better be standing at least twelve feet away. This distance was necessary to avoid an instantaneous response—usually aimed at my backside.

The day I learned the importance of staying out of reach shines like a neon light in my mind. I made the costly mistake of sassing her when I was about four feet away. I knew I had crossed the line and wondered what she would do about it. It didn’t take long to find out. Mom wheeled around to grab something with which to express her displeasure, and her hand landed on a girdle. Those were the days when a girdle was lined with rivets and mysterious panels. She drew back and swung that abominable garment in my direction, and I can still hear it whistling through the air. The intended blow caught me across the chest, followed by a multitude of straps and buckles, wrapping themselves around my midsection. She gave me an entire thrashing with one blow! But from that day forward, I measured my words carefully when addressing my mother. I never spoke disrespectfully to her again, even when she was seventy-five years old.

I have shared that story many times through the years, to an interesting response. Most people found it funny and fully understood the innocuous meaning of that moment. A few others, who never met my mother and had no knowledge of her great love for me, quickly condemned her for the abusiveness of that event. One Christian psychologist even wrote a chapter in his book on the viciousness of that spanking. Another man in Wichita, Kansas, was so furious at me for telling the story that he refused to come hear me speak. Later he admitted he had misread the word girdle, thinking my mother had hit me with a
griddle
.

If you’re inclined to agree with the critics, please hear me out. I am the only person on earth who can report accurately the impact of my mother’s action. I’m the only one who lived it. And I’m here to tell you that the girdle-blow was an act of love! My mother would have laid down her life for me in a heartbeat, and I always knew it. She would not have harmed a hair on my fuzzy head. Yes, she was angry at my insolence, but her sudden reaction was a corrective maneuver. We both knew I richly deserved it. And that is why the momentary pain of that event did not assault my self-worth. Believe it or not, it made me feel loved. Take it or leave it, Dr. Psychologist, but that’s the truth.

Now let me say the obvious. I can easily see how the same setting could have represented profound rejection and hostil- ity of the first order. If I had not known I was loved . . . if I had not deserved the punishment . . . if I had been frequently and unjustly struck for minor offenses . . . I would have suffered serious damage from the same whirring girdle. The minor pain was not the critical variable. The
meaning
of the event is what mattered.

This single episode illustrates why it is so difficult to conduct definitive research on child-rearing practices. The critical factors are too subjective to be randomized and analyzed. That complexity also explains why social workers seeking to rescue children from abusive homes often have such problems being fair. Many good parents in loving homes have lost custody of their sons and daughters because of evidence that is misinterpreted. For example, a dime-sized bruise on the buttocks of a fair-skinned child may or may not indicate an abusive situation. It all depends. In an otherwise secure and loving home, that bruise may have had no greater psychological impact than a skinned knee or a stubbed toe. Again, the significant issue is not the small abrasion; it is the
meaning
behind it—the way it occurred and the overall tone of the relationship. Nevertheless, grief-stricken parents have lost their children on the basis of a single piece of evidence of that nature. We call it parent abuse.

Please don’t write and accuse me of defending parents who routinely bruise and harm their children even in a minor way. It is wrong. It should not happen. But someone should have the courage to say we must look at the
total
relationship before removing a child from the security of a good home and not base a life-changing decision on a single bit of evidence.

Getting back to our theme of respect, let me emphasize that it will not work properly as a unilateral affair; it must run both ways. Parents cannot require their children to treat them with dignity if they will not do the same in return. Parents should be gentle with their child’s ego, never belittling or embarrassing him or her in front of friends. Discipline should usually be administered away from the curious eyes of gloating onlookers. Children should not be laughed at if it makes them uncomfortable. Their strong feelings and requests, even if foolish, should be given an honest appraisal. They should feel that their parents “really
do
care about me.” Self-esteem is the most fragile attribute in human nature. It can be damaged by very minor incidents, and its reconstruction is often difficult to engineer.

Thus, a father who is sarcastic and biting in his criticism of children cannot expect to receive genuine respect in return. His offspring might
fear
him enough to conceal their contempt. But revenge will often be sought in adolescence. Children know the wisdom of the old axiom, “Don’t mock the alligator until you are across the stream.” Thus, a vicious, toothy father may intimidate his household for a time, but if he does not demonstrate respect for its inhabitants, they may return his hostility when they reach the safety of early adulthood.

FULL-BLOWN TODDLERHOOD

Before leaving the topic of respect, let’s say a few words about that marvelous time of life known as toddlerhood. It begins with a bang (like the crash of a lamp or a porcelain vase) at about eighteen months of age and runs hot and heavy until about the third birthday. A toddler is the most hard- nosed opponent of law and order, and he honestly believes the universe circles around him. In his cute little way, he is curious and charming and funny and lovable and exciting . . . and selfish and demanding, and rebellious and destructive. Comedian Bill Cosby must have had some personal losses at the hands of toddlers, for he is quoted as saying, “Give me two hundred active two-year-olds and I could conquer the world.”