Discipline

Disciplining your kids is the hardest part of raising them. Your natural inclination as a parent is to give them everything they want, whether it's their favorite dessert or the newest fad toy on the market (who didn't stand in line in the pouring rain for a Cabbage Patch kid??). But if you give in to that on a regular basis, you will end up with a spoiled brat who can't get along with others and whom you hardly want around yourself.

Mark Twain had a solution: "When a boy turns 13, seal him in a barrel and feed him through a knothole. When he turns 16, plug up the hole." I'm sure he wasn't serious, although I might have been tempted had I thought of it in the midst of those terrible teen years.

My daughter is now a caseworker for a non-profit foster care agency. She has a challenging job--she sees some of the toughest cases of child abuse and neglect in the county. In some extreme cases, she may even need to recommend separation of children from their parents in order to safeguard the child. In my most egocentric moments, I want to think that she is well-prepared for her job because of the upbringing she had. The fact that she had boundaries and loving discipline as a child makes her better able to see and understand how sadly far off the mark some parents are.

Either extreme, too lax or too strict and harsh, is never good parenting. Somewhere in the middle is the gold standard: administering loving discipline and realistic boundaries. Although they squawk and complain, (and parents often find it almost as painful), most kids don't seem to thrive without a good dose of both.

I'm glad I never tried the barrel technique. But I'm also glad I stood in the rain for that Cabbage Patch kid.

"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." Hebrews 12:11