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Monday, July 28, 2025

Discipline

by

230 days ago
20241210
Dr David Bratt

Dr David Bratt

Be­ing a par­ent and bring­ing up chil­dren not easy. It’s dif­fi­cult, messy and fraught with mis­takes that are easy to make if you do not have a sen­si­ble head on your shoul­ders. A re­fusal to lis­ten to friends and fam­i­ly who pre­tend to know bet­ter than you is help­ful. I have the ut­most re­spect for cou­ples who refuse to have chil­dren or more than one child, for these or oth­er rea­sons.

Know­ing how to dis­ci­pline is huge. Too of­ten, dis­ci­pline is con­fused with pun­ish­ment.

Dis­ci­pline comes from the Latin dis­cu­plus, mean­ing the learn­er. Dis­ci­plin­ing a child is a long-term learn­ing process for both child and par­ent.

This idea of dis­ci­pline is dif­fer­ent to the one com­mon­ly as­so­ci­at­ed in the minds of most Tri­nis, i.e. that dis­ci­pline means pun­ish­ment. Pun­ish­ment is some­thing ex­ter­nal, im­posed on the child which may or may not force the child to be­have rea­son­ably. Dis­ci­plin­ing a child refers to the in­ter­nal process where­by the child it­self ac­quires self con­trol. Ac­qui­si­tion of self-dis­ci­pline is a con­tin­u­ous and slow process of many small steps for­ward and many small steps back­ward.

It’s easy to for­get this and to be­come im­pa­tient when the child tests you, which they in­vari­ably do. Pa­tience is dif­fi­cult in our hur­ry, hur­ry so­ci­ety. It is im­pos­si­ble to be pa­tient with a child with­out spend­ing a lot of time with that child. If you don’t have time, con­sid­er not hav­ing chil­dren.

Ex­am­ple is key. The say­ing, “Do as I say, not as I do” does not work when teach­ing chil­dren. Chil­dren are al­most im­pos­si­ble to fool and quick to de­tect hypocrisy. Par­ents who tell chil­dren what to do and then don’t do what they say, are in­ef­fec­tu­al teach­ers. Their chil­dren be­come con­fused and they lose trust. Once trust is gone, dis­ci­plin­ing is im­pos­si­ble.

The ob­jec­tive of child­hood is to be­come an adult. To do this, a child needs to at­tach him­self to some­one who he can trust. He needs to be­lieve in their per­fec­tion in or­der to feel safe and con­fi­dent in an in­se­cure world. He needs to form him­self in the im­age of his par­ents or of the peo­ple clos­est to him who pro­tect and love him. It is up to these peo­ple to build on this need for at­tach­ment, to pro­mote self-con­trol and a last­ing in­ner com­mit­ment to be­come a dis­ci­plined per­son. When he is still a child, too young to un­der­stand hu­man frailty, you de­stroy the im­age he has of you when you say one thing and do oth­er­wise.

Chil­dren see through hy­per­bole and quack­ery very, very quick­ly.

Con­sis­ten­cy is es­sen­tial. You should try to re­spond to sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions in the same man­ner. Chil­dren be­come con­fused with chang­ing or shift­ing rules. This eas­i­ly hap­pens when young par­ents live with their in-laws and have dif­fer­ences of opin­ions with them on how to bring up a child. Con­sis­tent dis­ci­pline be­gins at birth. Set lim­its and stick to them at least 51 per cent of the time. Your child will con­tin­u­al­ly try to test these lim­its. This is nor­mal. You do not have to do the cor­rect thing all the time. Mis­takes are in­evitable but healthy chil­dren will adapt and quick­ly swing back to the norm.

So, suc­cess­ful par­ent­ing is about help­ing chil­dren de­vel­op self-es­teem and self-con­trol. In or­der to have both, they must be con­fi­dent and be­lieve they are se­cure, loved, and of val­ue to their par­ents. To do that, it’s nec­es­sary to build up your child’s con­fi­dence. Praise is an im­por­tant part of this. Too of­ten, the op­po­site is the norm and whilst most of our chil­dren may not be phys­i­cal­ly abused as much any­more, the amount of ver­bal abuse they are sub­ject­ed to in their home, at school and even in pub­lic, is as­tound­ing.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, a nec­es­sary pre­req­ui­site for chil­dren to de­vel­op self-es­teem and self-con­trol, is for par­ents to have de­vel­oped self-es­teem and self-con­trol them­selves. That is the foun­da­tion of dis­ci­pline. All oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions flow from it. There are many fam­i­lies where this is not the case. Dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies cre­ate dys­func­tion­al chil­dren. Both seem to be over­ly rep­re­sent­ed in pub­lic. Many of our lo­cal role mod­els, politi­cians, pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­men and sports­men, are ob­vi­ous ex­am­ples, say­ing one thing and do­ing an­oth­er.

Par­ents will com­plain of be­ing un­able to dis­ci­pline their chil­dren and ask for psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment for them. Those of us in the field know the par­ents are the ones who re­al­ly need the psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sis­tance. That’s dif­fi­cult to ac­cept. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, as­sess­ing the child helps the par­ent un­der­stand their own prob­lems. An open mind, hon­est dis­cus­sion and trust, that re­mark­ably van­ish­ing com­mod­i­ty, helps.

Pa­tience, ex­am­ple, trust, con­sis­ten­cy, praise and hon­esty. These are the key­words which re­fer to dis­ci­plin­ing chil­dren. It not easy.


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