Discipline and Your Preteen: Striking a Balance

I can remember reaching the point in my childhood where I no longer saw my parents as infallible. I reasoned that if they allowed for their own mistakes, then they should allow for mine, and I argued this point every time they tried to discipline me for the error of my ways. I always presumed that they wanted to punish me because they were angry, not once did I ever stop to think about the question, "did you learn your lesson". I thought it was an expression - like break a leg, and I thought the lesson was "don't make them mad"! I never once looked at it as a learning experience, and that is a shame.

Discipline used as a verb simply means to teach by instruction or practice; to teach self control. Funny, that didn't come across at all when I was sitting in my room for a week! The idea behind discipline is not to punish our children for doing wrong, but to teach them the ways to do right. This concept puts a whole new spin on things for me, even today.

If our goal is to teach someone what to do, as opposed to teaching them what not to do, then the entire process has a positive ring to it (not that you could convince your child of this). For me, at least, it also changes my goal as a parent. Instead of using the traditional grounding or loss of privilege, it opens up a whole world of choices.

For instance, what if instead of not letting my son play his video games because he did not clean up his room (even though I have asked him nothing short of a million times), we spent some time volunteering at or collecting goods for our local homeless shelter for families? He wouldn't waste time begrudging me for taking away something that is rightfully his. He would spend time seeing first hand how blessed we are to even have rooms to clean up.

What if the next time the clearly superior palate of my preteen turns its' nose up at dinner, instead of doling out my usual "no snacks" ruling, we took a few minutes to learn what the children of Afghanistan had to eat and how to cook it. Then prepared it together, and ate it together the next evening. My son can't even remember what it was that he refused to eat last night, but I can guarantee that he would remember a lesson like that for a long time to come.

Looking back on my own life, I remember that I was grounded - a lot - but I couldn't tell you what I was supposed to learn from any of it, aside from doing what my parents said in the effort to not anger them. While I know that this type of parenting initially takes more energy than what I have done in the past, I believe that it will balance out because what is learned is truly taken to heart and I will spend a lot less time repeating the same lessons over and over again.