26 Aug Disciplining Your Kids the Right Way

“Let the raw effigies & budding minds of attitudes, attributes and adaptations walk the path of right directions”

Ever wondered why you tend to discipline your kids, tell them certain do’s and don’ts, get fed up of their unbecoming behaviour, tell them constantly to be less childish and start growing up with maturity and take up small responsibilities — even when you disliked it yourself when your parents used to impose the same behaviour on you?

Why do we discipline our kids? Is it for their good or our selfish reasons? Let’s talk about what is a good discipline and what is not good.

When you quieten your child, not let them play because they are making too much of noise, tell them to shut up, sit at one place, sleep at a particular time no matter what, not cry, not laugh out loud, eat what they are being given, and if they don’t obey you slap them hard, these are some signs of bad discipline. You discipline your kids so that they wouldn’t cause inconvenience to you. This is because you are too busy to listen to what they want to do. You are tired of clearing up their mess, tired of listening to the noise, tired of watching them jump around for no reason, tired of wasting too much of your time on them and not having a life of your own. Well, it is understandable and nobody ever said that parenting is not hard. We do want the best for our kids but getting that best is a part of the whole long exhausting journey. Your eating, sleeping, and working habits get dismantled. Your wishes and desires get shattered. All you are now left to dream about is your child. And here you start investing all your expectations in your kids. You are giving too much of yourself to them, you want to see a return of it.

Does it all sound similar to you? I hope I am not speaking your heart out, or am I?

But parenting is not really about keeping on sacrificing a whole lot of you all the time. It is more about having invigorating patience to see a tree grow up to bear the fruit that will be sweet, colourful, and cherishing. It is all about the right approach and attitude. Yes, children need to be disciplined so that they stay on the right track, but they shouldn’t be overburdened with dos and don’ts. Every moment of life for them should not be about deciding the side of the line they want to keep their foot at. Because once they’ll start understanding that not everything is about dos and don’ts and not all dos are right and don’ts are wrong, they’ll start disobeying you, not listening to you, and becoming skeptic towards your judgments.

Imposing the right kind of discipline comes from the discipline that is in you. If you are being too impulsive, your child will eventually start adopting it and become impulsive with their irrational reactions to whatever you’ll ask them to do. Therefore, don’t control them every time for everything without any reason. If they dropped something, it might be out of mistake and they don’t need such a bad scolding. If they are not sleeping when you need to sleep, let them go and play instead of hitting them and making them cry to sleep. If they don’t want to eat a certain thing, try convincing them but don’t force it up through their throat by force. Try to come out with ways to make things interesting for them instead of making them gulp down the things that they don’t understand the worth of.

Also, try to show them that you love them as much as you are imposing the discipline on them. They need to understand the importance of discipline otherwise discipline will become their worst enemy, a cage which they eventually try to break free from. Try reasoning with them, talk about the result and consequences of their actions, tell them how one thing often leads to another, give them the examples where people choose to stay disciplined because they have a purpose or an objective. A discipline is a tool, a key, often portrayed in the form of mannerism. Discipline in itself is not the goal. Make your kids choose their discipline and they’ll become mature enough to focus on the things that matter in their life over the things that do not.