"Don't Make Me Come Out there..." or Thoughts on Disciplining Kids
My child has absolutely no respect for my authority,” said an exasperated dad sitting next to me at a dinner party. "She knows she can behave hideously without any serious consequences.” The wine was flowing. “When I was a kid, my dad would have smacked me and that would have been the end of it. Now I yell and my daughter laughs in my face!"
This master of the universe had met his match – she was small, defiant, and used to being indulged. The rules of authority this man had learned as a child no longer applied and the ones at his disposal did not seem to be working.
When I was growing up it was different. Discipline was discipline. You knew which lines not to cross. Forget and back came a withering stare, a dangerous tone, an outright threat of impending consequences. "Don’t make me take off my belt,” said my gentle, loving father who grew up at a time children were seen and not heard.
My dad’s favorite phrase was ‘Stop crying or I’ll give you something real to cry about,” said a friend laughing at the memory of her mom threatening her with a wooden spoon. Another woman confided, her divorced mom hit the back of her legs with a thin, balloon-stick. One dad made his kids kneel on a broom handle. The best was my extremely elegant European aunt who never drove the family’s Volkswagen camper without her riding crop which she used to keep her five rowdy kids under control (this was before seat belts were mandatory).No one today would even think of doing these things. And yet, they achieved their purpose. These friends are now happy, well-adjusted adults with a deep sense of right and wrong. Not one feels they were “abused” as a child. Today we reason, we negotiate, we ignore, we give time-outs, we yell (“a lot” according to the New York Times) but we never, ever, ever spank not even lightly, not even as a last resort when everything else has failed. Those who do, know better than to talk about it outside a very small circle of friends.
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