Discipline –-

The world has changed its view of appropriate discipline or punishment so many times that who knows what will be acceptable when my kids are parents. Some states have done away with the death penalty because it is inhumane, despite the fact that most of the time it’s more humane than what the person did in order to qualify.

I’ve been through a couple of these changes that fall in this category. We had a principle in elementary school that had a paddle that looked like the end of ore – and he wasn’t afraid to use it. Occassionally when someone would run in the halls he would make them lean against the wall as if they were sitting on a chair, but the chair wasn’t there. The worse part of that is you were running for a reason, hopefully it wasn’t to the bathroom.

If you had to do it very long it started to hurt. I had a seventh grade social studies teacher that uses to swat our knuckles with a yardstick. Now I’m sure I was doing something wrong – but did I deserve that? More than once I have been grabbed but the nap of the neck or ear to quickly be escorted out of a room or a situation.

These were just in school – at home we had a couple of other rules. My mom would threaten us with a wooden spoon, but she was more bark than bite. Now my father followed through a couple of times on his threats. Disciplining our children isn’t always a positive experience, depending on which child; different things seemed to be effective. But I will admit that for the first two children spanking was an option – until I crossed the line.

This is told in my daughter’s own words – “It sounded like thunder beating on the carpeted floor as I shoved my little body into the smallest crack behind the closet door of the closest room I could run to. I was frantic, not enough time, not enough room, the door is opening, and he sees me - crap. I was a goner.

Well it was bad but not too bad now that it is over, I guess, I thought as I pulled down my pants to look at the red handprint though the leftover tears. It was bad enough that I would get to show mom at least she would make him sorry. I knew how to play the game. Look at what dad did mom! I re-teared for effect. My tiny bum had goose bumps from being exposed and sure enough the handprint wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. This was not the first time I had been on the losing end of my father’s disciple but it may have been the last. Truth be told, I probably deserved a good spanking every now and again.”

In reality she did – but that is the last time I remember doing it. The later kids are thankful. Each kid is different, my son all I had to do is look at him sternly and he not only would get the message but also start to tear up. One of the younger ones made me want to go back to spanking – the only thing that seems to be effective is taking away her cell phone.

The fact is that no one does what you want them to do all of the time – and sometimes that’s good because we’re wrong ourselves. The older we get and have a little more experience, the more we realize that some of these things don’t matter as much as we think they do. The older kids always complain that the younger one get away with murder compared to what they had to do. It seems that each year our curfews are later, the allowances are larger, and our discipline isn’t as violent.

Maybe its just because I’m just older and slower than I use to be, or maybe I’ve started to pick my battles and not get as mad on the things that really don’t matter. I don’t remember what my daughter did that night, but everything else is crystal clear – especially my wife’s reaction – yeah that little girl knew how to play the game.