Discipline: What is it?
Is Enforcing Discipline Early On Good For a Child?
This article is based on a discussion with Andrew Lynch on his post about Discipline.
Let’s try to deconstruct discipline. Normally this is what we as parents do to the children, we train them when they are young to follow certain routines and we force them to do this irrespective of whether they like it or not, want to follow it or not, for example, brushing their teeth.
My daughter used to hate to be brushed. But we can’t really not brush their teeth, can we? So, we had to force it on her and we didn’t enjoy it.
But because of this, I like to let her be as free as she wants to be after brushing her teeth, most times even before. Because that’s when she is most awake and enthusiastic in exploration by doing fun activities: Experiments, projects call it what you may, they can keep her occupied for hours together. Look at this one:
But if we interrupt that flow of inspiration in her, by asking her to get ready for school, we are trying another form of discipline or what we call discipline but in her world, her inspiration is curbed and so, instead of freely flowing and learning according to how she is created to learn, we are forcing her to learn what we want her to learn, for instance, that she has to get ready on time and go to school where she will learn her ABC’s and 123’s.
Where are they going to go, the ABC’s and the 123’s right? Can’t they wait? They will eventually learn them too! Why take away their creativity in the name of learning? Don’t you think we are, in essence, destroying their development by doing that, enforcing what we think is best for them? Why can’t ABC’s and 123’s wait for them to choose them? Do you get what I am saying here?
But you say—but I have got to go to work to earn my bread, and you might be correct in saying that! That’s the way the world is organized. We have to choose what is best for us. As for me, my child comes first and so I try to do what’s best for her.
Having said that, now let’s move on to the one form of discipline that i digressed until now but that is the one that is frequently emphasized as discipline, one that I haven’t touched upon yet. And it is also a very good practice.
Children do need to learn the art of training themselves in withholding temporary desires and indulgences in order to learn how to achieve a purpose. This is also very important and have to be taught early on but encouraging them to choose a form of discipline (pun intended) to focus upon could be done in a better fashion, in my opinion.
It could be a sport such as running, gymnastics, swimming or even exploring creativity such as music, the arts: drawing, sketching, singing, dancing etc.
When they learn early on that doing something for up to 30 mins a day can take them places, there’s nothing like that. But we fail fantastically there as well.
Because we don’t understand which discipline to train them in and as a result thrust them into one or many and they just stop liking any or all that we try to enforce into their structure. But here’s where schools could step in and produce fantastic results.
Instead of focusing only on ABC’s and 123’s, school’s could introduce them to the various art forms, even sports and find out which ones they enjoy best and they could even go one step further to build the child upon that.
Wouldn’t that be perfect? Then there wouldn’t be a need for enforcing anything, only flow of nature within them built into structure: the framework of the school system. And there won’t be a need for us parents to take them to after school activities such as baseball practice and piano class and so on.
Then discipline would come naturally and freely and passionately and there would be freedom in discipline and expression just like Jiddu Krishnamurthi mentions. What do you think?
Let me know in the comments.
Cheers!
Here’s the article in which Andrew Lynch discussed Discipline:
Hi Shalini,
I’m so glad my words resonated with you. Thank you