Consistency

Young children have short memories.  It is important to keep discipline from day to day consistent.  I do not believe in spanking personally, I think it is a very temporary fix to a potentially very long term problem.  I also don’t believe in simple time outs, for the same reason.  I think it is important for a child to be pro-active in his/her discipline.  I guess I believe in discipline and not punishment.  Here is an example of what I mean.  When one of my kids do something wrong, I make them stand straight as possible (don’t let them lock their knees if your going to try this) and hold a pen with their index fingers arms straight out in front of them.  I explain what they did wrong, and why it is wrong, and then I ask them for feed back.  This way I keep their mind occupied; while their bodies are getting physically strong (a pen can feel like 200 pounds after a time in this position) I only recommend 5 minutes to start.  If they do it again, I will use this method twice as long as the last time.  I’ve only had to enforce it more than once, one time, when my oldest was having a difficult time not interrupting people while they were talking.  Then I realized that the reason he did it a second time, was because my wife had accidently caught the living room carpet, and fireplace mantle on fire, so I had to apologize to him for this, as he was interrupting me because of an emergency.  I did decide to make him hold the pen anyway so that he remembered to say FIRE when he saw an emergency of that nature.  The point is, so far in 10 years neither of my children has made the same mistake twice, and my oldest generally disciplines himself.  I really think I owe this to consistency.

“Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.”

--Publilius Syrus