3 C's of Good Discipline

When we discipline a child, we not only bring out a desirable behavior; we bring out a desirable person. The kind of discipline we administer can therefore give a preview of the kind of person our child will be in the future. Hence, disciplining is not only a parental routine and expectation; it is a highly delicate responsibility that deserves and requires thorough consideration.
For this issue, let me share with you three (3) C’s of good discipline.

Comprehensive Discipline. Discipline should focus not on only one or some aspects of personality. It must encompass the whole child. Many Filipino parents equate discipline with punishment. While punishment can be beneficial when properly administered, it is not the only component of good discipline. Recognition, encouragement and praises must be integral part of parenting. The end goal of disciplining is to facilitate optimum personality development by capitalizing on child’s strength while teaching him to live with his imperfections.
There are parents who are good at looking into holes of their child’s behavior. They flare up when he fails to fix his bed, flanks in a quiz, or breaks a toy. But they miss his good deeds. Praises are powerful tools in molding behavior. When a child is sufficiently recognized for an achievement, he tends to repeat it again. Well-reinforced behaviors become an integral part of personality, and a young person carries them along even as he matures.
Comprehensive discipline also implies multi-scope parenting. Academic grandeur is good, but it is not everything. A number of today’s parents focus so much on scholastic achievement that they fail to check other areas of development — values, spiritual upbringing, social relationships, and the like. There are academic giants who are poor in interpersonal dealings. There are scholars but are too skinny to be true. These are products of imbalance parenting.

Clear Discipline. In fairness to goodness, children MUST know why they are being punished, or what they are praised for. When he finishes a good drawing, it is ineffective to just say, “Anggaling mo!” It must be behavior-specific: “Anggaling mong mag-drawing!” is a better-said praise. It is noteworthy that seemingly trivial achievements are indeed big thing in the eyes of kids. And these should be praised, too.
When he misbehaves, it is futile to simply slap him without a word. Tell him clearly the reason why you have to do it. Point out what the misdemeanor precisely is, why it is wrong, and what should have been done instead. In other words, it is incomplete to say, “Mali yan!” Always pair it with “Eto ang tama….”
Discipline is not a means by which angry parents simply ventilate their fuming emotions. Our children are not chimneys or mufflers that serve as exhausts through which we can air our tempers out and pacify our wrath. An important rule in parenting is that we discipline not because of anger, but because of love! This is why psychologists discourage parents from administering discipline while they are at the peak of anger. Heightened emotions can cloud our dispositions. And when things are not clear to us, neither can they be clear at all to our kids.
At any rate, children deserve their parents’ guidance and help to avoid repeating the mistake and replace it with the desirable behavior. It will be helpful to remember that discipline is supposed to be a collaborative effort between the parents and the child.

Consistent Discipline. Discipline is not a game of taste that we do it when we want, not when we don’t. It should be consistent across time. A misbehavior must be consistently treated as a misbehavior all throughout. It doesn’t become right just because you are in a good mood. Psychologist Edward Thorndike appropriately laid down that withheld punishment is reinforcement in disguise. When a child expects to be corrected for repeating a misdemeanor for which he had been previously punished, and he is not corrected, it appears to him that his misdemeanor is “rewarded”. He will therefore tend to repeat it over again.
This is one reason why disciplining is a task that requires an ocean of patience. We cannot expect a child to automatically respond to our one-time rebuke. Especially during toddler period, negativism — defiance of authority and doing the opposite of parents’ orders — is very much pronounced. Little as they are, kids do sometimes intentionally disobey to “explore” our reaction. Then we should patiently, lovingly, firmly and consistently correct them.
Discipline should also be consistent across siblings. It is an entirely confusing labyrinth in the eyes of our kids if they see our inconsistencies in treating them. What would one child think and feel if another sibling is ignored for committing a mistake, which the former had been previously punished for? By way of saying, except for “tasks of age”, what is wrong for one should be wrong for all.

In closing, disciplining should not merely be an offshoot of enraged temper. It should be a well-planned long-term training program that parents must carefully, sufficiently and properly undertake. Roy Smith once said that discipline is a refining fire by which talent becomes ability. In fact it is more than that. I see it is a refining fire by which a child becomes a person.