I stole a pack of Clorets (gum) when I was four years old. I hid them in a kitchen cupboard and would periodically get a piece to enjoy. One day my mom found them. Dang it! I had been caught.
My mom took the gum, made me go back to the store and confess my burglary, apologize, then pay what I owed. I was so embarrassed.
But I had learned a lesson. Don’t steal. Be honest. Got it.
The years passed and I was a young teenager, shopping with my mom and sister in the grocery store. We passed a tower of peanuts—not packaged up, just piled up, open for the world ( or at least me) to admire. I could smell them as we walked by. YUM!
My sister and I each grabbed a peanut. Just ONE.
My mom checked out and I cracked open the peanut shell as we headed to the car. Mom turned immediately and asked where we got the peanuts??
Sheepishly, we admitted we had each taken a peanut from the pile inside. Mom told us we had stolen and had to pay! We argued about the ridiculousness of paying for ONE PEANUT, about how much we should even pay for it, and how it really wasn’t stealing anyway.
WELL.
Mom was unwavering. She waited while we walked back inside ( each with a penny or a dime, I can’t remember), and handed the change to a store employee, along with a mumbled apology for stealing.
Lesson learned. AGAIN.
But this time, it did stick. I have never stolen anything again. Not even ONE delicious peanut.
This was how discipline worked in my life. Yes, I got in trouble for plenty of things, and discipline was like training—learning—to do the right thing.
The word discipline actually comes from the Latin discipulus, which means pupil or student.
Discipline was instruction.
Training.
Learning.
But then—the word discipline became synonymous with punishment only. Harsh, mean, punitive, and abusive.
Uh oh.
There’s been a shift.
And it’s not good.
From my observations, parents have decided to leave discipline on the side of the road. It’s been left behind. There is no training. No correction. No learning. Parents and children are simply just living in the same home, everyone getting older together.
Ugh!
It’s madness, people.
Why have parents at all if there is no teaching? Is a parent’s role really just to pay for the life of a child?? It is crazy to think that kids will grow up to be lovely people without instruction and training! It does NOT HAPPEN. Does anyone even read Lord of the Flies anymore? Anarchy always follows no discipline.
I watched a little boy chuck a basketball right at his brother’s head. He hit him, straight on, and his mother laughed. No teaching moment. Just pure chaos.
It’s time to wake up and realize that discipline is not a bad word. Discipline is teaching. Discipline is learning. Discipline is training. Discipline is correction.
Society at large is more chaotic than ever. It will not get better without an intervention.
We need a return to discipline. and that starts in the home.
With ME.
And with YOU.
