Child Discipline Issues
Child discipline issues can be tough to deal with. I want to share something that happened at my house last night because I think it might be able to help a few parents.
Now Sam is 14 years old. He was watching television and it was after 10pm. I don’t have a curfew for bed time for my teenagers during the week, but I was getting a bit frustrated as I knew that my son would have great difficulty getting up in the morning for school.
I was pondering in my mind whether I should discipline this child or whether I should just leave him alone. It was a tough choice. Of course a child should not be allowed up too late at night when they had school the next day. So I had every right to instigate some child discipline, right?
I gave him a subtle reminder about the time but Sam didn’t seem too interested in what I was saying. I hung around him for a while and his older brother went off to bed. I thought about just turning the television off and saying to Sam “please go to bed now”. How easy would that be? But I really wanted my son to think about the consequences of his actions and make his choices accordingly. So I waited for a little bit longer…
It was 10.40pm and I couldn’t stay up any longer. I said to Sam “good night” and off I went. Sam said to me “OK, I’ll go to bed now too”. I was relieved and jumped into bed. I lay in bed for a minute or two and saw the bedroom light go off in Sam’s room. I was pleased that Sam had taken my advice but to my dismay five minutes later, when Sam thought I was asleep, he turned the television back on and started watching it again. OK, what do I do now?
I got out of bed and walked into the lounge. “What are you doing?” I said to him. I don’t know why I did that. I was just surprised that he turned it on again. It was nearly 11pm by this time. Now here’s the stupid thing: I knew that it would do absolutely nothing by me going back out to him. He had made a decision to stay up late and watch the television but I just felt the need to let him know that I was watching him. How dumb is that?
OK, so was child discipline actually necessary here? I think I did the wrong thing by harassing my teenager. I sat down beside Sam and said to him, “darling, the only reason I want you to go to bed is that I am worried you won’t be able to get up on time for school tomorrow. Do you understand that?” Sam said “yes Mum, don’t worry. I’ll get up for school in time”. So I left it at that and went to bed.
I realised that I had wasted my time worrying about Sam when he was very capable of taking care of himself. I should have backed off and let him learn from his experience. As it was, Sam slept in for an extra half an hour but was still out the door in time for school. No problem.
Now Sam could have slept in and been late for school. And that would have been OK as well. If that had happened, Sam would have learned something from the process. Sometimes we actually need to let our kids make mistakes so that they can learn things in life. If Sam had been late for school, they would have held him accountable for his actions and he would have received a detention.
Parents, sometimes it is better to let our kids learn from the consequences of their actions. This was one of those occasions and I should have stepped back and let Sam figure it out for himself. When we allow our kids to learn from their mistakes, child discipline becomes much easier and we have more fun parenting.
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