Thursday, November 17, 2005
Extreme Discipline
I caught this article titled Mom Makes Daughter Stand on Street Corner and it got me thinking about the topic of disciplining kids as I have been seeing this lately to my wife's nephew and niece along with my cousin's boys. These kids are between 2 to around 4 years old.
This article is interesting because a mom used an extreme disciplining tactic after growing tired of her 14 year old daughter's continuing poor grades and chronic lateness to school. So the mom made her daughter stand at a street intersection holding a sign that says "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."
As the article also says, there will most likely be two camps on this issue. Some will think this further harms the child rather then benefits. And the other camp would think this is the perfect solution to deal with difficult to manage kids.
I think I would sit on the latter camp simply because this camp always works. And like my wife keeps saying, kids know what they're doing when they're howling and scowling for stuff even at an early age so it's best to nip it in the bud before it's difficult to nip when the kid is older.
But sometimes the problem with discipline is that the kid forgets about it the next day and then the cycle begins. I like the mention about reinforcing the negative effects of discipline with the positive effects of praise so that the kid isn't always under discipline. I think this is good because there must be a balance. Just as parents need to discipline when their kids cross the bad threshold, parents should also do the same when their kids cross the good threshold. I know that the kid should be made to understand that having free room and board is already the praise they're getting everyday. I totally agree with that as the kid should also understand how things come to be. But without the matching praise when the kid does good, I feel the kid and the parents will never know the good effects from praise. The way I see it, it's like at work. Most managers would tell the employee when they've done a good job. Besides money, this helps strengthen the employee-manager-company relationship.
This discussion can go on and on and I think no one belief will apply to all kids. At the end of the day, the parents have to do their homework and hopefully find out what works best for their kids. I'm also ending here cause it's getting late. Initially I wanted to write more but I'm getting tired writing this and watching tv. hehe
This article is interesting because a mom used an extreme disciplining tactic after growing tired of her 14 year old daughter's continuing poor grades and chronic lateness to school. So the mom made her daughter stand at a street intersection holding a sign that says "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."
As the article also says, there will most likely be two camps on this issue. Some will think this further harms the child rather then benefits. And the other camp would think this is the perfect solution to deal with difficult to manage kids.
I think I would sit on the latter camp simply because this camp always works. And like my wife keeps saying, kids know what they're doing when they're howling and scowling for stuff even at an early age so it's best to nip it in the bud before it's difficult to nip when the kid is older.
But sometimes the problem with discipline is that the kid forgets about it the next day and then the cycle begins. I like the mention about reinforcing the negative effects of discipline with the positive effects of praise so that the kid isn't always under discipline. I think this is good because there must be a balance. Just as parents need to discipline when their kids cross the bad threshold, parents should also do the same when their kids cross the good threshold. I know that the kid should be made to understand that having free room and board is already the praise they're getting everyday. I totally agree with that as the kid should also understand how things come to be. But without the matching praise when the kid does good, I feel the kid and the parents will never know the good effects from praise. The way I see it, it's like at work. Most managers would tell the employee when they've done a good job. Besides money, this helps strengthen the employee-manager-company relationship.
This discussion can go on and on and I think no one belief will apply to all kids. At the end of the day, the parents have to do their homework and hopefully find out what works best for their kids. I'm also ending here cause it's getting late. Initially I wanted to write more but I'm getting tired writing this and watching tv. hehe
# posted by kfcblog @ 10:15 AM 
