NMR ISSUE 21

Astrological Forecast 21
Concise Lexicon of the Occult
Cricket
Discipline
Editorial 21
Faerie Love
Firewalking and the New Age
Fitting In
Hallows Eve
Lazaris on Lazaris
Letters 21
Magickal Use of the Tarot
Man in a Woman's Religion
Nature's Truth
Pelican
Realigning the Sabbats
The Oldest Magick
Understanding Your Dreams
Wicca Craft Gerina Dunwich

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Pagan Parenting: Discipline

Amanda Cummings

One of the things we parents constantly face is the question of discipline. How do we create discipline in our children? What is effective? What is appropriate? Do we as Pagans have a different perspective on this aspect of parenting than the non-Pagan world around us?

First off, let's define discipline. Webster's defines it as: 1) training that develops self-control, efficiency, etc. 2) strict control to enforce obedience 3) orderly conduct 4) a system of rules, as for a monastic order 5) treatment that corrects or punishes. As you can see, in our society's mind discipline and punishment are almost identical. I would suggest that, particularly for Pagans, these are not the same. I would like to maintain that discipline—self-discipline—is what we as parents are striving to help our children learn for themselves. This is very different from what society now accepts as discipline when it comes to children.

Why do I stress this? Because it is my hope that we grow beyond seeing our children as things" to control. We do not train our children by imposing order on them, like pets. We raise our children by teaching them how to find that order within themselves and showing them how to impose it on the world around them. We have then taught them responsibility for their world.

We have learned ourselves to view children as things or property because that is primarily how our parents had learned to view us. This is what we are used to. It is normal. Think about it: We work to manage, control, and enforce certain behaviors in our children. We impose our concept of order on them by determining what we will allow, and what we won't. We then create that order by whatever means we see as effective. This usually winds up being some system of rules which they must heed; the consequences of conformity being reward, and the consequences of non-conformity being punishment. This is what we call discipline in this society.

But is it? In this system, we use reward/punishment to coerce acceptable behavior from our children. What we have done is tell them that we are their judges and can dispense value based on their obedience. We are the brandishers of punishment. Punishment is the weapon of coercion we use to threaten our children's sense of self worth in order to get them to comply with our demands.

For instance, there is nothing dangerous or bad about a child singing at the top of their voice (as my youngest is so fond of doing). However, after 10 or 15 minutes, it is quite maddening (believe me!). The punishment/reward system parent says, Stop that singing! If the child doesn't comply with the command, the parent reissues it, Stop that singing now, or else I'll [whatever the punishment is going to be]. If the child still doesn't comply the parent punishes them.

But think about it. What have you just taught your child? I would suggest that you have just taught them that obedience is mandatory in order to have value. You have taught them that their singing has no value if you say it doesn't. You have taught them that they need to deal with you from a position of inferiority and fear (my parent will do such and such to me if I don't comply, and they can do it because they are bigger and stronger and I am little). And most of all, you have taught them how to recognize and comply when they are similarly threatened by others outside your family as they grow up. If this is an established, accepted pattern of discipline, they will also learn to coerce behavior from other people by devaluing them, thus proving themselves superior and valuable. And you have taught them nothing about showing consideration for other people, which is what the issue was in the first place.

What should we do then? This is the big challenge. We are so accustomed to systems of punishment (including rewards, but to a lesser degree), that we fail to realize that there are myriad other options for dealing with issues of behavior.

First, I think rather than demanding absolute, unthinking obedience from our children, we need to help them understand that their actions have consequences, and let them be responsible for those consequences. After all, when someone demands absolute, unthinking obedience of us as adults, how do we feel about it? Are we cooperative? Do we feel resentful? If we have no say in determining the standards for compliance, how do we feel? Helpless? Defensive? Insecure? When we do that to our children, why does it surprise us when we run into the same reactions we ourselves would have? No one likes to be absolutely controlled. And we don't want to create blindly obedient, unthinking adults out of our children, either. We want them to think, express, create. But how can they, when we tell them that CONFORMITY is the penultimate goal? How can they chart new directions for themselves and their futures when we have taught them that value comes from following and conforming? They will become small-minded, self-interested people, and we will have given society the weapons to whip them back into line.

In the earlier scenario, the issue was the parents' comfort. When my youngest goes into her 15th performance of The Itsy Bitsy Spider at the top of her lungs, my comfort is definitely the issue. Rather than demand instant compliance that she stop singing, which she wouldn't understand anyway (after all, it's her favorite song, and she sings it really well—at least to her!), I have better results by giving her choices. You can stay in here with me, if you're quiet, or you can sing outside, because I don't want to listen to you sing so loudly anymore, is what I usually say. Now the choice is the child's. It will depend on what is most important to them at that particular point in time. She will either leave the room, or come and sit quietly with me, depending on whether she wants to sing or cuddle. There is no judgment, no punishment, just a matter of consideration for my comfort. Better than half the time, she takes her act on the road. She sings loudly enough, though, that I can hear her from the back of the house, indoors, when she is outdoors in the front yard. But, at least she's not in the same room with me anymore!

Second, we must treat our children with the same respect and consideration we would like ourselves. This is a particularly difficult one for me. I yell. Sometimes a lot. Always really, really loudly! Now, yelling, in and of itself is not bad, as it expresses anger, frustration, etc. Children need to know what these things are and how to express them without doing harm. This is how I release anger and frustration. However, it is not terribly considerate, and I acknowledge that. It is also not terribly effective.

Respect and consideration mean we treat our children as people, with the rights we believe ourselves entitled to. If we treated our children considerately, we would ask for their input on decisions that affect them (and we'd listen!), we would be polite, use good manners. We would talk to them as if they had sense (because they do, you know), and children can tell when we talk down to them. How do you feel when someone does that to you? If we treated our children with respect, we would try to keep a civil tongue in our heads, but we would also apologize when wrong and make amends. And we would treat them as if they had intrinsic value, not because they could prove they had value (by obeying & conforming).

Another thing to consider is that by externally imposing our idea of order on our children, they do not learn to value the idea themselves. A popular term right now, in regard to children learning, is the word internalize. To internalize an idea is to arrive at its value on your own, and adopt that value as valid for yourself. In math, it is that point when 2+2=4 changes from something you say to please your teacher, to being two things and two more things making a group of four things. The child who gives the expected answer in order to receive praise or avoid punishment has learned how this system works, but they have not learned a thing about math. However, the child who realizes that two of anything and two more of anything makes four things, can go on to learn different addition problems, and can build on that to learn other processes. This child has internalized addition. It is now part of their discernment. If we teach children to mindlessly conform, they internalize nothing, but they learn how the system of punishment/reward works.

We are now at the heart of discipline: helping children internalize their own idea of order. In my house the battleground is cleaning their room. My children will vacuum, dust, set and clear tables, etc. with very little grumbling, and with relative efficiency; but mention cleaning their room? It's a whole other ball game: toys all over, clothes flung on the floor of the closet, stuffed under beds along with dolls, school stuff, etc.; folded clothes in the laundry (because it's easier to have mom wash them again then to put them neatly in a drawer—which should give you some clue about what their drawers look like). It's every parents nightmare, and mine in particular. I can count on go clean your room to mean a whole day of my constantly having to nag, threaten and? (You got it) YELL! The trick to helping children internalize things is to find a way to make it matter in their reality. They would rather listen to me yell for a while (and continue to fiddle around in their room) than pick it up. Talking to them about responsibility was equally ineffective. I made them a deal: I would buy them new comforters for their beds so their room would be pretty (which is important to them), if they would keep their room picked up for the 30 days it would take to get the comforters off layaway—without nagging. I was so proud of myself. I had found a way to make a clean room matter to them. Wasn't I clever? WRONG!

They began on the first day after we went shopping. Two hours to clean a room that should have taken 20 minutes. I was having to nag some, too, but from a distance. Three days later, I was in the room, livid, yelling like a raving banshee! This had gone far enough! So I left the room to cool down. When suitably deflated, I ventured back into the Twilight Zone. I calmly explained that their toys and clothes are not my responsibility, but theirs. It was their responsibility to take care of their things.

My roommate, Mike, volunteered this idea. I would survey the damage in the room. I would then give them a time limit in which to get the room clean. At the end of the time frame, they would have to leave the room. Mike would then go in and take away everything remaining to his place. So far, their room has stayed practically spotless (and a big thank you to Mike!).

The point is, it has to matter to them. Then they can assume responsibility for their behavior themselves—instead of sticking you with it. Finding some way to have the consequences touch them (thereby producing its own reward) is the tricky part. My children didn't care about the comforters for their beds. They did care about losing their things. We renegotiated the comforters. They can have the comforters after 30 days, consecutively, of keeping their room clean. Losing the toys is not negotiable. Now the comforters are a perk, a benefit for big behavior. But when you give children choices you have to a) be sure the consequences are reasonable and b) let them live with it.

When I say reasonable, I don't mean say, You can leave the car door handle alone, or fall out of the car. Tempting as that may seem sometimes, falling out of the car is not an option. Choices should pertain to the issue. Much more effective (and safer, I might add), would be, Leave the car door alone, or you will have to sit in the back seat where you can't reach the door handle. The difference between this and punishment is that the child actively participates in the choices and their results. It is not arbitrarily applied. For instance, if a child has a hard time keeping track of their allowance, you might say, You may keep your allowance in this [special place, like a piggy bank]. If you don't, and your allowance gets lost, I will not replace it when you want to buy something. Then when they want to buy ice cream at school on Friday, if they have put their money away, they will have it for ice cream. If they haven't, you will not give them more, so they will do without. The parent may then give the instructions again, I'm sorry you can't afford it this week, but if you keep your allowance in here, next time you will have money for ice cream. The parent must not cave in or the child will have to learn the lesson again later. Punishment would look like this: Either you put your money in this [whatever], or I won't give you anymore allowance.

You have to let them live with the results of their decisions. If you say no to something, then follow through. If you say I'll stop the car, then hit the brakes. The only way to learn responsibility is to have to be responsible. So let them start on little things they can manage. They can move on to bigger things later. If they are too little to pick up their whole room, give them a corner, or a specific task. They can learn to control themselves and their behavior as well.

Whining is another biggie. I learned this one from my mother. No one likes talking to whiny kids (drives me right up the wall) and some kids are whinier than others. So how do you handle this? My mother would always say, You're whining. I can't hear whiny kids, and then ignore us until we used our big voices to talk big. And you know what? It works great with my kids. They know that I can hear them, but they also know that if they want to be heard, they'd better use their big voices!

This is why punishment is counterproductive: It is externally imposing an idea on someone else, instead of teaching them to discover that idea themselves. The other practice so common today is spanking children to punish them, hereafter referred to a hitting children, since that is what you do to them. I think this is a terrible tradition in our society. I know it goes back a long way—back to when children were legally considered property. It is notoriously ineffective for two main reasons:

Hitting a kid is cruel. Think about it. Put yourself in the child's place: You are little. You are defenseless. There is this big adult (who you have a tendency to think of as god), three times your size, infinitely stronger than you, who is really angry. This is scary enough, but if they get much angrier, you know they will hit you. This is so scary that you no longer care why they are angry. When they start hitting you, all you want is to make them stop! What have you learned? Compliance means your parent won't hit you. Doesn't this sound a lot like what bullies do?

Hitting children is violent. If I did this to an adult, teaching them to do what I want by hitting them when they don't, how long would it be before someone pressed charges for assault? That's right, assault. It is against the law for adults to hit each other, but adults who hit children are disciplining them. Would you want to learn from a supervisor who would hit you if they didn't like your performance? How comfortable would you be on the job? How long would you stay there? Would you think it humiliating to be taught that way? Yet, too many people insist on teaching their children in precisely this manner. Being hit hurts, in case we've all forgotten. It hurts to be slapped, smacked, hit, knocked upside the head, pushed down, etc., etc. Yet this is acceptable when it comes to teaching your children a lesson. Violence breeds violence. One of the biggest oxymorons I've ever run into was being hit as a child for hitting my sister. It was ok for my mother to hit me, but it wasn't ok for me to hit my sister, and if I hit my sister, I would be hit by my mother. It is not acceptable to hit people, and if that is what you are going to teach your children, then you can't hit people, either. It only makes sense.

Why I think this is a particularly Pagan issue? The most obvious reason is the Wiccan Rede, which says, An it harm none, do what ye Will. Self-discipline is so important to our children's development is because of Will. To do what we Will takes balance, control of the self and the emotions, and the ability to discern what our Will is—not our whims, not our wishes, but our Wills. What do I want to accomplish? How do I go about doing this? If we are to teach our children how to take charge of their own reality, they need to learn how to recognize and participate in it effectively. And they need to be able to think for themselves. This is what imposed order through punishment/reward systems robs our children of. Independent thought cannot be tolerated in that system, but it is essential in ours. The freedom of thought is what our children lose when they are coerced into acceptable modes of reality.

An it harm none, is the crux of this discussion. I believe it is harmful to our children and their future (and our own) if we teach them to cave in, comply, think only in traditional forms, strive for acceptable ideas and toe the line. It is harmful to them when we discipline them through violence. It is harmful when we teach them the system of punishment/reward, thereby giving anyone the ability to devalue them in order to coerce the expected response from them. We have not reached the understandings and values we have, just to turn around and teach our children the system of fear we left, have we?

Children are people. As such they deserve the respect and rights we ourselves expect to enjoy. Let's start extending these things to our children now. It can make a world of difference later.