Listen to thisDiscipline takes more time, and requires more work than punishment
Discipline requires that we do a lot of thinking before and during the
intervention, and asks that we design, not merely administer, an
intervention that will teach the young person something about the
situation, or about him/herself, and that it will enable the individual
to handle it better next time. We must consider who are behaving in the
unacceptable way, what we know about their history and make-up that
helps us understand why they are meeting their needs in an inappropriate
way, and how we can provide an intervention and consequence which will
facilitate effective learning. Discipline, as a practice concept, is
often avoided in favour of more punitive interventions simply because of
the demands on staff time and energy. It’s easier to have charts on the
wall spelling out consequences for all manner of misbehaviour, to take
things away, to send someone to his/her room to “think", than to take
the time to evaluate each incident of unacceptable behaviour, to use our
knowledge of the child and of individual and group dynamics to
understand the reason for the behaviour and to devise a consequence
geared for the needs of the individual youngster.
Discipline requires a focus on the
individual
Similar behaviour does not spring, necessarily, from similar or
predictable motivation. Each child must be considered in terms of
his/her background, present coping skills, treatment needs, and
abilities for learning. Six children may run away together, but each
will run for his/her own, individual reasons. Punishment may, but
discipline will not allow all six to be given the same consequence,
because the necessary learning will be different for each. Who left
because they have trouble controlling their impulses? Who left because
they couldn’t say “no" to others in the group? Who left because in the
past it has been safer to leave than to stay? Each has something to
learn; each has a different capacity to learn; each deserves the respect
to be seen and treated as a unique person with unique needs. Each
deserves discipline.
Discipline cannot be forced
Punishment can be forced, but we cannot force anybody to learn. It thus
becomes our task to provide the opportunity, to structure a learning
situation, to give it our best shot. It becomes our task to give the
learning the time.
Discipline enhances a child's self-image
Punishment damages a sense of self-worth. I don’t believe that it is
true that children enjoy misbehaving and falling out of favour with the
important adults in their lives. I believe, instead, that “acting up" is
all that some children know. It feels comfortable, it makes them feel
like themselves, it reinforces their negative self-images. I have never
seen any evidence that it makes them feel good. Learning new ways to
behave and handle emotions and difficult situations, learning more about
themselves, learning that someone cares enough to struggle with them to
help them change; this, I believe, feels good. Discipline allows the
development of personal competence, and the sustaining of positive
relationships with important adults, building a sense of worth and
value. Isn’t this our commitment?
Discipline is hampered by previous life
experiences
Kids who come into placement are, for the most part, undisciplined. They
have been punished a lot; they have been ignored. Neither punishment nor
uninvolvement teaches responsible behaviour. A lifetime of being ignored
or punished does not make it easy to receive discipline. Children tempt
us to do what would be easier for us anyway, to ignore them, or punish
them. It is a challenge for us not to respond in the way they seem to be
asking and which makes them feel comfortable. Abused kids elicit abuse;
they act as if they would rather be made to suffer, to be called names,
to be yelled at or hit. They would rather be sent to their rooms
(ignored) than to be disciplined. Most don’t feel they are worth
discipline! They don’t understand our willingness to invest the time and
effort. This willingness and investment, I believe, is at the heart of
treatment! This is hard to keep “up front" in our minds when they get up
in our face and beg us to punish them; when they wreck our nights and
ruin our days.
Discipline is hard just because we’re human
Sometimes we have bad days. Sometimes we envy them the treatment they
are getting at our hands because we’d like to have some for ourselves.
Sometimes we’re just plain tired and irritated. These times call on all
of our reserves, and all of our personal and professional commitment. We
are here to treat them better than they were treated before we met them;
to treat them better than we were/are treated; and to treat them better
than we’d sometimes like to treat them.
Discipline, like love, requires patience and
kindness
Punishment can be swift and impulsive. Who hasn't, in a flash of anger
and frustration, been tempted to take away someone’s bathroom
privileges, to ground them for two years, to send them to their rooms
until they “grow up"? The commitment to provide discipline in these
moments is much like the commitment to love the unlovable. It takes
patience to explain and relate a consequence, to be sure that the
behaviour enables us to provide a clear explanation for intervention,
and to construct a consequence that changes, rather than confirms, a
negative view of the world.
Discipline can be proactive as well as
reactive
In fact, it is possible on many occasions to recognise that corrective
discipline is necessary because of a failure to provide preventive
teaching interventions. Selfishly, it is far more useful, less
exhausting, and more pleasant to spend time with youngsters preventing
misbehaviour than anxiously awaiting its occurrence and having to react
to it when everyone involved is in an emotional state that decreases the
chances of effective teaching and learning taking place. Too often we
seem to wait for something awful to happen and then spend countless
hours in meetings, consultations and ruminations deciding what to do in
response. The beauty of the discipline framework is that it reminds us
that, unlike punishment, which is only reactive, discipline/teaching can
be done at anytime. We can talk in advance about how to keep windows
from being broken when Frank loses his temper; how we can handle
feelings and challenges other than by running away, how to direct
aggression into acceptable activities, etc. We can provide discipline in
advance of disruptive behaviour. We can use that well-developed ability
to pick up on the warning signs, the “vibes" which signal the potential
for something getting out of hand. We can teach as prevention and save
all of us the bad feeling which results from “acting out" behaviour.
This focus on prevention may, in many cases, cause us to re-evaluate our
reward systems for direct care staff. It is unfortunate that so many
strokes are given to child care workers who are good at “handling"
difficult situations. To reinforce a focus on discipline, we should
commend the child care worker who provides such good discipline that
there is very little to handle. We also need to reward creative and
constructive consequences, even if they appear “soft" in a context where
punishment seems called for. In considering the difficult task of
maintaining discipline in classroom settings, Silberman (1970) reminds
of the difficulty arising when teachers become obsessed with silence and
lack of movement in environments where this becomes the chief means by
which their competence is judged, since this atmosphere hampers real
learning. He reminds us that a group cannot achieve enough maturity to
keep itself under control if its members never have an opportunity to
exercise control. Rewards need to be given to workers who do not “control" the group, but who struggle with the group and its members to
learn self-control, with the understanding that while learning anything,
the practice cannot be compared to the desired proficiency. Learning to
type means a lot of misspelled words at first. And learning new
behaviours requires tolerance for the approximations which will
eventually lead to the desired performance.
Conclusion
Discipline is one of our primary tasks as caretakers of children. It is
also one of our greatest challenges. It can be, when done as a way of
life with those in our care, one of our greatest rewards. Discipline
gives kids what they come to us to get; it is easier on us than any
amount of punishing; it works and it feels terrific. Watching young
people change their feelings about themselves “recognising their own
value and worth “is a thrill that never leaves a worker who has toiled
with and on behalf of this young one. Recognising that disciplinary
interactions, teaching kids that they deserve our time, our thought, our
planning, our creativity; teaching them that love and respect can be
found in this world as evidenced by the love and respect we can share
with them; teaching them that they can learn to meet their needs in a
way that enhances their own feelings about themselves as well as the
feelings toward them of others around them; sharing the joy and
confidence that comes from learning “these rewards will energise us and
give us the motivational push to keep on for another hour, another day,
another year.
Direct care workers tow a difficult line, searching for a blend of structure and freedom which allows children and young people the right to learn from their own mistakes, but which still lends them the protection of our experience as a buffer against unnecessary disasters. There will be times when the consequences we mete out will seem unreasonable to the child. At times like this, we need to examine ourselves to make sure they are indeed reasonable, and necessary, even if not understood. Anyone who has witnessed a two-year-old running out into traffic, convinced that all cars will stop while s(he) retrieves her/his ball, has experienced a moment when preventive discipline was the order of the day, whether the process was able to be mutual or not. There are other dangerous situations which call upon our best skills in attempting to provide preventive discipline; most of us are not willing to allow teenagers to learn from the mistake of cutting their wrists, or taking a dangerous drug. It requires careful thought and lots of discussion between adults, to determine which situations we should step into and which we should allow to play out so that learning can occur from natural consequences. We need also to recognise that there are times when kids are not available for discipline: when they’re on drugs or alcohol; when they are blinded by rage; when they are out of touch with reality. Most often, these times will pass and the opportunity for discipline (as contrasted with control) will present itself and we will then buy up these moments after the storm, to try to teach another way of handling stress or peer pressure, remembering that the goal of discipline is self-control, self-discipline. It is when we see a child or teenager learn a better way to handle his/her feelings and impulses that we are paid for our work, not when we pick up our cheques.
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This feature: Extract from Lorraine Fox. Teachers or Taunters: The dilemma of true discipline for direct care workers with children. In Readings in Child and Youth Care for South African students. Cape Town: National Association of Child Care Workers. pp.48-52
