How often do you demand that your children have skills that you lack even as an adult? How many times have you displayed the very behavior that you correct in your child? These are fair questions, yet the answers can stop you in your tracks, because if we are all honest with ourselves, we all have a bit of growing up to do.
I can’t count the number of times I said I would stick to a diet or exercise routine only to fall off the wagon days or weeks in. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have raised my voice after promising to stay calm. I tend to give myself a lot of grace. I’m only human, after all. Life can be difficult, and I’m doing the best I can. Yet, when my kid loses his cool and yells at me, am I so quick to offer that same grace?
Have you ever fought with your partner in front of your child but then demanded she get along with her siblings peacefully? Or snatched a toy from a child’s hands in frustration after lecturing him that he shouldn’t snatch toys? Of course, because we have all done things like that, and it’s okay. Mistakes are a part of life. But the biggest challenge in parenting, and in child discipline is not figuring out the right punishments or consequences, but it is learning to model what we want to see. It’s learning self-discipline so that we can teach our children self-discipline. After all, the goal is to raise children who govern their own behavior so that we don’t have to spend our days and years together policing them but rather enjoying life with one another.
In her book, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline, author Becky Bailey says this, “All parents demonstrate or model a code of conduct and a value system. This is done through their day-to-day interactions with others. Until we become conscious of these patterns of interactions, we will not be able to guide the morality of the next generation. Most of us model respect when we are calm and when life is going our way. However, what happens to our values when we are stressed and life becomes complicated? How do we behave when traffic is backed up, when our children forget their permission slips, when our spouse fails to stop by the grocery store again? What happens to treating each other with respect during these times?” It is easy to love our children and others when they’re doing what we want, but how we love and behave during challenging times sets the standard. The question is, how can we improve ourselves?
Step One: Become Conscious of Your Patterns
The first step to any real change is always to become aware of the patterns you are wanting to change. Most of us make unconscious decisions all day long. We emulate the patterns our parents modeled for us, or we just let our reactions fly, making no attempt to rein them in. Start paying attention to your reactions, behaviors, and the feelings that drive them. When do you lose your cool? When do you behave badly? What causes you to feel out of control? Take note of the thoughts and feelings that arise during those times. You can’t change yourself until you really know yourself, so get to know your patterns.
Step Two: Choose Your Perceptions
As you become aware of your patterns of behavior, you’re likely to find that your perceptions are driving your emotions and reactions. If you perceive your child as willful, naughty, or testing, that’s going to elicit a negative reaction. There’s a great quote credited to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that says, “The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.” Therefore, changing your perception will change your reactions and behaviors. When you see the child not as difficult but as seeking help or connection, you’ll respond from a place of love rather than reacting from a place of fear, and love is always the right response.
Step Three: Switch Your Attention
Are you constantly focusing on your child’s faults, mistakes, and shortcomings? Where you focus your attention is where all your energy goes, so if your energy is feeding the negative behaviors, guess what you’re doing to see more of? Also, when you focus on weaknesses and faults, it colors your perception. Start focusing on what you want to see, not on what you don’t. This goes for behaviors you want to see from your child and also your own. Socrates says, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.”
Step Four: Focus on Connection
Connection helps us all be better people. When children feel emotionally connected, safe, and secure with us, they feel better and behave better. We have greater influence and get more cooperation. The same is true for adults. Healthy, positive relationships mean we see the best in each other, believe the best in each other, and guide one another to optimal growth. To connect heart to heart, spend some time laughing, playing, and just being fully present and loving.
Self-discipline is a mental game. We cannot simply will away the negative reactions that have rooted themselves in our brains. We must work daily at being aware of our thoughts and emotions, choosing positive perceptions, focusing our attention on the good in ourselves and others, and staying connected to those we love. If you can’t control what you think and what you focus on, you can’t control what you do. Master your own mind so you can then teach your children to do the same.