Creative Discipline

I believe that there is are certain times and situations that require a meaningful and purposeful butterin' on the biscuits. However, with that being said, we don't necessarily agree that this form of discipline should be the only form of discipline. Each child is different in personality and learning abilities, so the same form of discipline will not work with every child.

It used to be that I could just look at my son and tell him that his behavior or his choice disappointed me or hurt my heart, and he would break down into tears and do a 180° turn. Easy peasy, right?? With my daughter it has been completely different. I would tell her I was going to take away something until she learned how to change her behavior, and she would cross her arms across her chest and say, "Go ahead". Argh!! So infuriating. With her, time outs didn't even work great because she learned to just go to sleep sitting or standing. LOL.. She's still a work in progress.. Luckily for me, and thanks be to God, I don't need to do a whole lot of disciplining for either one of my children.

With that being said, when we do need to discipline, and by discipline I mean the word in its true form which is to instruct a person to follow a particular code of conduct, we need to be creative to ensure that the discipline lesson fits appropriately with the choices that we are trying to veer them away from or towards.

So I am trying to teach my son to NOT bring EVERYTHING in his school desk home with him EVERYDAY. I told him, "Unpack your backpack when you get into class, and pack it nicely in your desk. When you write your homework assignments down, pack only the items you need to pack into your backpack." "Yes ma'am," he says. And he does... for one day.

So after two weeks of repeating myself over and over and over and over again, I decide it is time for more than just talking. I explain to him that it is bad for his back to carry so much heavy stuff everyday, and also that he could break his backpack, and if he breaks his backpack because he is not following my instructions, then he is going to have to carry his books and homework back and forth every day. I then proceed to have him hold his hands out, and I begin piling his things on him to hold.

Once he has the full brunt of his school belongings in his hands (or on his arms as it were), I tell him to walk around the perimeter of the downstairs of our home 10 times while holding his things, and if he were to drop them, he would need to re-stack them on his own and begin again. After a bit of crying and a couple of re-starts, I think I got through to him on how heavy everything is, and how he should not bring that much stuff home on a daily basis...

We'll see how long it lasts this time..

Stay tuned... :•)