Discipline vs Punishment

Discipline encourages change, while punishment inhibits it. It accounts for an individual child's emotional maturity while gently, firmly, giving her the tools she needs to obey your commands. It rewards positive actions while correcting negative ones without crushing the child's spirit and sense of wellbeing.

Punishment is a bigger person forcing a smaller one to do as directed, whether the little one can do as ordered or not. It teaches children how to bully their smaller peers, siblings, and others long before it teaches them how to lovingly correct another's aberrant behavior. There is NEVER good reason to hit a child, so spanking is definitely out.

Discipline is the consistent, firm, and loving enforcement of previously established boundaries. It consists of helping a child understand why a rule is necessary, proving that you will always enforce it, and that the restrictions increase with each repeat of the offense that engenders them. It begins in your heart, as you recall how badly you felt when your parents grounded you, removed a treasured toy from your toybox until your restriction ended, and how overjoyed you were when they returned it.

It ends when the child learns her lesson and not before then, lest you confuse her. It persists in spite of temper tantrums, through attempts to avoid it, and until you are certain your baby has learned the lesson the discipline was intended to impart to her.

Punishment, contrarily, is an arbitrary act usually inspired by a parent's anger with a child for overstepping a boundary unawares or for committing a known infraction repeatedly. It does not account for a child's seeking your affection in a negative fashion because she is not getting it any other way. It does not permit an occasional lapse or episode of forgetfulness.

It implies that you are a perfect person, which your child already knows you are not. It robs a child of choices, personal responsibility for her actions, and otherwise discourages change. If you could not keep the rule for which you punish your child, then you have no business issuing edicts and insisting that she obey it either.

Discipline pulls a child back from rushing traffic and gently scolds her for scaring you, whereas punishment permits the child into the flow and risks her death just to prove that playing with fast-moving cars is dangerous. Discipline insists that a child do as instructed, but punishment torments her into tractibility. Discipline teaches listening skills, whereas punishment encourages a child to ignore you.

Imagine if you will, a simple person seeking solace in the arms of Morpheus. We all choose our method, denying our need as we do it because our society trained us to pretend that feeding our soul decent food doesn't matter. Having played that worthless charade since birth, I know how foolish is its course, so I openly, avidly, and whole-heartedly pursue sedation by any means necessary.

I don't use drugs, alcohol, or other such chemical aids because they inhibit the mind that plays here today. Instead, I sit quietly and wait for inspiration to strike. Meanwhile, hurrying mankind, oblivious to my presence, tramples my heart under foot. It hurts! I cry out, but the din of life's concerns drowns my pained cries.

You all suffer similarly, but unknowingly until one such as I informs you. Often, you ignore our gentle nudges, too discomfited by their truths to accept them. Occasionally, desperate for your own release, you follow the flow of our thoughts and at least temporarily find the surcease you seek.

Yes, my language is often overblown. Sure, my hyperbole boils and roils, often confusing you. It is my gentle way of coping with the stresses this life presses into my plastic spirit, so they don't overwhelm the message God gives me to carry to you. Gentle spirits, rest...do not seek surcease in drugs, for their joys do not last a moment and you must again partake.

Instead, reach inward and discover the kernel of wheat chafing at your conscience; for that kernel causes your current agony. Seek it, smell it, taste it, and then let it go...for it is of no further moment to you. If said kernel urges you to renew the acquaintance of children you sired but abandoned to your roving ways; shame already eats away at your heart, so I will not add any here. This reminder is enough.

Seek them, find them, and then play with them as a fellow child. Give loving discipline (I'll address this versus punishment in a new blog) as needed, caring enough to issue it calmly. Be warned that you aren't a hypocrite (politicians should not instruct their progeny to tell the truth always, for that is a foreign concept to them), for your children will out you more surely than a thorn under his saddle causes a horse to buck at the irritation. They will listen politely, assure you they'll obey, and then do as they've seen you do.

You have no recourse when this happens, for you aren't the example you should be. If you urge restraint, exercise it yourself. If you urge truthfulness and loyalty, live them. You cannot hope to reach them if you are not living as you insist they live. It is NEVER too late to change, nay it is wholly necessary each day, for we are never the same person when we awaken that we were when we last went to sleep.