Sovereignty of SeaWitch

Children are our future. Children are a blessing. Children seem to be many things these days except disciplined. When I use the word 'disciplined', I don't mean spanking them if they so much look at you the wrong way. In fact, I don't even mean spanking at all.

I'm talking about the original sense of the word. Websters defines discipline as 'the training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement." The key words being moral and mental improvement.

It seems that everywhere I go these days, I see badly behaved children. Maybe I'm just getting old and what little patience I have is nearly depleted but I'm sure everyone knows someone who has kids who make you re-examine any thoughts you ever had of becoming a parent yourself. If you do have kids then you are probably thanking your lucky stars that you didn't have more.

Being a parent myself, I really do understand the 'terrible twos' or the 'troublesome threes' or even teenage angst. But just because I understand all the stages a child can go through on his or her way to becoming an adult doesn't mean I'm not bothered when I see 7 year olds throwing temper tantrums in my house. Or 5 year olds slapping and evenbiting their parents when they can't have the entire set of the Barbie Fairytopia collection. I can't understand how the parents allow such behaviour. What's more, I am baffled by the fact that parents don't seem to mind when such behaviour occurs in someone else's house.

I've had children come to my house, make a mess of it, break things and have fits while their parents do one of three things: stare vacantly at me while I clean up the broken glass from the floor; tell their child that destroying my son's toys wasn't nice and continue their conversation; or ignore the behaviour completely. Whatever happened to "get over here now and apologize" or "as soon as you clean that mess up, we're leaving because if you can't behave properly outside the house, you will not go anywhere" type of firmness? A lot of the time, parents have said "Billy, you've upset our hostess and now she's going to get angry with you".

This is even worse. Then I become that "mean woman who hates kids" just because a parent is too cowardly to discipline their child themselves.

Has discipline become such a dirty word that it can no longer be used in parenting? My conclusion is that it's a combination of many things. Parents equate discipline with spanking and truly believe that a screaming banshee 2 year-old will respond to reason in the middle of a tantrum. Many parents now work full-time and feel guilty reprimanding their children in the little time that they do see them. A lot just find it's just easier to cave to the child's petulant demands and deplorable behaviour than it is to spend extra time and patience to discipline them.

I know that kids don't come with an instruction manual at birth and that God gave them faces of angels so we wouldn't send them back but I refuse to believe that children can't be trained manners and good behaviour at an early age.

I won't know if I've done a good job raising my son until he's well into adulthood but I do know that no one else will ever feel the need to discipline my child for me. Some people considered it cruel and unusual punishment when I made my son clean his purple ink artwork off my white walls when he was three, but he's never even attempted to write on anything but paper since then. So if people call me Captain Von Trapp, I am not the least bit bothered. At least they know that my son won't be walking over their furniture, breaking their vases or giving them any flippant remarks without incurring the Wrath of Mom.