By John Rosemond
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
Several columns ago, I related the story of an encounter with
the mother of a defiant 4-year-old girl. The child had refused to dress for
school in the morning. The mother told her she'd take her to school dressed or
undressed. The girl dressed.
I pointed out to the mother that getting dressed in the morning
is not the problem; rather, it is the girl's defiance of her authority. The
threat had not solved that problem. The mother wanted to know how I would have
dealt with this problem.
First, I'd have done what Mom did: I'd have told the girl that
I would take her to school dressed or undressed. Let's assume the result would
have been the same. Then, when the child arrived home from school, I would have
confined her to her room for the rest of the day and put her to bed immediately
after supper.
Several readers complained about the column. In the words of
one, my recommendation was "draconian." Along that same line, another said it
was "completely, outrageously out of proportion to the little girl's offense."
Another said that the problem was taken care of with the threat, that punishing
the child after school was the equivalent of double jeopardy.
I'll deal with the first complaint first. What, pray tell, is
"draconian" about confining a 4-year-old to a room I assume is nicer by far than
the room to which I was occasionally confined as a child? I was not scarred by
the experience. I did not develop "negative associations" with my room. I simply
did not like being confined to it for long periods, during which it became even
more boring than it already was.
No, folks, draconian would be confining the child to a closet,
or a damp, dark basement crawl space. Confining her to her room is benign.
On the matter of my recommended punishment being out of
proportion to the child's crime, I submit that the only punishment that fits a
crime is one that stops the crime from happening. American parents have been
fooling around with disciplinary matters for 30 years, waving fly-swatters at
charging elephants.
This fooling around has produced a plethora of 4-year-olds who
look their parents in the eyes and refuse to do what they are told; 4-year-olds
who throw wild tantrums when they do not get their way; 4-year-olds who curse at
their parents and hit them; 4-year-olds who tell their teachers to shut up. Need
I go on?
This is the price we are all paying for having listened to
psychological voices telling us that the traditional exercise of parental
authority was bad for children and needed to go. Isn't it interesting that what
was supposedly bad produced a fair amount of good, and that what is supposedly
good has produced an abundant harvest of bad?
Sending this child to her room - for what, six hours? - will
not harm her psychologically. In fact, her psyche could withstand a week, but a
week would surely be overkill (by a day or so). See, I'm not so mean!
Six hours will produce a lasting memory. Well, actually, it
will begin to produce a memory. The old saying, "The third time is the charm,"
applies. Several applications should do the trick. It is a fact that unless a
punishment produces a long-term memory, or begins to do so, it is worthless, a
waste of everyone's time and the parents' energies.
It should be obvious by now why so many of today's parents
become so frustrated over disciplinary matters. To wit, they are using
discipline that is too weak to accomplish anything; therefore, it is not
discipline at all. It is nothing, and as it is said, nothing ventured, nothing
gained.
© 2003, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
