Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about discipline, and how I want to raise my children to have an intrinsic moral code to guide their own behavior and make good choices in life, and what disciplinary tactics would be most effective at doing this.
At a recent training I attended, a speaker shared a story about how she dealt with a child in her care who was stealing. When the child produced a toy that she knew he had stolen and said that his teacher had given him the toy, rather than confronting him about his dishonesty and punishing him for the lie and the theft, she took a more clever approach. “Oh, how nice of her!” she exclaimed. “Let’s go back and thank her for it!” Can’t you just see the child squirm? The natural consequence of getting caught in his lie was far more effective than any punishment she could have inflicted on him when it came to making him think twice before doing the same thing again.
It reminded me of Little House. (Then again, what doesn’t?)
I thought about the time when Laura disobeyed Pa’s instruction not to go to the swimming hole without him. Since nobody ever would have known that Laura disobeyed, Pa and Ma had certainly instilled some of this self-discipline in Laura already, or her consience wouldn’t have pricked her so provokingly that she finally went and confessed. But the way Pa handled that incident has always impressed me.
He identified the natural consequence that resulted from Laura’s misbehavior — now Pa and Ma can’t trust her. Then he created a “punishment” to solve the problem: “If you can’t be trusted, then you must be watched.” Rather than inflicting arbitrary misery upon Laura that had nothing to do with what she had done wrong, Pa carefully applied a punishment that would teach the natural consequences that come from making poor choices.
This isn’t the first time Pa did this, of course. Think about in Little House on the Prairie, when Laura and Mary merely thought about disobeying Pa and untying Jack when Indians went into the house and they were afraid for Ma and Carrie. There was no need to punish them as they didn’t disobey, but Pa takes even that opportunity to help them understand the consequences if they had disobeyed him: Jack would have bitten the Indians and then there would have been big trouble. The straw stack is another example where instead of punishing the girls, Pa again explains the consequences of their behavior: the animals would have no food for the winter.
I wish I were clever enough to instantly react with fair punishments that would instill self-discipline in my children in the future, but I fear that I won’t think fast enough. So I reflect on the examples of these wise parents who have gone before, such as Charles and Caroline Ingalls, and try to learn from them.
I’m sure you’ve all known someone who knew just how to handle a sticky situation with a child with a clever and effective disciplinary measure such as Laura’s having to be watched. Perhaps you yourself are that wise person! Would you please share your stories of “Little House” style discipline so we can all learn from more examples!? Just think if we were all as successful in raising such respectful and obedient children as the Ingalls girls were… what a lovelier world it would be.
Well, I’ll jump in and expect my head to be bitten off – but remember these are novels and certainly do not reflect the common treatment of children during the mid and late 19th century in the U.S. – it also doesn’t reflect the period literature that children were given to read that show real – not imagined – consequences, such as a family member being maimed or dying. One of the strangest booklet/pamphlet I’ve run across was WHY WE DON’T PLAY WITH FATHER’S GUNS; which ends with a boy shooting his sister. Remember in FARMER BOY the punishment for getting too close to the edge of the ice.
I grieve when I repeatedly see so many children that have seemingly no self-discipline and their actions are tolerated if not passively encouraged by helicopter parents and discouraged and disheartened school teachers. This is far more common behavior than not – at least here on the East Coast.
There is no head-biting here, all respectfully submitted opinions are welcome whether they agree with us or not.
However, I’m not sure I completely understand what you’re trying to say. Yes, these are novels… and in some cases, confusing the real life people with their character counterparts can make for faulty commentary. However, in this case, it is the characters and their actions in the books that I am admiring, and whether the real Charles and Caroline disciplined in this way or whether other families of the time period did is irrelevant to the point I was attempting to make — which was simply that I really like the creative discipline described in the Little House books and would like to implement such tactics with my own children.
Another great example that I thought of but didn’t go into is Little Men, by Louisa May Alcott, which again is fiction (though somewhat biographically based on the discipline used by her father Bronson Alcott in his school). Jo and Professor Bhaer use the same kind of disciplinary tactics with their boys at Plumfield as those employed in the Little House books.
Are you arguing that this type of discipline is a good thing or a bad one? I guess I’m confused because your first paragraph seems as though you’re warning against 19th century discipline, but your second paragraph seems to counter that, as if perhaps the discipline in those days was better than today’s lack of it after all.
(Regardless, I wasn’t trying to make a point that yesterday’s discipline is better than today’s or vice versa — I believe there are good parents and not so good parents, and good discipline and not so good discipline, both then and now. I was just picking out an example of what to me is good discipline from then, to apply now.)