How to Enhance Self Discipline in Your Child

Discipline is a key ingredient to harmony and to a meaningful and fulfilling life for your child in the school and in the home. Parents and authority figures support that internal process, allowing the child to become self-disciplined by choice and not by fear.Virtual learning has highlighted the importance of self-regulation. When children don’t have an adult physically present while they are in class, we can see how important it is, and how much of a difference it makes when they study because they recognize its importance or if they are doing so only when they are being watched and controlled.
 
A child that develops self-discipline becomes an emotionally intelligent and resilient adult. When children grow up feeling protected and loved, seen and accepted for who they are, supported toward making decisions, that increases autonomy and competence. They feel drawn toward an empathy and compassion that they observe in their role models so they develop their own sense of “right and wrong” and develop a mature character as part of a natural process.
 
What are the common approaches to discipline and what can we obtain with the prevalence of those styles? Shapiro and White (2014) mentioned 3 parenting styles that are three different attempts to help children grow up: permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. Each one involves different views of what children are and what they need to become self-regulated and self-disciplined.
 
The permissive approach considers the view that children are inherently good and don’t need limits or guidance to become self-disciplined, what a big mistake!! Love and respect are key but self-discipline doesn’t emerge in time without adult intervention and assistance. Children who grow up without healthy boundaries won’t recognize the society boundaries later on. When they don’t have age appropriate behavioral expectations, they are likely to be lacking in impulse control, achievement motivation and cognitive and social abilities. These kids may become self-centered and have a bigger tendency to substance abuse than children who had authoritarian or authoritative parents.
 
The authoritarian approach is based on the belief that children are inherently bad and they need to be manipulated into self- discipline. To do this, authority figures would punish them when they do bad y and reward them when they do good things. This may seem sensible to some of you and many people use it because it seems effective and fast but it has a high mental health cost; it makes children experience life as a threat and do things right only if they are being supervised. It also cuts the development of children’s own internal guidance and emotional intelligence. When we consider long term growth and self-sufficiency in combination with the sake of the relationship with him/her, limiting authoritarian moments is highly recommended.
 
So, what enhances self-discipline growth? The authoritative approach views children as having the seeds of both good and bad within them. The parents could nurture the good and temper the bad. Both love and limits are necessary to grow into a self-disciplined and resilient human being. The goal is for children to perceive and regulate her/his emotions one day, and to act in personally and socially intelligent ways.  All humans have an innate development potential that is a set of inherent capacities that adults merely need to support.
 
It is imperative to help children develop their own inner authority and self-regulation mechanisms. If we give our children space to learn from directly experiencing the impact of their actions so they can pay attention to the present moment before them, they will be able to feel the nuances of human interactions and respond in attuned, emphatic and compassionate ways while they discover the interdependence in human relations and societies.

References
Shapiro, S. and White, C. (2014). Mindful Discipline: A Loving Approach to Setting Limits and Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.