Child rearing – the lost art of disciplining your kids, what happened? Part 3

Praise the Lord.

Before I start I ask for your prayers as I lost my father back on Dec.2.  We will be traveling to Savannah and ask for your prayers for safe travels there and back home.

We are finally to the third, and I feel, the most successful methodology of raising your kids that is a skillful approach that combines a little bit of the first two, traditional and progressive.

Comprehensive methodology is the type that only the post-baby boomers can actually employ successfully with minimal to no glitches or snags.

The 45 to 60-year-old age group are the ones that use this approach and have the required experience to pull this one off because they were raised in the traditional style and tweaked it somewhat to not be as harsh as the traditional, but to be stern enough to ensure their kids understood that discipline, respect and self-worth would be paramount.

Because of their upbringing with the church as the foundation, the comprehensive methodology is similar to the traditional so you have a solid base to build a successful program so your kids have the greatest chances of succeeding in life.

One of the things I equate this methodology with is my military experience.  Most who haven’t served or were not raised by parents who served have believed the misnomer that we either raised or were raised with an “iron fist” or super strict and had little to no freedom. This is not the truth and to the contrary in most cases. The only thing that was restricted was our exposure to that which would lead to trouble or negative outcomes.

We were not allowed to play or associate with those kids whose parents rewarded their bad behavior.  Trust me, caring, concerned and loving parents know who these kids are and while as parents, they may from time to time communicate with the parents of these kids, but that was the extent of how far it would go.  There would not be sleepovers, especially at the other parents home, our kids were not allowed to go out after dark to any event with those kids, just to name a few.

Some parents might believe that this is not being a nice or friendly person or that we are judgmental, and well, they would be 90 percent right.  It’s never about being nice or judgmental; it’s about not exposing our kids to potential hurt, harm or danger.

We have all heard of being guilty by association and you are a product of your environment; these steps are classic examples of how you ensure your kids do not become victims of this.

You can allow your kids to play with other kids but limiting who they play with makes your job easier as there is less to undo.

You can and should allow your kids to play video games.  Yes, Xbox, PlayStation or the Wii should be the order of the day as these are some of the best outlets for kids that are under the comprehensive methodology.  They are building hand-eye coordination, critical and cognitive thinking and is a great energy release so that they don’t have extra energy to get into “other” things.

They should also have their own tablet of choice as most, if not all of their peers, do as well.  You as a parent do not want to create an opportunity for them to be picked at and feeling inferior to their friends or classmates.

You must do your research before purchasing the games that you allow them to play to ensure the subject matter is appropriate and not too far out of the scope of your limits.

There are many games that are educational and the child most times won’t even know that they are actually learning.

One of the best reasons I highly suggest getting them gaming systems is multi-purposed.  One of the reasons is that now you actually have a bargaining piece to leverage behavior, meaning you have something that you can control the use of based on performance.

Also, you build their knowledge of the outside world and you write the narrative. Some of these games are so close to the real thing that the mind won’t be able to detect real from fantasy thus you have an opportunity for a teachable moment to ensure they do know the difference.

To this day, I still use this practice because I have kids all over the world from the military to college, Japan, England and the U.S., and they are in my living room every time I turn on my console.

One technique I taught was once you place your child on punishment, sometimes we are so upset that the punishment might not fit the crime so we have to set up opportunities for them to get out on early release or good behavior such as choirs being done without asking, good or better grades, volunteering, extra “I love you mommy.” etc. They spawn the good side of them and over the course of time will become second nature or habitual and this is always a good thing.

Till next week,

God Bless.

Rev. Dr. Robert L. Harrison, PhD