Play week always gets us thinking about the differences in children. Differences come from families. Families all have different ideas about child rearing. That's what makes life interesting.
One of the big differences I see generationally is the concept of discipline. Even the word has become a negative. The real meaning of discipline is a noun - a method of learning. Mathematics is a discipline, sciences are disciplines, so are history and geography and rhetoric and theology and philosophy. The idea that discipline is somehow a bad thing is a rather substantial strike against learning - at least in a traditional way of thinking.
At the same time, the action word discipline: to discipline has also been cheaply shot at. To discipline ourselves means to work at something. I can't think of a single thing worth doing well that one does not have to practice, to perfect, to spend a lot of time learning - to become disciplined to do. Diet, exercise, yoga, sailing, knitting, sewing, cooking, gardening, driving, photographing, etc.
Now take it one step further: if you really want something, how hard do you have to work to achieve it? Does it hurt? Does it bite slightly into pride and knock us down so that we have to pull ourselves up and start again. Yes, for the most part discipline hurts. It's supposed to hurt; pinching the pride is part of the process of learning.
It's the same with children. Discipline or learning hurts, and you never have to touch a child to achieve a discipline that a child can grow up with comfortably.
Yet what we are finding is that about 10% of parents can't allow a child to ever be hurt by discipline. "I can't force, demand, or take anything away from my child because," and the sentence invariable stops there. "I can't, I can't."
Not allowing discipline to hurt is a form of neglect, because a child who is not hurt by the things he is trying to do is a child who believes the world is not a place where he has any limits. It's a place where he has become a small god. Expectations or demands never touch him. His world is a fictional place where he never has to produce or meet his consequences because "I can't, I can't." While the world works to serve him, he is unbound - completely free.
Or is he? When a child cannot learn because he is under the fictitious notion that he doesn't have to and nobody will make him because it's painful, he won't. When a child does not have to socialize, and can hit anyone he wants without cost, he will, but he won't have any friends. When he goes through life choosing one bleak option after another because one or both of his parents just can't allow his pride to fall, it creates a child who can't live in the world successfully, and who does THAT hurt? The child. The very subject of their love and affection is the one they hurt the most because suddenly, "I can't, I can't" and it's too late.
Today six children couldn't participate in play practice because they are so undisciplined they disrupted the play. That's a shame. We'll keep working at it, but for now the six will learn to listen and to do the things the other children have already learned while the play continues.
The weather was cool, lively and relatively sweet.
We spent a lot of time out doors today. We talked about the first Thanksgiving - Mrs. St. Louis taught a whopping lesson on Pilgrims and the kids enjoyed it. Dhezmond asked a lot of really good questions and so did Yuta who wanted to know why the ship was called the Mayflower.
We had sticky buns on the patio, and celebrated Miss Molly's birthday with cake and milk for snack. Then it was on to lunch - a hearty blend of grilled cheese, eggs turned eyes, apples, oranges and homemade chicken soup. We had salad and milk.
We finished the Wizard of Oz, and we learned some new songs for the play.
All in all it was a great day.
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