Teaching Kids Discipline

Discipline is important, whether you are teaching kids to be disciplined at home or at school.  Not all people are capable of self-discipline, even adults find it difficult! Discipline needs to be developed during a child’s early stage, this would help them develop their attitudes and prepare them in handling school, work and other social activities.  

• Home Discipline

Before children would even reach school or play with other kids, the firs social interaction that children would have would be with the parents.  Parents play a crucial role in preparing their children for social interaction with their peers and elders. Most parents would think that discipline is more of punishment.  Actually, it is more about teaching your kids to identify what is right from wrong and how wrong choices could put them into bad situations. 

When teaching kids about discipline, consistency is the key.  If you give in to what they want once they start crying, they would repeat it again.  But if they see that you are firm and consistent, they will learn that crying and throwing tantrums will not get what they want.  Inconsistency with your punishment and rules will make children to misbehave more. 

If your kids are throwing tantrums, stay calm.  The reason why your kids are throwing tantrums is because they want to get your attention.  If you fuss or yell at them, it is still attention and it is more likely that they would repeat it in the future. 

Too much is never good.  Too much criticism can have an impact on how your child would view themselves.  Too much praise would make the comments less effective.  Positive reinforcement is also important.  When commenting on the child’s behaviour it is better to use positive and encouraging words. Set a good example.  As parents, the people they would usually see is you.   They are likely to follow what you do and if you also abide with your own rules. 

• School Discipline

Classroom discipline is another thing that most teachers dread, especially the new ones.  Teachers have to deal with children that have different temperaments.  Having a diverse group could sometimes put teachers in the edge of their sanity. 

Before school year starts, you need to have a solid discipline plan.  On the first day,  the first thing that you should do is discuss the classroom rules.  You could discuss it just like how you discuss academic topics.  You could even include it in your syllabus.  This would help minimize any kind of disruptive behaviour in class. 

To earn your students’ respect, then be fair.  You have to be conscious when making decisions.  So, even if it is your best student that makes a rule violation, then give the corresponding punishment or consequence for their action. 

If your students get to be confrontational, they try to avoid banging heads with them in front of the other students.  You do not want to “humiliate” your student in front of their classmates.  You can pull them outside after class or while others are busy with their exercise and talk to them, calmly.  

Just like home discipline, consistency is important.  Make sure that everyday the rules are followed, if not, the students would think that it would be easy to get away with misbehaviours. But do not bring the grudge until the next day.  For example, a student did something wrong yesterday do not expect that they would do the same the next day.  Give them a chance.  But for example, they did the same thing for consecutive days, then consider having a good talk with the kids.  A bigger issue can be bothering them

Teaching discipline is among the hardest thing to do.  For me, it can be more difficult the algebra and Calculus questions.  The children’s attitude in the future would depend on how they learn discipline early in their lives.  It may be difficult, but for me the most effective method of teaching discipline is becoming the model yourself
