Writings by me

Carrying on with Sarah’s theme from Wednesday, it got me thinking about other ‘rods we make for our own back.’ Specifically, discipline.

My nan always loves to say ‘your child has your number from the minute they’re born.’ Translation: from the moment they are born, your child will wrap you round their finger unless you are firm. They have the power to walk all over you if you let them. It’s your choice as a parent to decide whether you are going to let them control your life. And any struggle is a failure, on your part, to parent them properly.

It’s an awkward balancing act. Tough discipline is not nurturing enough; too permissive and you’re a pushover. Just you wait until they get to be a teenager and they will never, ever listen to you. Throw in the fact that often when they are being naughty, they are also simultaneously being really, really funny and it all gets pretty difficult.

Take me and my kids; Freddie is 6 years old and as is probably typical, very well-behaved. Being the first child with young, optimistic parents, we were probably firmer with him. Aside from a few regrettable phases, some hitting and general disobedience around the age of 3, we have managed to get him to 6 as a (pretty much) well-behaved dream of a child.

Then we had Harry. There is no difference between the children, they are both absolute delights. Harry however, is child 2; that means nothing in terms of his behaviour and everything in terms of ours.

With Freddie, I wanted to do everything ‘right,’ and I borrowed a lot from how my parents raised me – very much loving but at the same time pretty firm about behaviour and authoritative. Freddie responded well to this and so yes, some might say we nailed it.

With Harry, it became much more about survival. Again, not his fault, just a general realisation that we could either battle him on the same stuff we had to with Freddie (routines, food etc) or we could chill out and pick our battles. Don’t get me wrong we still have hard lines and boundaries, but overall, we also have accepted that sometimes you have to lose some battles to save your sanity. Just like you may have to co-sleep sometimes to get any rest at all, sometimes you have to concede defeat to make it through to bedtime. And that’s fine!

Discipline style is not a one size fits all approach, much as parenting behaviour experts would have you believe. Just like much of it, it is a trial-and-error, child-tailored approach. If you are permissive now, it does not inevitably mean you are beating yourself with that metaphorical rod in the future. Likewise, if you are tough now, it does not mean your child won’t rebel later.

The main rule of thumb for us now? Survival is paramount; if that means bribery for good behaviour, go for it. We’re not parenting in a vacuum, we’ve got grown-up stuff to do, so make it easy.