Balanced Discipline

Discipline is something so often ignored when raising today's children. Everyone is afraid to go too far and become the monsters they saw their parents to be. Or maybe people see their children as friends that they want to keep close without offending. The reality is that parenting is a major responsibility that sometimes makes us the bad guy. How do we find balance between the fun times and the tough times? How can we be teachers and disciplinarians without losing the friendship that means so much to us?
I think that one reason that discipline has not been utilized as much as it should be in recent years is because of a common misconception that physical violence is the same thing. Although corporal punishment has been used in generations past, it is not necessary to ensure your child learns proper behavior. The technical definition of discipline is "instruction given to a disciple or pupil", and if we look at it this way there is no need to be afraid of disciplining our children. We all remember an adult from our childhood that was able to teach with calm and kindness. Being a disciplinarian means becoming that adult to the children in our life.
Teaching without violence and anger unfortunately does not change the fact that the disciplinarian does get seen as the bad guy. As long as your rules are consistent and clear, your child will accept them and get over the bad feelings very quickly. Need an example? During the course of me typing this paragraph my son decided to stand on the seat of his tricycle. He knows that an extension of the rule "always be gentle" is that "we do not stand on our toys," and he knows that standing on a toy means that toy gets taken away for the rest of the day. Because the rules and repercussions are clearly defined I need only state what's happening and why to reiterate. There is no raised voice and no aggression. From time to time (including this time) he has trouble accepting the consequences for his actions. Sometimes that only means whining. This time, however, he broke another rule: part of being respectful is "never say gimme to Mommy." As soon as he was done sitting in time out (the consistent result for speaking dis respectfully) he gave me a hug and told me he loves me while we talked about what happened.
Part of growing up is pushing buttons and testing limits, just as part of raising a child is setting and enforcing those limits. It is important to maintain a balance of all the different roles you play in your child's life. If you do not devote energy to play time and experiencing your child's interests you can be sure that your child will act out more frequently in order to receive the attention he feels he's missing. But that gives us a chance to play the role of friend that we all want to be for our children. So be a friend when it is appropriate, but be willing to be the bad guy as well. If you do it right you can be the adored teacher, which we can all agree is far better than the belt-wielding dictators that raised us. If we don't teach our children right from wrong we will regret it as we grow old.