The problem of the undisciplined child

A conversation yesterday with one of the lovely girls I coach for debating got me thinking. She was telling me how she flatly refused to follow a teacher’s instructions, and in return received a ‘behavioural strike’. What even is that? I wish I could say that in my day, had I done something like that I would have received a detention, but the truth is, in my day (bearing in mind it is only a few years since I graduated), the most I probably would have gotten was a talk from my year level coordinator – maybe the head of senior years, with very little punitive consequence other than my own conditioned self-guilt.

The alarming trend toward children is that they are allowed to run free without teaching them any serious understanding of consequence or discipline. As a result of my work, I see this in classrooms and one-on-one behaviour.

In a classroom, there are often only one or two students who act up, but I have very little authority to discipline students. However even the hands of regular teachers are frequently tied. A stern talking-to will only ever be so much of a deterrent, and the behaviour will inevitably start up again. The problem is that if a teacher comes down to hard on a student, there is a risk that the parents of that student will come back to the school, in defense of their child, which then lands the teacher in trouble for being "too mean" to a student who was misbehaving in the first place.

In one-on-one tutoring situations, I have had to teach seven year olds who I am unable to discipline because the parent is in the adjacent room and will reprimand me for attempting to rein in their unruly child. There are of course, techniques that can be used to make the child sit still, but it is difficult to reason with a small child.

The issue then becomes that because the child is not concentrating, or finds the work required in order to improve boring, no progress is made, and one must then justify this to the parent.

In both of those instances – both classroom and individual, I point the finger at political correctness and a indignation on the part of parents that stems from the message that nobody should tell you how to raise your child. It is impossible to tell a parent the truth about their child, because they don’t want to hear it. When you want to say “Your child is an undisciplined little brat who is at times, quite rude”, you have to instead say “Your child could learn motivational skills, and it would be beneficial if they would develop a more positive attitude towards learning, and the learning environment”. It doesn’t really pack quite the same punch, and moreover, it leaves room for interpretation as to the meaning. 

The unwillingness of parents to hear anything negative about their children means that their children aren’t instilled with the self-discipline to be dedicated students, or often, even particularly polite.

Maybe I’m just a crotchety old woman before my time, I have witnessed parents threatening their young children with punishments if they don’t start behaving immediately, and then when the behaviour continues look at me apologetically and shrug, suggesting we end our lesson short.The only thing this tells the child is that they can get away with this sort of behaviour.

I think that in some ways this has led employers saying that they are least willing to hire generation Y workers, because they are the least disciplined or fastidious when it comes to their work. Gen Y (my generation) is the generation that grew up with the beginnings of this behaviour. I dread to imagine what this will be like for the students in school now. So I would just like to say a big thank you to my mother for smacking me when I was being unruly or rude (in honesty, she sometimes still does). Mother, I understand why you did it, and I think it’s the best thing you could have possibly done for me.