The Importance Of Childhood Discipline

[homersheineken]

Part of the problem with parents today (and the previous generations going back to boomers) is that parents value their social status and people's valuation of them as people/parents very highly. They value other people's view of them more than the discipline and well-being of their children. Their solipsism means it's more important to look good in the public eye than risk looking like a mean parent (abuser) to strangers in public or even within their own sphere of colleagues. This has grown immensely with social media and the fear of going viral.

Media and TV show parents who are lackadaisical so parents follow that lead and children emulate greedy undisciplined 'heroes' from their favorite show. Parents would rather hand their kid a phone/tablet and let them be mind-numbed rather than teaching them to behave in restaurant - this takes effort and discipline. And time away for parents themselves to engage in their own narcissistic hedonism of mobile social media, - snapping foody pics, bragging about being at such and such trendy restaurants, being envious of others at 'better' restaurants while also on vacation, etc... Friends I have who are parents are stunned to hear we don't give our kids phones - how do we keep them busy (and away from the parents)? And that we don't have cable (they'll be left behind on the latest cultural debauchery, er fad). They simply don't understand how we do it as parents. We'd rather invest our time in family than in this culture.

This is further exacerbated by the government. Parents are afraid that if they discipline too severely (or even worse in public), someone will report them to social services and they may lose their children - and there is some truth in this. This is by design. Communistic doctrine dictates that the government should be in the business of raising children and have been incrementally interjecting themselves through such measures for decades. It's not about what's best for children (discipline, being well-behaved, ability to think for themselves etc...) but what's best for the State to further its power.

This is the design of this system. It's a "feature", not a "bug".

And people either don't want to be removed from the system, or are too scared to do so. So they take the easy way. And it's easier to see how we, as a society, are in the calamity that we are in now.

 

[Trewolla]

At least in part, I believe the Boomer generation was a reaction to so many of their fathers having been psychologically and spiritually damaged by events in WW2. My life was greatly influenced by the perpetual anger of a father who experienced heavy combat in the Pacific theater. I'm certain that I'm not the only one.

It's a popular belief that the Boomers are as they are because they were "babied" by the generation which preceded them. Maybe in some cases that's true. But it's also true that the WW2 generation supported the war in Vietnam out of sour grapes. That's to say, the WW2 generation pushed for the war in Vietnam because they felt as if Boomer generation deserved to go through the same thing that they had.

The 60's was a rebellion against being pushed into a war for which there was no good reason by a previous generation who didn't care what the reason was. The WW2 generation had their war and felt their children were no better than they were,...so they deserved a war also.

 

[Ah_Tibor]

At least in part, I believe the Boomer generation was a reaction to so many of their fathers having been psychologically and spiritually damaged by events in WW2. My life was greatly influenced by the perpetual anger of a father who experienced heavy combat in the Pacific theater. I'm certain that I'm not the only one.

It's a popular belief that the Boomers are as they are because they were "babied" by the generation which preceded them. Maybe in some cases that's true. But it's also true that the WW2 generation supported the war in Vietnam out of sour grapes. That's to say, the WW2 generation pushed for the war in Vietnam because they felt as if Boomer generation deserved to go through the same thing that they had.

Agree with both paragraphs.

A lot of boomers had the crap beaten out of them as kids, most of them weren't babied at all. I think that's the reason why they fell for stuff like "men just need to open up emotionally" or "children need to build autonomy" or "as long as everyone is safe and having fun!"

I don't like the "day of the pillow" kind of stuff. Even if you grow up in less than ideal conditions, we're all here for a reason and can build a good family.

 

[paternos]

Thank you for this post Roosh.

I just came back from visiting my parents over Christmas.

As a lustful young man in my twenties ago I was frustrated about them, at that moment I thought they didn't give me the freedom I needed, where 16 year old boys were going out, my parents kept me at home, were I watched porn on the internet every day in my room. I felt trapped and locked in.

After I left home at 18 years I discovered and lived debauchery for many years, girlfriends, alcohol, cheating, hitting on women, hooking up, tinder.

Today I'm a single 40 year old man, seeing the emptiness I was chasing, but happily God found me and decided to become baptized.

I now look back to my upbringing with more compassion, I spoke well with my dad this Christmas and see he is a fearful man, he was afraid something would happen to me in my past, and for that reason kept me home. I feel the same as you, I never had an upbringing, I was never taught discipline, I could do whatever I wanted if I just didn't stimulate the fear of my father. For him fear was and is his main guidance in life. Which wasn't much different from me in the years after, having lust as my main guidance in life.

And that's what modernity is, emotionality, if you feel lust, you should go after it, if you feel desire, you should work hard to get it, i you feel fear, you should get rid of it. Most of all the dogma is, you should feel good. If you feel good, all is good.

I also spoke to my very old grandfather. He was born a Catholic but as a young man left the Catholic church. We had a beautiful conversation about God in our lifes, how he left the faith and how glad he is I return, I find that beautiful, even over generations we might loose track but we can come back, we can always come back, he is calling us. The old man is now every night listening to Gregorian singing. Isn't that beautiful?

In life I was blessed to find a Benedict monastery that received this lustful man with all courtesy every year the last 5 years. They showed me discipline, obedience and humility by their own actions. That opened my eyes slowly in the years after. They never told me I should be different. But they showed me the example.

How can a father give what he doesn't have himself?

As a middle aged single man I now try to bring the benedictine values in my life, discipline, obedience and humility. Like you for many years I preached the opposite, I always told girls to just let go and enjoy yourself, and making her feel like the princess in that moment before I wanted sex. I have a very destructive past for others and myself.

But I'm happy there are people like you making the same journey, even though we are on opposite sides of the world, we are in this together. I pray to god in the morning that I may do his will that today, instead of mine, always obsessing over lust, fear, pain, irritations and self-pity. And it just strengthens me to know there are many men like us walking this path, needing to throw away a lot that was taught to us by our parents and society.

I'm daring to watch the mirror for the first time in my life in the last year, and it's not a nice sight, I need to make amends, get my own life in order, let God do the upbringing in me with a fierce hand.

If God allows me to find a good Christian lady and allows me to build a family discipline will be a priority of me, sharing the lessons I learned. Focusing the family on truth and God and divine love.

 

[Feyoder]

The best behaved children I've known come from a Catholic family where parents lovingly discipline them, own no tv and greatly limit internet usage. Makes one think...

It's almost as if your actions as a parent are ENTIRELY reflected in your children. Too weird.

 

[Edelweiss]

@Roosh Would you kindly share a couple of examples of the disciplining you witnessed during your stay with the orthodox family please?

 

[pureblood]

A simple reminder that a sovereign GOD is in control of HIS creation "consider myself lucky" luck is not apart of HIS sovereign plan.

“If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.”​

 

[grenade001]

I've noticed a general pattern is that older people are more likely to see that it's BS because they've lived through multiple societal scares, and they're at an age where breaking a hip or seeing your friends die is part of life.

I was talking to my mom the other day and she mentioned how bad inflation was in the 70s, and it was a generally bad decade for working-class people. The psychological warfare is way worse than it ever was, though.

When I see pictures of my paternal grandfather who was born in the 1900s, you can see in his eyes that there isn't a lot that would scare him in the Earthly world. Especially considering he survived both World Wars; saw his own brother killed on the battlefield; then afterwards moving to the other side of the world with his family to build a stable prosperous life. If you could do that, you could do anything.

I have noticed only boomers really freaking out about COVID. The 80+ crowd I speak with are thankful that they got to the age they have so far. Certainly not under any illusions that they would live to be 100 in a COVID free world.

 

[aogilmore]

Throughout my entire childhood, I was beaten not only because of my behavior, but because of the turbulent emotional states of my parents, particularly my mother, who gave me 98% of my whuppings.

I'm glad you advocate discipline rather than corporal punishment. The rod in "spare the rod and spoil the child" is the shepherd's rod, used to guide the sheep, not administer whuppings.

 

[Pray_Everyday]

The rod in "spare the rod and spoil the child" is the shepherd's rod, used to guide the sheep, not administer whuppings.

I agree.

The following is from a post I made in the ladies forum. To those who don't venture over there, I present the monstrosity that is "child training" or "blanket training":

Anyway, I've come across a few sites that, in short, guilt the family (primarily the mom, let's be honest) for not having perfectly well behaved children who will sit quietly thru church services or act docile, and quiet in general. Also, I sometimes watch youtube videos of people who claim they were raised very religious and are now atheist (and often woke, ugh) mostly to figure out how it went horribly wrong and so I can avoid the same pitfalls for my own family (and no, going away to a liberal university is not the common thread here, some of these people married young and didn't go to college). The closest I've come to finding a common thread here is extreme levels of corporal punishment and parental hypocrisy.

Well, one church website was mentioning something about child training being a must, which I assumed meant discipline. Wrong. It actually means to intentionally tempt the child into misbehaving, in order to strike it repeatedly.

The idea comes from a book called To Train Up A Child which teaches to begin "training" months old babies when they "misbehave" by crying or reaching for a toy (that was deliberately placed there for temptation's sake) by hitting them, and pulling their hair for biting while nursing, among other things. If the child reacts in "defiance", by squirming, trying to protect itself, or anything other than just taking the beating, the parent is to "calmly" continue to beat them. This book promises to result in cheerful, quiet, well-behaved children, but sure seems to result in an awful lot of young adults that turn atheist and hate God (and three dead children, so far).

Some of the many negative reviews of this book explicitly explained how having to leave a church service because of a noisy child is seen as a huge shame on the parents (ahem, mother), and how they believe if you don't "train" your child you are not doing God's will.


Amazon product

To Train Up a Child - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Appears to have the opposite effect of what is intended...

Also, it seems wrong to me that people judge other parent's parenting and presumed motivations for said parenting based on a single short public interaction. I remember years before having kids I was horrified to see a toddler with a tablet. But now, as a mom, it's like do I want to keep up appearances to random strangers that I'm some kind of perfect screen-free parent, or do I want to finish my food grocery shopping without my toddler's shrieks disrupting the entire store? I hardly see how my toddler refusing to go quietly to the grocery store means that we the parents somehow failed at discipline...

 

[SavedByGrace]

As a fully grown woman now, I firmly believe that a lot of my problems in my youth and with my parents were because of a lack of discipline and structure. I needed rules, consequences. My mother tried too hard to be the 'cool mom' and more of a friend when I needed a mother. This disfunction helped shape my adult dysfunctional relationships. Thankfully I have gained the awareness that it was rules, structure, routine and discipline that I required and if God should ever bless me with children will provide them with that lovingly.