Self-Discipline: As a Little Child?

I attended a parenting class last week. Self-conscious as I was going into it, I was not the oldest person in the room. There was a fair amount of graying hair–various educators, as well as other grandparents, were in attendance. We were drawn to the free two-hour session by its title:  “Say Yes to No: Teaching Kids Self-Discipline.”  (It was based on the book to the right, which you can learn more about here.)

Our Lucy, bright and funny and energetic, is still a typical three-year-old: willful, testing her limits, testing our limits, asserting her own will. I know we need to get a handle on that, but instead I have found myself having PTSD (preschool temper & sassing days) flashbacks, along with the feeling that I never did know quite how to handle this stage.

My epiphany–although I couldn’t articulate it until just now–has been the realization that while self-discipline and self-control are largely the same, disciplining a child is not at all the same thing as controlling her.

And therein lay my greatest parenting failures.

Lenten Thoughts, week 3

[Part of this article was originally published in February 2009.]

I’m not sure why my thoughts strayed to piano teaching the other morning when I was praying. (Why do my thoughts ever stray at that time? A perennial question.  Sigh.)  I recalled my conversation with Angela about the “hard parts” needing more practice than the “easy parts.”

“Think about it, honey,” I said.

“If some measures are really easy for you, and some give you lots of trouble, how does it help to just start at the beginning and play the piece straight through?  You’d always be playing the easy parts just as much as you do the hard ones.”