Excerpted from Parenting With Wit and Wisdom in Times of Chaos and Loss by Barbara Coloroso (Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 1999, $35.00)
In a moment of exuberance, your four-year-old moves a ballpoint pen past the edge of her drawing tablet and scratches the wooden kitchen table. In a fit of boredom, your nine-year-old uses the same pen to gouge several permanent tic-tac-toe patterns into the same table. Returning from a weekend trip, you stand at the kitchen door in shock as you survey the damage to the entire kitchen, table included. Your teenager tries to explain that she had a few friends over and the party got a bit out of hand. The most serious damage was done by your daughter's best friend, Sam. Fueled with alcohol, and angry and bitter about his parents' acrimonious divorce and ongoing custody battles, he carved a variety of four-letter words into the table.
What's a parent to do? We might be inclined to let the mistake slide, punish the nine-year-old by removing his GameBoy for a week, ground our teenager for six months and ban her friend from our property forever. These "solutions" are a variation of punishment or its alter ego, rescuing. None disciplines the kids or helps them to develop their own sense of inner discipline. And for the angry teenager, there is no opportunity to fix what he did, figure out how he can keep it from happening again or heal with the people he has harmed.
How we respond to their many mistakes, occasional mischief and rare mayhem can help provide the wherewithal for our children to become responsible, resourceful, resilient, compassionate humans, who feel empowered to act with integrity and a strong sense of self or to become masters of excuses, blaming and denial, who feel powerless, manipulated and out of control. Whether they feel empowered or powerless will greatly influence their ability to handle the myriad of traumas they will experience throughout their lives - traumas brought about through death, divorce, illness, natural disaster, broken friendships, loss of a job or mistakes, mischief and mayhem they create themselves.
Mistakes
The four-year-old who has scratched the table cannot repair it. The reality is that the table has been scratched. The problems to be solved are 1) how to minimize the mark and 2) how to keep the table free of further accidental marks. The preschooler can wipe the table to remove the colour from the marking and help place a larger mat under her drawing paper to protect the table from any damage the next time she is drawing. You can give her felt-tipped pens - easier to clean up and less likely to cause irreparable damage. As a parent, you are there to give your child as much ownership as she is capable of assuming for the problem she created, offer guidelines for fixing the mistake and assure her that she can handle it.
To remove all of the pens from her and never let her draw again at the table is punishment that teaches her nothing about learning from her mistakes. She also learns nothing about being capable of fixing mistakes she has made or about how she can keep from making the same mistake in the future. To spank her for being careless is to invite her to become fearful of ever making another mistake, to hide her mistakes, to strike back at you if she dares, or in anger and hurt go hit her younger brother or the cat. To let her continue to mark up the table, even accidentally, is to say that she need not be concerned about any limits and boundaries. To offer excuses - "She's too young to know any better," "She didn't mean to do it," "All kids scribble on tables" - is to teach her to make excuses for her future mistakes: "It wasn't my fault," "She made me do it," "I couldn't help it."
Everyday incidents and mistakes can be opportunities for children to take ownership of problems they have created, figure out how to fix the problems and figure out how to keep the same mistake from happening again. Kids, even at age four, begin to see that when they have a problem what they need is a good plan, not a good cover-up and not a good excuse. As they grow older, they will be less likely to dread taking risks that might result in great failure (or great success). Rather than giving up when they experience setbacks and defeats, they can be open to learning from adversity and using that knowledge to create new opportunities.
Mischief
The four-year-old did not intend to damage the table; the nine-year-old did. He needs to go through all four steps of discipline with special attention to how he is going to keep such damage from happening again. Taking ownership of the problem he created, he will need to take part, to the extent that he is capable, in getting the table repaired. He can help sand and refinish the tabletop if you, the parent, have those skills and can help him learn how. If not, he can make a phone call to the refinisher, help deliver the table to the shop, help carry it back into the house and arrange a reasonable payment plan to you for the repair. (If the repair costs are way beyond the means of repayment for your child, you can show some mercy and reduce the debt to a workable amount, covering the excess yourself. You would hope your in-laws would do likewise if you were to break a piece of their cherished and very expensive crystal.)
All of this will involve your time as well as your child's time. Punishment is so much swifter; doing it yourself, so much smoother. However, the time you take is well worth it as your child begins to realize that all of his actions have consequences. He also learns that he is quite capable of taking ownership for what he does and just as capable of taking full responsibility for the problems he's created, not because he fears reprisal, but because it is the healthy thing to do.
Mayhem
Standing in the kitchen feeling betrayed, wronged, hurt, disappointed and angry, you know that discipline is only the first step in restoring both the table and the relationship you had with Sam, your daughter's friend who destroyed this family heirloom. How easy it would be to display righteous indignation, continue being angry and feeling victimized, to push for punishment, seek revenge and hold a grudge? Just as easy and as unproductive would be to make excuses for the teen or shrug your shoulders and chalk the experience up to a once-in-a-lifetime outburst that won't happen again and need not be addressed further.
There is a real need for the teen to take ownership of the mayhem he created, fix what he did, figure out how he can keep it from happening again and heal with the people he has harmed. This cannot happen in an atmosphere of punishment, vindication or vengeance; nor will it happen in an atmosphere of indifference. It can happen only if we are willing to create an atmosphere of compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience, in which we can help him work through the four steps of discipline and the three Rs: restitution, resolution and reconciliation.
