Four Levels of Discipline All Kids Need to Learn
I wanted to talk to you about our life skill, this cycle, which is discipline. We’ve been working for the past month on teaching the kids the four levels of discipline. And so we wanted to share them with you so that that way you could benefit from them as well.
Level One of discipline is simply obeying the rules, having the kids listen to what they’re being asked to do. respond with. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. And get it done. Now, just imagine how much nicer and how much less stress there would be in your house. If the kids simply responded with Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. And did what you asked them to do. Now, again, this isn’t going to be blanket 100% of the time. But what I’m hearing a lot of is that everything becomes a negotiation or even worse, a debate or an argument. Whenever you ask your kids to do something, we don’t get that here so much because level one of discipline is simply to obey the rules, do what you’re told and be happy about it. That’s the second part of our discipline is not throwing the temper tantrum, teaching the kids that you’re, you can have a verbal response. But you can also have a physical response. A lot of times when you ask the kids to do something, and they roll their eyes, or they throw their body, you know that that’s a temper tantrum one way or another. And we don’t do that as martial artists.
Once we start working on discipline, we took the kids to level two, level two is self-discipline, start figuring out the things that you’re supposed to be doing, and get them done before mom or dad asked me to do them. Simple things like you know, you’re supposed to make your bed every day. You know, you’re supposed to get yourself dressed, you know, you’re supposed to brush your teeth, etc. So making sure that you create a list of things that the kids can be working on with their self-discipline. So again, how much stress is that going to reduce on you, not having to talk to them and lecture them and remind them 10 times a day did you brush your teeth? Did you brush your teeth and you make your bed and a lot more things can get done and the house is going to be a whole lot happier?
That takes us to level three. Level Three is self-control. Having good discipline means being in control of your feelings and your emotions. And a lot of times again, this is a struggle for a lot of kids, they want what they want, and they want it when they want it. And if they don’t get it, they’re not sure how to handle that disappointment. Well, this is where we start working on it. Having good self-control means it’s okay to be upset, but it’s not okay to throw a temper tantrum, right. It’s okay to be angry. It’s not okay to yell and scream. So whatever rules you put in your house are certainly up to you. But that’s where we start to work on proper ways or acceptable ways to deal with disappointment. Finally, that brings us to level four self-awareness
This is something that almost no child is able to do. And unfortunately, a lot of parents are lacking as well. Self Awareness is the understanding of how my actions affect those around me. We also include in actions, so if I don’t do something, how does that affect those around me? If my job is to make my bed every morning, and I don’t do it, what’s the impact of those people around me, Oh, mom or dad are gonna get upset, right? I’m gonna get yelled at everybody’s stress. And you can start to look at those different situations. So teaching the kids to become self-aware that what they’re doing, and how they go about doing it is going to affect other people that leads into empathy. And all of those skills are tremendous things that are going to help the kids become great leaders as they grow older.