Good Discipline: Teach Compliance First
When I first started talking about the quality of compliance I used the word obedience. I got such a negative reaction from teachers and parents that I had to change the name of the quality from obedience to compliance. It seemed as if obedience was too strong a word and parents and teachers were offended by it. I still don’t think that there is anything wrong with the word obedience. Thirty years ago we demanded obedience from children. Today we can’t even use the word, and obedience turns out to be the last thing we get from children. Well, what is the definition of compliance? Compliance is when a person does what he is told, when he is told to do it, with a good attitude. And willfulness is the opposite of the character quality of compliance.
Why is it so hard to get children to be compliant with the instructions of an adult? It is the natural tendency of children to want to explore and do things, their natural curiosity is always at work and they believe at a young age that they can do and say just about anything that they want. A parent’s first job is to teach their children the word NO. If children don’t understand what they can and cannot do, and they don’t understand the word NO they will draw the conclusion at a very young age that they can do anything they want. Believe it or not children will draw this conclusion at about the age of two. This is one of the reasons why everyone talks about the terrible two’s. Children are starting to walk and have a natural curiosity, and want to explore just about everything, like a hot stove, or electric outlets. They want to pull on the dogs ears, or change the channel on the TV set in the middle of a show, or go into the cabinet under the sink and play with the Drano. If children don’t understand the word NO, and more importantly, if they are not corrected for their non-compliance they will begin to believe that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. Then suddenly mom or dad get to the point that they are fed up with their children’s behavior and they start to take things away, or start to scream the word NO which leads to the child crying and throwing a temper tantrum.
I am not sure where adults got the idea that they can rationalize with a two year old and truly make that child understand their adult reasoning. The truth of the matter is they can’t. But these same children enter pre school and kindergarten and are behavior problems for the teacher from the get go. These children can’t share, stay in their seat, follow directions, or take turns. When they are disciplined for non compliance they scream and carry on like someone is cutting off their right arm. The teacher then begins to believe that there is something medically wrong with these children, like they must have ADHD, or ODD. In reality the children were just never taught the meaning of one little word, NO.
