Discipline Depot, One stop shopping for all your discipline needs.

The art of parenting has been slipping slowly from the hands of parents and into the laps of "professionals" for many years now. From Dr. Spock in the 1940’s to today’s reality show Super Nanny parents are increasingly looking to others for guidance on how to parent their children. Whether this shift is the result of a conscious downloading of responsibility or a genuine lack of parenting knowledge it is a burgeoning problem in the homes and schools of the nation. No one seems to be at the helm of the Good Ship Kiddy Wink and a fierce storm is on the horizon.

This phenomenon usually rears its ugly head in today’s schools at parent teacher conferences or by phone call with parents pleading for help with their child.

"What can I do with him, he just doesn’t listen?"

"How do you deal with his behaviour in your classroom?"

"Do you have any strategies on how to get her to…?"

My most recent encounter with this ever-growing lack of parenting skill was precipitated by a phone call home with regard to a child’s behaviour. Little Bobby was being a constant irritant to everyone in the room and all my management strategies had been exhausted.

The call went home and I left a message on the answering machine. In less than 24 hrs I got a response by Email from the mother explaining that she had forwarded a message to little Bobby’s father and he would be calling me.

My first question was why she didn’t just pass on the message at the dinner table but who was I to be questioning a family’s means of communication. At least there was a glimmer of hope that dear old Dad might have some clout.

Later that day I got a call from daddy and he immediately started to awkwardly field questions to get an idea of what his child had been doing. After about a ten-minute conversation he thanked me and said he would be speaking with Bobby’s mother and they would decide what they would do.

The next morning there was a message on my voice mail from Bobby’s father:

"My wife and I had a good discussion with Bobby about his behaviour but we haven’t given him any kind of punishment yet."

"We just wanted to ask if you might be able to advise us as to what would be an appropriate punishment?"

Whether it was intentional or not, these parents were trying to download the disciplining their child to me. Talk about parenting without the hard part, not being the bad guy.

Man if only it were that easy.

That is your job not mine Part II

Classroom management, such as it is, is much different today than it was in days past. Gone are the menacing management styles that were once used to terrorise and suppress the student body and in its place a far more kind and gentler management system has taken its place.

In today’s classrooms children are managed through goodwill and understanding between teacher and student. It is understood that the only thing that really keeps a class in order, is the goodwill the students collectively grant the teacher. Outside of that the teacher has nothin, zippo, zilch at their disposal to maintain order in a class. Teachers have been metaphorically castrated in the past twenty years and have nothing other than a lesson plan, a sparkling personality and if they’re lucky an allusion of authority.

The only vestige of days past that teachers still have in their quiver of management tools is the phone call home and even the effectiveness of this has changed in recent years. At one time this was the hammer that was only unleashed when all else had failed in the classroom. It would frequently result in a sound whooping when dear old Pappy got home and/or a month in solitary confinement. This phone call was the single greatest fear a child had and would usually only have to be made once in any given school year to straighten a child out.

Today, more often than not, even the call home has little to no effect in modifying a child’s behaviour. Thankfully, with some families it still carries some clout but for the most part it simply opens the teacher up to criticism about their skill and serves only as a conduit for verbal abuse on behalf of the parent toward the teacher.

A recent phone call home by a colleague garnered a comment from a parent that sums up how many people feel about being asked to assist a teacher in modifying a child’s behaviour.
After trying every anaemic means of modifying the child’s behaviour at their disposal, including report card comments, letters home and voice mail messages the teacher finally contacted the child's father by phone one eveneing. Irritated by the intrusion the father summed up the ever growing sentement of today's parents in two short sentences.

"I don’t call you when I have a problem with Johnny at home so don't be calling me when you are having a problem with him in your classroom. He is your problem not mine!"

With that, the father hung up and absolved himself of any responsibility for his child’s behaviour in the classroom.

That is your job not mine Part I

Traditionally it has been understood that a child’s education goes far beyond the walls of the school and that parents have as much a roll in educating their child as teachers do. Whether it be monitoring homework or working to develop the behaviours that are necessary for success in school, it is accepted that parents play a crucial part in their child’s education.

In the past two decades however parental involvement in the education of children has been waning. For an ever-growing group of parents, it is believed that education only occurs between 8am and 3pm behind the closed doors of their neighbourhood school and god help the teacher that attempts to include them in the pedagogical process.

Even with a parent on side, getting a kid to do homework can be much like digging twenty-foot ditch with a teaspoon, futile at best. Without parental support you have a better chance of getting the dirt from said ditch to complete the work.

Recently a young colleague of mine in her second year of teaching was having a great deal of difficulty getting one of her students to complete their homework. The situation had become so bad that the child was in danger of failing the term because of incomplete assignments. As is required by school procedure, phone calls were made emails and even written notices had been sent but all to no avail.

In a last ditch effort to contact the child’s parent the teacher called home late one evening and finally got the father on the phone.

Now it is important to note that contacting a parent is not something most teachers enjoy doing. In a world where hostility toward teachers is common place and being verbally berated by angry parents is more the rule than the exception the young teacher expected the worst.

Before she could utter a word beyond her name, the father began the verbal barrage.

"Who do you think you are expecting me to do your job!?"

"If you want to make sure his homework done you come and make sure it gets done!"

"Homework is not the responsibility of me or my wife so stop harassing us!"

and with that it was over. The saga of the missing homework had been concluded. The child had been relegated to failure because the parents didn’t care enough to take the time and ensure homework was at the very least attempted if not completed.

How Not to Keep Your Kid in School

John Doe was like most wayward teens, disinterested with school, hated his parents but was completely unwilling to take on any the responsibility his parents shouldered on his behalf such as housing, clothing and sustenance. The only thing the parents hadn’t provided to this point was a vehicle.

Skilled in the art of manipulation, John managed to milk his parents for all they were worth both emotionally and financially not out of malicious intent but out of learned behaviour. In this kid’s scant 17 years of existence, It is almost certain his parents had never uttered the word “no” and always had taken the path of least resistance in raising their child.

The first half of the year John’s mother would call on a daily basis obviously crying, frustrated with trying to get this kid up and to school.

“Please help!” she would say “I can’t get him to school, isn’t there anything you can do?”

What she and many parents don’t understand is that if they can’t get their kid to do something the school will have even less success. In this particular case psychologists, social workers, police and judges couldn’t get this kid to do what they wanted, he was out of anybody’s influence.

Strategy after strategy was used to persuade, dissuade and nursemaid this child into attending school, stop getting arrested and to become a useful citizen of the world.

At the end of 4 months an abysmal attendance record and nary an assignment handed in, it was suggested that it might be time for his parents to show this child the door. Force him to fend for himself and remove him from the comfortable world his parents had created for him.

“Oh no we couldn’t do that! He won’t finish school if we do that”

It was time we let mother in on the worst kept secret in the history of secrets

“He ain’t gonna graduate anytime soon when he is hiding out in your basement smoking pot and drinking beer all day!”

“Oh no, no… He isn’t doing that! He wouldn’t do that!”

After much begging and pleading we agree to hold onto dear John until the end of January at which time we would decide if he will stay or go.

“Oh thank you! My husband and I will talk with John over Christmas and lay down the law”

January 3rd comes and John is waiting for the doors of the school to open.

“Wow! You and your parents must have had one hell of a talk.”

“No not really.” “Hey did you see my Christmas present in the parking lot?”

A brand spanking new Volkswagen Jetta VR6 with all the bells and whistles.

That day mother calls us to say what a wonderful Christmas they had. She went on to explain that she and her husband discussed it and decided that rather than laying down the law, if they bought John a car for Christmas he would feel obligated to attend school.

John attended school for the first week after Christmas. We haven’t seen him since.

Anyone Up For Golf

Regardless what Hillary Clinton says, for most parents, raising children is “their” lifes work and has little to do with Mrs. Clinton’s village. In essence, a child’s success or failure in life is a reflection of just how well a parent has done their job.

Unfortunately some parents abdicate their opportunity to parent and subscribe to the village analogy because of their inability, blatant neglect or just plain laziness.

On this particular occasion our program was to receive a young man who had been kicked out of every school in town for such things as truancy, drug and alcohol use and various other unscholarly behaviours.

The father was a workaholic the mother an alcoholic. The kid was in serious distress and in dire need of professional psychiatric help or perhaps just a couple of parents who gave a damn.

The father came to the intake meeting, said all the right things, furrowed his brow at all the right times, smiled lovingly at his kid intermittently, we thought we might have a genuine chance in helping this kid out given the fathers apparent interest in his kid.

After about a 45 minute meeting the plan in place, dad stands up and says, “Well got a flight to Phoenix to catch, see ya in two weeks.”

As he heads out the door he turns and declares to the three staff members present. “Fix my kid and there’s a golf weekend someplace nice in it for ya.”

How to Buy Your Child's Love

Cell phones have become an integral of everyone’s lives it has become for many, a, can’t live without item. It is no different for kids these days in fact they are the engines, which are driving the digital age and consume every new innovation with an insatiable appetite.

It was a late spring day, when an effervescent young lady came running, breathless and desperate to the office.

“Can I please use the phone!?”

The receptionist declines the request and tells the girl to return to class.

“But it is really important!”

“I forgot something in my dad’s car and he is leaving on a business trip and he won’t be back for a week!”

The receptionist softens and grants the request. The girl franticly dials her father, hoping he is still driving to the airport.

“Daddy!”

“I forgot my cell phone in your car this morning when you dropped me off and I really need it.”

“Can you send it to me?”

The office staff looks at one another and collectively roll their eyes. Before the receptionist can tell the girl to get off the phone that her forgotten cell hardly constitutes an emergency the girl blurts out.

“Ok Daddy!” -------------- “Thank you!” ----------------- “I love You!”

As quickly as she came she dashes back out the door and down the hall to class.

Heads shaking the office staff return to running the school and think nothing more of the frantic call.

Some time later a cabby walks in, cell phone and envelope in hand.

“I have to leave this for Jane Doe.” The same girl who made the frantic call an hour or so earlier.

A fifty-dollar cab ride from the Airport to the school just so this girl wouldn’t miss a call? Will wonders ever cease?

At the end of the day, when the girl comes to claim her digital identity, the receptionist hands over the cell and the envelope. She immediately pockets the phone then tears into the envelope in which she finds two crisp hundred-dollar bills.

Gleefully she similes and calls a friend on a phone that has cost her father 150$ on that day alone and says, “lets go shopping!”

The appointment

The school received a call shortly after class began and it was the mother of a primary child, grade 3 if I recall correctly. She was reporting that her daughter was sick and would not be able to participate in class on this day.

The mother did however have a request of the school. Could she bring her daughter into school to be watched while she went to a “very important appointment” that could not be changed? She promised it would be no more than a hour and the child could just sleep in the sick room while she was gone.

As unusual as the request was the Principal agreed, assuming that the mother would not make such a request if the appointment wasn’t truly pressing and she had no other options. Shortly after the Principal had agreed to the arrangement, the sick room was made ready and the mother dropped the child off.

“No more than an hour the mother reiterated”, with that she made her escape.

The hour came and went and so did a second. In that time, the child’s condition had deteriorated and vomiting was added to their list of symptoms. As with all young children, when vomiting ensues comforting is needed so the Principal became the default nursemaid.

As the third hour approached the mother finally returned from her pressing “appointment.” She was all primped and preened looking as bright as a summer’s day.

She had been at the spa… Her unavoidable appointment was a morning at the spa.

Surrogate Parents, Ward of the Professionals

Teacher parent meetings are not all that unusual and in a program for kids who are a bit rough around the edges, these meetings occur a little more frequently than "normal".

Usually these meetings are precipitated by some random act or behaviour that is completely unacceptable in a school setting and the school, out of obligation, must make the attempt to involve the parent(s) in the solution.

In this particular case the student had lost their licence due to at least one DUI that we knew about. Rumour had it that two accidents and one vehicle theft had also contributed to the licence revocation.

Needless to say when said student was transporting a number of other students to the local Micky D’s for lunch we just had to blow the whistle. A quick call to the local police garnered a traffic stop, which resulted in this student receiving a number of fines and a formal invite to a court appearance at a later date.

Not 24 hours later we receive a call from the parents of this child requesting a meeting about the incident. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to meet with parents we happily accepted.

Most parents arrive at these meeting sheepish and apologetic, eager to make amends for their children’s behaviour. This was not one of those occasions.

“We thought you were suppose to work in the best interests of our son”

“How could you call the police on our son?”

Our explanation about how the safety and wellbeing of the students under our supervision is of paramount importance and that their son’s actions was a threat to the safety and wellbeing of himself and four other children fell on deaf ears.

After almost an hour of hashing out the finer points of what the responsibilities of teachers are, the father sums up where he and his wife are coming from.

"We have left the raising of our child up to the professionals and you have sorely disappointed us”