Skip to main content

What is Love?

During our six-month check-in with our licensing worker, he asked some of the same questions he'd asked at our initial visit and then chuckled at our responses. He said we did the same thing everyone does. When asked, "what do kids need most?" everyone says "love" at first. Six months into fostering, when asked the same questions, everyone says, "routines and boundaries". We chuckled along with him but shared that husband-wife look over his head.

Why? Because they're the same thing. Routines, boundaries, discipline, rules, consequences, correction, explanation---it's all love.

Our society is familiar with the harm that comes when a child is physically neglected. It's easy to see the kid that appears dirty, hungry, hurt, etc.

But equally harmful is the parent who neglects to instruct and correct their child in how to be a functioning member of society and a generally nice person. Who fails to discipline.

(Ugh, I hate that discipline is such a loaded word. For some it automatically denotes physical abuse and hyper-controlling parents angrily thumping a Bible.)

So, I'll define it to avoid being misunderstood. When I say discipline I think of the teaching of practices by modeling, instructing, and correcting. I think: moderating the base human impulses everyone must learn to control.

I think: a kid who isn't a brat.

So, yes, we teach our kids to say please and thank you and wait their turn and eat with their mouth closed.
We name envy and selfishness when we see it and we teach them why indulging in these impulses is harmful. 
We seek to have routines around eating and sleeping (let's be honest, seek is as good as it's going to get with 5 kids from toddler to high school--I didn't say we are perfectly disciplined; I said we teach disciplined practices) because we want them to see that we know healthy habits are valuable. 
We require them to do things they don't want to do (eat that icky food, stop nagging their sibling, obey us right now instead of eventually) because it is good to subjugate ones personal will for the greater good.

Etc.
These, and many others, are skills for living that all productive members of society and generally nice people need. And neglecting to teach them is just as bad as failing to feed or clothe your child.

Discipline = love. If you truly love you will discipline.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching "ouch"

I taught the girls to say ouch. When they first came to me their hair was a mess. Snarls, mismatched lengths where sections had been hacked off, thin and coarse hair that tangled in every hair clip I tried, etc. Due to a healthy diet and daily vitamins, as well as good hair products and regular brushing, their hair is now sleek and glossy. Jane has a cute haircut. Kate's hair is growing longer every day and curling into ringlets that bounce. I was so afraid of hurting them when they first came! I have naturally curly hair and my mother's is stick straight. She never understood how much it hurt when she pulled the brush straight through. I haven't let her touch my head since I could do my first clumsy pony tail. (At first, I held their hair so loosely while trying to do it that every single pony tail fell out minutes after going in. Looking back I feel like those people who don't know how to put a diaper on and it falls off when they lift the baby up!)  But eve...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flash Fiction - Guilt Free

And this one I wrote for the fun of it. It was delicious to wallow in such a world of self-indulgence I'll never know. This is flash fiction (less than 1,000 words). Guilt Free It was fudge sauce, thick and cold from the back of the fridge, dipped in gourmet raspberry jam—the kind from France with the understated label—straight onto a spoon and then suckled in my mouth, a frosty mug of milk tremoring faintly in my left hand, to be gulped in indelicate swaths allowing a dribble or two down my front, the first time I hit her. Not really hit. Shoved. A forceful push. A push that began with contact. The contact of my hand wedging so neatly between her small sharp shoulder blades, wedging in so that I almost could not retract myself from the catapulting force launching her into the tub. Not a hit—there was no smacking, cracking, sharp stinging rebound. No bruise. She’d laughed. She’d thought it was a game. Like when I clapped my hands together as she went up the stairs, cla...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stuff of Nightmares

For the past few months I've had this weird sleep pattern happening a couple times a week. I'm super tired and go right to sleep and continue to sleep for about 30-40 minutes. Then, I come rushing awake with my heart thumping, gasping for breath. My mind is flooded with anxiety about some tiny, specific thing like when you've already left for the trip but suddenly remember the crucial thing you forgot that absolutely must, somehow, be retrieved. I'm so anxious--and sleep-addled like when you can't fully come out of a nightmare--that it takes me 1 to 3 hours to go back to sleep. All the while feeling desperately tired and then angry that I can't get back to sleep. Because being angry sure is a relaxing way to soothe a tired brain to sleep. Yesterday we got a call from the Guardian ad Litum (the attorney for the girls). It was a brief check-up as it always is. He asks no questions beyond his first "how's it going"; wants few details. But, he is u...
Post a Comment
Read more