Article September 5, 1988 Issue

The discipline of Love

Children and their parents can learn self-control when Love is the teacher.

Kathryn W. Greenacre

Discipline . How often we shy away from the thought! It implies punishment, suffering, and deprivation for the wrongdoer. Yet is this what discipline really is?

As a parent, I thought it was. When my sons were young, there were many times that I did not "spare the rod." I felt deep anguish that I was not able to control either my temper or my sons' outbursts. And often, after having punished the boys, I felt despair that I had allowed anger to hold sway—and guilt, because of the form of punishment I had inflicted. (Anger is hardly an impartial or merciful judge.)

In my remorse I often punished myself with days of self-condemnation. Only after I had suffered greatly would I turn to a Christian Science practitioner for help in removing the mental darkness through prayer. There was progress, but oh! so slow. I seemed so easily to slide back into anger. I dimly saw that discipline was a form of education, but in the crisis of dealing with the screaming and fighting, I felt entirely unable to reason with the boys. At times I was able to stop their outbursts and then instruct them (and myself) about the necessity for self-discipline. Yet even this was not enough. I needed to stop viewing discipline as a matter of human ways and means—as punishment, deprivation of privileges, scolding. Circumstances were forcing me to find a higher concept—to see discipline as the persistent acknowledgment and growing appreciation of man's true status as the beloved child of God, always under the control of the one Mind, God.

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