The issue of the best method of instilling discipline in children has been a matter of contention for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Africa, the most common method of disciplining a child was through corporal punishment. It worked sometimes, or at least most times, and other times it didn’t. It was an African thing to instil the living fear in children so that every time they were going to do something silly, they remembered what awaited them. Today, the idea of applying corporal punishment makes most modern parents cringe. Most insist that it’s not effective. In fact, someone last week told me that it makes your children despise you. In the Africa that we grew in, your parents didn’t really care about whether you loved them or not. Unlike today, they didn’t get out of their way to make you their friends. You were their child and they were your parent. Their job was to make sure that you do not turn into a drug addict or a thief and if beating you up was the way to go, they happily did so. Most people I know swear that they are who they are today because of that fear. For others, the jury is still out on that. Today’s parents use the methods that ‘work’ for them. Some apply the ‘grounding’ method where the child is denied an opportunity to socialise with friends, others confiscate the children’s gadgets while others choose ‘having a conversation’ to get to the bottom of the issue. With each method, there are highs and lows. I don’t remember my mother beating us as often as most of my peers’ say they were. She invested so much of her time as a housewife in doing some activities with us and using the time to deliver whatever message needed to be delivered. She was clever and a very good story teller and she capitalised on this to deliver real life stories. She would tell you this very elaborate story which could come to life in your mind but at the end of the story, she always had a question or a conclusion of what you should pick from it. Looking back, I realise how effective it was because stories are not something most people, including children forget that easily. Besides that, mother had what I like to call ‘the eye’. If you grew up in Africa and your mother never gave you that look that would stop you in your tracks if you were doing something silly, then we need to investigate your roots. ‘The eye’ still has an effect on me to this day. How do I discipline Kwezi? I have tried the eye. She understands it and apologises or depending on her mood, she laughs at me and walks away leaving me stuck with my eye. Other times, I have given her some slaps on her bum but over time I have come to realise that I feel bad about it. The search for the right way continues.
