DON’T DECEIVE YOURSELF
Zuigan Gen Osho called to himself every day, “Master!” and answered, “Yes, sir!” Then he would say, “Be wide awake!” and answer, “Yes, sir!” “Henceforward, never be deceived by others!” “No, I won’t!”
—Gateless Gate, case 12
It was on my thigh, the back of my left thigh, where—my daughter’s tooth prints pink and pulsing—the subject of discipline first occurred to me. Ouch! She was no longer the self-regulating little device she started out as. No longer only benign belly and bowel functions. Somewhere between last night’s bath and this morning’s diaper, she had transformed into a fanged menace, a horned demon. I reacted at peak throttle. I slapped her arm, hard, and we both crumpled in a flood of fear and tears.
Oh, my. This is going to require more than endless work and ceaseless hours. It will take more than cleanliness, organization, cooking, laundry, and shopping. It will take more than all my money and good intentions. This is going to require the d word, dammit: discipline.
There is no topic that piques and polarizes parents more than discipline. How we wish our children would be good! And by “good” we mean easy for us. They aren’t, not all the time, not one of them. How much we aim to be good parents! And by “good” we usually mean different from our own, with different views and means of discipline. We so seldom are, although our children keep coming at us, provoking us to take a wiser approach.
This is a thicket, you know, this business of being bad and being good and how much we indulge and how much we inflict. Add to it the flammability of fatigue, anger, and pride and it is shocking how much of the time we can get it all so terribly wrong.
I was a witness to a visit made by my mother’s pastor during her last stay in the hospital. Intending perhaps to lessen the gravity of her circumstance, he wandered lightheartedly into a bit of a sermon on raising kids. He seemed sorry about it, but he also seemed certain: those boys of his needed a wallop nearly every day. Indeed, they forced his hand! My mother, who had spanked me only once growing up and as she did, sobbed at the pain to us both, lay stone-faced in bed. Numbed by her fate and perhaps struck dumb by this message, she offered up nothing. Not a nod. Not one nervous smile. She could never be righteous, but she could be silently, unshakably good.
I think of my mother often—I think of her now—as the flash points of parenting come on fast and close. I think of her bawling out loud at the shame and sadness of intentionally hurting her child. Her first time, and she was already so disappointed in herself! When you, too, are brought to tears by your own rage, you will know what I know from my mother, although the wisdom usually comes one wallop too late. You will feel many things after you strike too hard or shriek too loud or otherwise terrify your child, but you will never feel right. The subject of discipline shows you your interdependence; it demonstrates your oneness. When you deliver the blow, you will suffer the impact. The question is, how does it come to this? Better still, how can we stop even one second short of too late?
When babies are little we are told, and then we come to see, that every outburst is a cry for something needed. A few days or weeks into the drill and we can decode the pitch and duration of the wail, look at our watches, and know everything instantly. She’s hungry. She’s tired. She needs a diaper change. And later, she’s teething. She’s overstimulated. She’s bored. Or, she’s sick. All nonjudgmental deductions that trigger our compassion and action. But when our children get a tad older, appearing more sophisticated and encountering a more complicated world, we’re likely to ease back on the compassion. We mistake them for fully evolved human beings. Sometimes we mistake them for the enemy. Assaulted by the rude new disguise of their cries for help, we judge them. You’re being bad, we think. We say it, too, delivered impulsively with a spirited correction to their minds or their bodies.
Now, who’s practicing being the good parent?
We are deceiving ourselves anytime we view our children as separate from the conditions that we ourselves still largely create: separate from the circumstances of their environment; separate from the state of their minds, bodies, and bellies; and separate from the monumental influence we as parents impose. We look at them with loathing, these new, inscrutable children, these other children. In this shift of perception, we expel our babies from the unity of we and engage them in a battle in which they can only get stomped. These are the moments when wakefulness waves its puny white flag. If we can wake up, we will see that we cannot separate self from other. We cannot separate restraint from self-restraint. We cannot separate respect from self-respect. We cannot separate discipline from self-discipline. We cannot separate. We delude ourselves by even perceiving someone as separate, and we deceive ourselves with our delusions. There is nothing outside ourselves.
This sounds like Buddhist mumbo jumbo, you might say. Nice in theory but not in practice because of the vagaries of kids’ temperaments or genetics or even the influence of the devil. But I don’t know anything about those things, and anything I do know doesn’t help me handle the moment of impact. When my daughter does something I don’t like or can’t fathom, something embarrassing or inappropriate, I have to go to work on it immediately, and all I have to work with is myself. Oh, sure, I could try working directly on her. Let me work my stiff, open palm violently onto your plump behind. But I don’t want to do that! It will be a time much, much later and a climate much, much cooler when I can work with my daughter in other ways—dialogue, compromise, explanation, role play—but for now (maybe forever) all I have to work with is myself.
How? I must slow my reactions down. I must observe the situation and intuit the cause. I must consider her developmental urges and instincts. I must listen, carefully, to her words. I must use my own words, or silence, precisely. I must alter the aggravating situation, often by removing her, sometimes by removing me. I must bring all of my attention and all of my power to correcting what I have done or not done to unwittingly allow, encourage, foster, and fester this mess taking place right now in my own house. And if you argue that this is all too liberal, too permissive, because my daughter must learn what is right and what is wrong, I will respond that in fact my daughter will learn in the same way she learns almost all things—by watching, hearing, and imitating me. My child will do what I do and say what I say, but she will never, without coercion, do what I say. How I wish that every single time she could watch me calm down, cool off, take responsibility, and solve the problem. Only then can she learn to do likewise.
I once read a doctor’s advice on dealing with a thumb-sucking problem, which can be a world-class annoyance. Wear a rubber band on your arm, the doctor said, and snap it sharply against your wrist anytime you think about hounding your kid to stop sucking his thumb. Discipline seems to work on this principle, too. Turn everything on yourself first and then take stock of whatever problems remain. There won’t be nearly so many.
Lest you think I’m some kind of born-again peacenik, someone who levitates above the fray, let me assure you that none of these conclusions were reached without pain or punishment to us both, without inflicting the horrors of rough handling when I was simply too frustrated or stubborn to take a breather. I lose it all the time. We all lose it all the time. The point is not that we lose our cool, the point is how quickly we find it again.
About the time I realized dismally that I had no disciplinary method, no philosophy, and no higher authority, messianic messages began appearing. Perhaps this is how mine will appear for you.
A book tipped me off that most tantrums occur at moments of low blood sugar or fatigue. Aha! Discipline yourself to live strictly by routine. Offer precisely timed meals, snacks, and naps and you can preempt some of those nasty scenes. You can quite nearly prevent tantrums in public when you discipline yourself to avoid lengthy or ill-timed shopping trips.
An expert on daytime TV said out-of-bounds behavior is a cry for attention. As doses of high-intensity attention, punishments can reinforce inappropriate behavior. Next time, withdraw your attention and see how quickly the behavior self-corrects. Announce your intention to leave the room until the tantrum is over. Then leave the room. Abandon the fight. Ignore the offender. Let the fire go out, as a fire always does if you have the self-discipline to stop fueling it. After that, rally yourself to provide positive forms of attention. Play, read, draw, tumble, and frolic. Together.
There are situations that simply scream out for your decisive intervention—circumstances that require you to cut through the behavior before the both of you spiral further into chaos. When Georgia began having tantrums, the curative was often, “Go to your room.” We were stunned when it worked, but it usually did. If your child defies the order, then discipline yourself and take refuge in your room. For this, I designated a cushy reading chair in my bedroom, where I hardly ever had the luxury to sit anymore. This became mom’s “quiet chair,” where I parked myself to decelerate conflicts. Invariably, my tamed two-year-old would venture in within minutes to make up with hugs and kisses. Your child, after all, wants something, and what he or she usually wants is your love.
It’s funny how many discipline problems occur around the very things we haven’t—ahem—been very disciplined about ourselves. Face up to whatever lack of discipline you’ve forgiven in yourself, because you’re about to propagate it in every single generation that succeeds you. Are you disorganized, messy, hot tempered, foulmouthed, lazy, or forgetful? Fix it. Want your child to eat better? Then add variety, balance, healthfulness, and regularity to your own diet. Are you expecting her to eat her meals at the table? Where do you eat yours? Having a hard time getting your child to brush her teeth? When’s the last time she saw you brush yours, or even helped? Bathing is a battle? Then get into the tub and have fun. How can you get your child to sleep at a decent hour? Go to bed on time. Establish a routine for yourselves and administer it every single day and night. Seeking the surety of a governable household and the sanity of consistent behavior? Be firm with yourself: tell your child what you expect, give clear instructions, and impose consistent limits. Over and over and over again. Want your child to learn to handle difficult emotions and overcome fears? Then do likewise. Express yourself calmly, own up to your feelings, and don’t be afraid to be honest. If you don’t believe you have the capacity to administer your child’s welfare, he or she won’t believe it either. Want your child to be good? Then be good.
One of the fastest ways to become a wise parent is to remember what you used to know so well: that children act up when they are hungry, tired, or uncomfortable. It remains true for them, as it does for us, long past the point when we can recognize it. These are still the easy days, after all. Our children are still little. My mother used to quote her own mother when she tried to help me put all of this into perspective: “When children are little, they have little problems.” When children are big, we’ll worry about that later.
“We do not bite.” I hold my daughter eye to eye and say emphatically to us both. It is a promise to her and a reminder to me to keep my own sharp teeth and swift hands to myself, to silence my shaming words, to revive my flagging attention, and to restore my faith in boundless, compassionate love above all.
No matter what the situation, how perplexing or intolerable, you always have a starting point when you start with yourself. Yes, sir!