"D" word: Discipline

CONTENTS
1. Tools for Parenting Teens
2. Links to Learn From
3. Inside Your Teen's World
4. Learn Their Lingo
5. A Little Encouragement...And Humor


1. TOOLS FOR PARENTING TEENS
This week is all about the "D" word: Discipline. Together, you and your youth pastor (and any other adults involved in the life of your teen) are working to help your "child" move towards a healthy adulthood, and discipline is a big part of that growth. This excerpt from "When Church Kids Go Bad" (and they do!), will give you a look at two sides of discipline.

POSITIVE DISCIPLINE VS. NEGATIVE DISCIPLINE

Discipline that focuses primarily on punishment as a way to get a young person to behave properly is what's often called "negative discipline." A negative disciplinarian threatens, frightens, snarls, growls, bristles, and becomes just plain nasty in order to persuade young people to behave. Even if this kind of external pressure gets immediate results, when the pressure lets up, so does the person's response. Negative discipline usually backfires.

Negative discipline can destroy a young person's sense of being loved and wanted. It can leave him feeling insecure and worthless. Negative discipline implies getting even, retaliation, vengeance, and exacting a penalty. Of course, all these dangers are increased whenever negative discipline is cruel, unreasonably severe, or prolonged.

Guilt is another common motivator in negative discipline. But using guilt to get your teen to do something is destructive. Guilt is a tremendously difficult feeling to carry around inside. And even if your young person does change her behavior because she feels guilty, she will resent it; that resentment, coupled with feelings of guilt, can produce intense feelings of anger.

Negative discipline can help control some behavior by establishing an avoidance response. But negative discipline alone never teaches young people to be responsible, motivated, and cooperative. Any improved behavior due to negative discipline simply means the young person has realized that, in this situation, the cost of negative discipline outweighs the benefits of misbehaving. The young person may change the way she behaves, but not change the way she wants to behave.

I've heard that you can train fleas. Apparently, if you throw some fleas in a jar and put the lid back on, for a few minutes you will hear a popping noise. The fleas will jump from the bottom to the top, and their little bodies will crash against the lid for a few minutes. Eventually, they will get wise and won't jump as high--they'll jump to a height just beneath the lid. (After a while, even a flea realizes hitting its head on the lid isn't much fun). After a few hours of this, you can unscrew the lid, and the fleas won't jump out. They have the ability to jump higher than the top of the jar. But something tells them if they jump too high there will be pain. In the same way, negative discipline may make a teenager behave the way you want him or her to just to avoid pain. But inside, nothing has changed.

The problem with negative discipline is that it's effective only as long as the threat hangs over an individual's head. Negative discipline does not teach the long-term benefits of changing behavior. When the threat of negative discipline has been removed, people are likely to resume their inappropriate behavior again. Consider how people tend to drive when they know a police officer is sitting beside the freeway with a radar gun. As long as that police car is visible, most people will carefully stay within the speed limit. But some of those same people are willing to drive at unsafe speeds if the police aren't visible and they think they can get away with it. Negative discipline procedures make the adult youth leader a police officer in the youth group.

Negative discipline may curb some unacceptable behavior. But negative discipline in itself does not teach or motivate a young person toward more desirable behavior. It tells a young person what not to do--it doesn't tell him what to do. Consider our prison system. If punishment were effective in teaching people better behavior, then nearly anyone released from prison after several years of incarceration would go straight from then on. But a recent study showed that more than two-thirds of released prisoners were arrested again within three years. Of course, there are all kinds of reasons why someone who has been imprisoned is more likely to end up there again. But that doesn't change the basic fact that imprisonment merely keeps a person off the street for a period of time; it does very little to encourage rehabilitation or true changes in thinking and behavior.

On the other hand, positive discipline involves a combination of encouragement, consistency, fairness, and high expectations to train young people. A positive disciplinarian uses words, deeds, or circumstances to develop maturity in the young person--which is the ultimate goal of youth ministry. (See Colossians 1:28.) Our task is to prepare, disciple, and train young people to serve God with their lives, to bring them to maturity, wholeness, and completeness in Christ. Through positive discipline, we develop mature young people who know themselves, accept themselves, and control themselves.

Positive discipline is more an attitude and atmosphere than an action. It is a tool, not a weapon. It is an expression of love, not anger. Discipline in the true biblical sense is positive and encouraging--in fact, it's even proof of love. The remainder of this book is dedicated to helping you become a positive disciplinarian...

Too Little Discipline or Too Much?

Some adults believe it's a mistake to teach young people self-control. They believe it's best to stand back and allow teenagers to find their own paths and make their own mistakes, rather than offering them firm guidance. While I disagree with this type of thinking, I understand what motivates it. Young people need to express their independence, but our attempts to control and micromanage every moment of their lives really can make things worse. Too many rules and get-tough leaders off end kids and run them off.

However, the hands-off, anything-goes approach is equally disruptive. A teacher who has a laissez-faire approach loses kids. When the kids who've left the group are asked why, they often say they've stopped attending because the class was so wild and chaotic. Not all kids care for the loud, obnoxious behavior of their peers. Chaos might be fun for a few minutes, but not forever. Kids want order for the security and safety it gives them.

This hands-off style is common among adult youth leaders who fear they'll lose the kids' friendship if they react any other way. But the anything-goes approach carries a number of negative attributes. Think about what happens when a leader doesn't seem to notice or care about the disruptive noise from the group:

- It teaches kids it's okay to talk when someone else is speaking.

- It offends the kids who want to listen but can't because of the noise.

- It says: "This is competition. May the loudest or longest talker win."

If we want an environment that attracts kids and encourages good behavior, we have to fall somewhere between the two extremes. We're not called to be watchdogs, drill sergeants, or undercover cops, but we're not called to roll over and play dead, either. We don't need to be authoritarian, but we do have to be authoritative. We can't be permissive, but we have to be sensitive to everyone's needs. Kids need a comfortable environment free of excessive control, but some control must remain.

Some Dos and Don'ts of Discipline

Fair and reasonable discipline is like a fence that provides protection and defines limits, demonstrating both care and concern. Like a good fence, our discipline needs to be strong enough to do the job for which it was intended, but flexible enough to account for unexpected situations and different kinds of kids. (Don't forget that some young people require more discipline than others--that's just the way teens are.)

To be an effective youth leader / fence builder, here are a few "dos and don'ts" to keep in mind:

- Do make sure youth group members know where the fence is. Kids need to know where the boundaries are. As long as they stay within the defined boundaries, discipline is not necessary.

- Don't make your fence so wide that young people can do virtually anything they want and still be within the boundaries.

- Don't build the fence so tight that there is no room for the youth group members to breathe or so close that it stifles creativity. Trying to maintain a tight fence that is suffocating requires almost constant vigilance and often leads to constant discipline situations.

- Do make sure your fence boundaries are appropriate for the age and temperament of your group members. Limits should be redefined as young people mature.

I don't know of any young person who doesn't want to know where the boundaries are. There is security in knowing the limits. Young people don't want to have the boundaries hammered on the door of their youth room like Luther's 95 theses. They don't want to hear the rules recited every morning when they awaken. But they do want to know that there are rules and that they will be enforced.

Giving a young person complete freedom and license is recognized today for what it is--a grave mistake. It places too much responsibility on young shoulders that are not yet ready to carry that burden. The weight of responsibility can be crushing. But too much discipline can have a very similar effect, giving the young person a feeling of failure. Again, the burden is too heavy to bear.

**
Les Christie has spent more than forty years in youth ministry, including more than twenty years in the same church. An energetic speaker, Les also chairs the youth ministry department at William Jessup University. He's the author of more than a dozen books and lives in California with his wife, Gretchen, where he no longer has to discipline his two grown sons, Brent and David.

Learn more about and purchase the book, "When Church Kids Go Bad" here:
http://www.youthspecialties.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=431

*Save 30% off the retail price of "When Church Kids Go Bad" when you use Coupon Code YPNAG4 and order by 9/10/08.

**

2. LINKS TO LEARN FROM
Lower Drinking Age is Criticized (copy and paste links)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082003626.html?hpid=topnews

What Are People Actually Doing on the Web? (copy and paste links)
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurstechnology/2008/08/20/google-yahoo-microsoft-ent-tech-cx_ml_0820wheregoweb.html



3. INSIDE YOUR TEEN'S WORLD
...Random things you may not have heard about...
Is Generation Y Going Deaf? (copy and paste link)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-10021362-47.html

Comic Book Heroes Soaring to Video Games (copy and paste link)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/marcsaltzman/2008-08-21-comic-book-video-games_N.htm



4. LEARN THEIR LINGO
...Some slang and texting lingo for you to speak (or at least understand)

- CUNS = See You In School (An acronym or text message used in online chat, IM, e-mail, blogs, or newsgroup postings.)

- ROFL = Rolling On Floor Laughing (An acronym or text message used in online chat, IM, e-mail, blogs, or newsgroup postings.)



5. A LITTLE ENCOURAGEMENT...AND HUMOR
"He who teaches children learns more than they do."
~ German Proverb


*All outside Internet links are here to inform or entertain you...we at YS don't necessarily endorse or support every link you find here.

===========our sponsor=========== IT'S A DIRTY WORD...BUT SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO IT! In this practical book, youth ministry veteran Les Christie will help you take a positive approach to discipline when it becomes necessary. "When Church Kids Go Bad" will: - reveal the reasons behind problem behavior and show you how to take a positive approach to discipline - teach you how to use rules and consequences effectively - help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses in discipline situations (and improve your areas of weakness) - give you dozens of specific, practical, helpful ideas you can use immediately with your students Learn more about and purchase the book, "When Church Kids Go Bad" here: http://www.youthspecialties.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=431 *Save 30% off the retail price of "When Church Kids Go Bad" when you use Coupon Code YPNAG4 and order by 9/10/08. =================================

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