So You Think You Can Meke? By the time I got to sixth grade, I was ready to make my stand. It was the first day of the sixth grade and I was in class, sitting at a desk, when a substitute teacher walked in and introduced herself to the kids. She told us that if we didn’t act right, she’d tell the regular teachers, and they’d have us removed from class and put in the office. I remember thinking, “She’s so big and can do whatever she wants! She can’t do that. She’ll go to jail.” It was easy for me to think like that. I’d been told by my teachers and by my parents that she couldn’t do that to me. I kept myself in school and everything turned out fine until the middle of the second marking period. When a substitute teacher asked the class to stand for something or another, I couldn’t stand still for a second. I kept moving my feet, my arms, and my hands around. Then I realized that the other kids were staying in their seats. I was busted. So was I really in trouble? I had violated a rule. I had to be punished. So the substitute teacher held me out of the classroom and called my parents. She asked my dad, “Do you know where I can find this girl’s parents?” He said, “What do you mean?” She told him, “I have a special assignment for your daughter. She needs to go to the guidance counselor’s office.” She said she’d call my mom, but she didn’t. I waited by the office while she called my mom. I was bawling and crying, feeling like I was so bad. When my mother came to pick me up, she asked me if she needed to go see a psychologist. I said, “No, mom! I’m the one who made the mistake!” My mom said she knew and asked me why I had gotten so upset. “What do you mean?” I told her about the punishment. She said, “Well, at least it wasn’t a lot of trouble for you.” That’s how my mother taught me about discipline. She told me it doesn’t matter what somebody else is going through. It’s what you are dealing with, and that’s what is important. We don’t want to worry about what other people are doing to us. We have to take care of our own business. If you give somebody a little extra bit of trouble for being unruly, all you do is train them not to come to school on time, to be disrespectful, to waste their time because they don’t have to go to school in the first place. You are making their behavior worse, not better. What Happens When You Don’t Keep the Rules? There are times when we may get angry because we feel we have had to do something that seems unfair. The way we deal with anger depends on who we are, but the same rule applies. We can say, “I shouldn’t have to do this! Nobody’s supposed to put you in jail just because you have a job!” I’ve heard that a lot of people agree with that rule. No matter what we are dealing with, whether it’s a teacher’s rule or some other kind of rule, our children learn that they have a responsibility to behave. If somebody else won’t listen to you and you have to make an effort to get through to that person, don’t take it out on your child! When your child is little, you can talk about these things. Later, if you decide to punish your child because he broke a rule, you need to use time-out or a chair or something to tell him he messed up and ask him to clean up the damage. If he continues to be rebellious, it may not be right to keep giving in to him. You need to follow the rules because you want to, not because he wants you to. The same is true for parents. It’s easy to say, “I shouldn’t have to clean up all this mess I made when I was young.” It would be more comfortable to accept blame. But once you understand the rule, it doesn’t matter how your parents treated you or how you were brought up. To take charge of your life, to be responsible, you have to take responsibility. You have to say, “I’m a responsible adult now, and I have to learn the rules that go along with being an adult and a parent, and I have to respect the rules myself.” Once you accept responsibility, you can put it all together. The Bible says, “He who has a rule for his children and teaches them the law is in the way of life.” (Proverbs 6:20, GNB) God has already written those rules, and he’s the one who will take away your sins. If you find yourself with a child who won’t listen, you need to make that child stop disobeying. Then you need to decide if you are going to have rules and discipline for your child. When you do that, don’t blame anyone else for what you did. Instead, know that you are responsible for what you do, and make the best of the way you raise your child. Comments I don’t have children, but I’m always shocked to hear about how mean some teachers are to kids. One time I was with a girl at the park who was throwing around the ball really hard, and a mom was walking by. She shouted at me, “Girls don’t play with balls!” To a person who does not see it, the statement can sound mean. It sounds like some of the worst examples come from schools with no discipline. What’s the worst place to have to deal with those people? Is there a place where people expect there to be discipline but instead find that they don’t have any say? We had a woman as a teacher who had never been married, let alone had any children. She had some kind of agenda and it didn’t involve actually teaching. We were in a class of around 30 students and she was in charge of us. She kept yelling at us (it was supposed to be the “positive” thing) for wearing ugly clothing and telling us we looked cheap. She said it in front of our parents, so I never went back to her class. (and that was the smallest class I went to) I can’t say if you do have to deal with a lot of teachers who are just mean. But when you teach, you teach at home. If a parent doesn’t learn the proper way to talk to their children, it will affect the behavior in the classroom. If you are mean, you are wasting your own time and you are hurting their child. The way people raise their children has a huge impact on how they behave. I work with a lot of teenagers and so I am exposed to that age group often. They are all about finding rules, I guess. What they are taught to believe in school will be carried into their everyday life in the future. That’s why I try to give them as much advice as possible to prepare them for the world outside of school. Being a teenager, I’ve dealt with a lot of problems with teachers and students. I can remember my school principal telling me, “We’re going to have no more discipline problems after you graduate.” One day he was going to visit my schools and find me misbehaving in school. (Not by doing anything wrong, but I just did not care for my teacher or the way she acted.) This is not a good way to tell a child that they don’t need to listen to a certain person. I teach at a pre-k through grade four private school and I often hear parents blame teachers for their children not behaving. It’s not true. The children bring their behaviors with them when they come to school. It is the parents’ responsibility to make sure their children behave and respect school rules. My family often get upset with me for disciplining their children, but I have heard so many times from others how it can affect a child, not just their behavior, but their thinking. To discipline a child is very easy, just like what you said, all you do is train them not to come to school on time, to be disrespectful, to waste their time because they don’t have to go to school in the first place.