Modern Day Child Discipline Can Benefit Those Who Need Help

If you're anything like me, you grew up in a world where the belt ruled the home. I'm not complaining, I was the type of rebellious kid that knew I'd get in trouble, but do it anyway. After all, it's only a few licks and I could go right back out and keep playing the moment the sting went away.

That sort of parenting is rare these days. Frowned upon in public, shamed on social media, parents now do what they can to try to change the way we discipline kids seeking an impactful message of growth without the painful impact.

Since those days, I've seen parents that try to use reason and logic with their kids... but kids aren't reasonable or logical, so it's usually lost on them. Time outs and grounding haven't been effective since the invention of the smartphone and tablets. We live in a time where kids actually just want to go to their room anyway.

There was a short trend of parents trying to use social media against them, making little shame signs and having their kids pose with them for pictures to be shared throughout the community, but even an old-school-butt-spanker like me knows that's a worse kind of bullying than a reasonably strong lick with a belt... but a recent grapevine post got me thinking there might be a way to instill a little fair discipline and respect into our wild kids after all.

Take this with a grain of salt because there's not actual backstory to the random post, just a simple message asking for ideas... It was as follows...

Help. I have 4 very spoiled entitled children, who need to do some community service to remind them just how blessed they are. They are 7,8,13 and 16. Any suggestions where we can have them volunteer?

It reminded me of my own mom who always kept us in cheque as humans. If she thought we didn't appreciate the meal she spent hours making, she'd quit cooking for a night or two. If we fell in with the wrong crowd, she'd have us volunteer at the local old-folks home to remind us that preppy clothes don't make us "better than" people. Some of our best lessons of how to act as normal people came out of those situations, I can only guess this Lawton mother is looking to do the same thing with her blessed kids.

The first thing that popped in my mind was yard work... hear me out.

There are countless numbers of aging and old veterans in this town that have grown to an age where they can't take care of their own yards and can't afford to pay anyone to do it for them. They face a decision to either risk a potentially dangerous injury or eventually catch a fine from a local government that can't exist in the grey areas of life. What if we used real-world kid discipline to benefit those who deserve help the most?

Makes sense to me. Yard work is easy and it wouldn't be something that would have to be a professional-level golf course-looking type result... Just a simple cut, maybe weed the flower beds, run the edger, and done. It's something even the youngest kids can be useful for, and the elderly person receiving their hard work would be remarkably thankful for their efforts.

If the tiniest amount of easy manual labor for a deserving vet sounds like just the thing your kids need, reach out to any of the various charities in town that can find a deserving home worthy of your efforts. At least one of the local Ambucs clubs spends their time building wheelchair ramps for vets, I'm sure they have a long list of people deserving a little help from your tiny humans.