DELAYED GRATIFICATIONS AND DISCIPLINING

A Story by JENY

its about disciplining....

The words Delay and Patience are very much linked. Delay of an expected thing in your life can be a test of your patience. While immediate gratification is source of happiness and contentment for a child, ability to delay gratification is a sign of maturity and wisdom of an adult.

As we grow up we are taught to delay the gratification of our impulses. Acquiring an ability to delay gratification is an important step in the process of socialization. The formation of a social consciousness, by which we become aware of factors that assure wellbeing of our fellow human beings, is possible only by succumbing gratification of our impulses both positive and negative to some unwritten norms and rules that are approved by all. For example, there is appropriate time, place and method to satiate our hunger in each culture. Individual, who fails to form such consciousness, is a misfit in the well functioning of society.

To a great extent this formation takes place spontaneously in the life of an individual. But this empathetic skill towards the society as a whole acquired through schooling is supposed to widen the mental realm of the individual considerably. The basic concept of discipline in schools is aimed at building a healthy social consciousness in the students.

Any sort of formal disciplining, that is time bound, exhorts delay in gratification. So disciplining is primarily painful to students who are pleasure oriented by nature. Almost all problems of disciplining between an adult and a child arise from adult’s lack of awareness of the mental state of the child when he is asked to delay a particular gratification.

No mind is as hostile as the one deprived of gratification of some intense need. Greater the intensity of the need, higher is the hostility towards the source of hindrance. That is why almost 90% parents of adolescents are in conflict with their wards. It is in adolescence, various needs, including emotional, reaches at its peek and the individual is blindly in search of a means for gratification. When parents fail to recognize this state of mind of his child before applying restrictions, there dawns new conflicts. Parent fails to take into account the emotional being in his child. Only those parents, who have understood how a mind deprived of gratification works, can devise suitable strategies for disciplining.

Same is the case when there is failure while imparting formal disciplining in schools and college. Disciplining in institutions often carry out them with some degree of indifference. Of course disciplining through common rules and regulations can never cater to emotional disposition of separate individuals.

But in common disciplining, the problem arises when the authority of discipline stresses on the how of disciplining rather than the why of discipline while stipulating the rules and regulations.

The process of disciplining is rather easier if authority could convince members of a group, why a certain act of disciplining is recommended. Because it provides them with a rational cause to abide by rules and regulations. Blind adherence to rules generates distaste towards the rules and the persons who impose it.

So never make any delay to explain the purpose of rules and regulations intended to delay gratification. Let them learn to delay gratifications with a positive mindset. Basically human mind hates restrictions, it is pleasure oriented.

© 2010 JENY

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Coyote Poetry

The world had great change. Both parent must work. Less activities for children at school. My childhood was very good. I usually had a parent at home. A lot of kids get taught by strangers who do not care if the child is content. Disciplining children is very difficult. We must have control and allow the child to grow. You wrote a very strong Blog on disciplining. We must allow the children to be free and safe.
Coyote