How are your skills as a disciplinarian?
Are you effective in bringing order out of chaos? Do you know how to get your children to submit to your control?
While those skills are useful at times, if that is the total of your ability as a disciplinarian, your range is too narrow.
The Oxford English Dictionary provides an illuminating definition of the word discipline. Yes, the modern usage favors the ideas of “order” and “control.” However, the original meaning of discipline was “to instruct, educate, train.” By that definition, the best disciplinarian is the person who is the best teacher.
Recently I rented two interesting films from the 1970s – one well-known, one largely forgotten, but both critically acclaimed. They depict an effective disciplinarian in the classical sense of the word. And, interestingly, the teacher in both films was played by the same actor, Jason Robards. I think he was cast in both films because, as an actor, he exudes intelligence, fairness, calm, and the ability to effectively communicate what he expects from his adult “disciples.”
In “All the President’s Men,” Robards plays Ben Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post, who guides and assists two young reporters, who are hot on the trail of one of the most important news stories in the history of the republic, the Watergate break-in. Every clue that they uncover provides another link in the abuse of power pointing all the way to the highest level of government.
What does Bradlee advise his eager, young reporters to do?
Go slowly. Check and double check your sources. Be accurate. Yet he encourages them to keep going. He could have clamped down, restored “order,” and told Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to cover the NFL instead. But then he would be teaching fear, not courage.
In the second film, “Julia,” Robards plays another real-life character, Dashiell Hammett, who is mentoring Lillian Hellman on how to become a writer. Hellman would go on to write celebrated plays such as “The Children’s Hour” and “The Little Foxes,” but at this time in their relationship, she was unsure of herself and struggling to find her voice as a writer, while Hammett was an established writer of detective novels.
In one terrific sequence, we see Lillian smoking and sweating as she wrestles to get the words onto the page. She stands up and throws the typewriter out the open window. Apparently she retrieves it, because she continues to plug away, until one day she gives the finished product to Dashiell to critique.
Sitting on the porch of their beachfront bungalow, he reads the final page of her play, takes off his glasses, and tells her that what she has written is simply not up to the caliber of the talent that he knows she has.
That’s teaching. In the same sentence, he manages to be simultaneously honest and affirming. Lillian does not react with anger or frustration, because Hammett gives his feedback with calmness and compassion. She simply gets back to work. A good teacher or parent does not tear down the first, unsteady signs of growth, but like a gardener gently and persistently cultivates the first sprouts poking out of the ground.
To be an effective disciplinarian:
Inspire.
Be an example of the qualities — courage, compassion, creativity, spirituality — you are trying to encourage in your children.
Give constructive feedback.
Say what you want more of, rather than dwelling on what’s wrong. Make it specific. Keep it short. Don’t lecture – unless your goal is to anesthetize, hypnotize, and antagonize the listener.
Have patience.
Practice does not make perfect, because perfection is impossible. Practice leads to improvement. Encourage your sons and daughters to stick with pursuing their goals.
In the movie Dashiell finally tells Lillian he thinks she has written the best play he’s read in years. But maybe she already knew that. After all, she had a great disciplinarian.
(Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist for Catholic Charities Milwaukee regional office.)
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