Video Transcript: Discipline Challenges

Discipline challenges. I do not know of a youth ministry that does not wrestle  with the problems of discipline. Having a child in your program that is just not  cooperating, whether they're doing it overtly or covertly, they are set to they  have their own agenda, and they're going to use your meeting to carry it out. It is a challenge. You cannot do youth ministry and not have this particular challenge, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with it? Every youth ministry has  discipline problems, and we did that. We had that as well. In our ministry, we  had to struggle with that. Here we are trying to raise up youth leaders and one of the most difficult things is when they had to deal with an unruly child. And next  thing you know, your attention is drawn away from leading or doing that which  you're supposed to do, to having to deal with this troublesome child. And so  what do you do? How do you solve that problem? Well, we solve it by what we  call, actually, what Jim Fay and Foster Cline call parenting with love and logic.  It's a book that they both wrote on. It really has to do with with discipline through  natural consequences. But what was striking to me was the co author, Foster  Cline. Foster Cline is he is a psychologist, and he's someone who has  developed the attachment center back in Colorado, and I'm familiar with him  because I had the privilege of raising an adopted child, and so I know  Something about the difficulties of attachment disorder. It has been, it's very  difficult attachment disorder, I guess, in its purest form, when you when a child  has a disruption in their life, whether through violence or through turmoil in the  mother's womb or through difficulty at childbirth or before childbirth, it can create problems with attachment. I can remember that in the books that I read as I  wrestled with how to deal with this, there was one book that had a an illustration  in front of it. It said, the dog looks at the master and says, You love me, you feed me, you take care of me. You must be God. Then the cat comes along and says, You love me, you feed me, you take care of me. I must be God. And then the  last statement is, here's to all you parents who have cats with fangs. That's  probably the extreme, but that's what happens when there is a disruption when  you're young, it can really mess with your life. And what I discovered is that  there is a measure of attachment disorder in families, growing up with children,  growing up in my community, in poor communities, if you come out of a broken  home or single parent family, or if there's some kind of stress or or problems  going on. There's there is attachment issues, and there's issues relating to being able to to love and to receive love from others. And so, yeah, this disorder takes  place, perhaps not in its full measure, but it does take place to some extent,  amongst the young people that you probably serve. And so what do you do?  What do you do? What are the keys to love and logic? Well, first you need to  know the love and logic approach to dealing with discipline issues really fits well  with a transformational discipleship philosophy of ministry. And here are the  principles, no three strike rule. I don't know if you're familiar with this or not, but  many times when a kid gets in trouble and they're brought to the leader or to the

principal, they say, Okay, three strikes and you're out. Well, no three strike rule.  You never give a child permission to repeat bad behavior, because they'll take it  to the limit. That's what they will do. So no, no, no. Three strike rule, the child is  

responsible for his or her behavior many times, when a child acts up we, we  take on responsibility for their behavior, or the parent takes on responsibility for  their behavior. No, it's the child who is responsible for their behavior. The leader  is responsible for his or her response to the problem, so anger, frustration,  yelling, arguing, they're not appropriate leadership responses. In fact, it shifts  the weight of the problem off the shoulders of the child and onto the leader, as  someone once asked me, if you look at 10 points of concern and your child has  failed, has failed the class, and they come home, they tell you they failed the  class. If there are 10 points of concern, how many points lie with the child and  how many points lie with with the parent. Most parents would respond in such a  way where the points would most of the points would be on their shoulders, and  very few would be on the child. So the key to parenting with love and logic is  that you never take responsibility off the shoulders of the child. So the child  owns the decision to misbehave, and therefore the he or she owns the  consequences of that, of that behavior. So here, here, here's what we do. You  give children choices you can live with. You never give a child a choice. You are  not, you are not, you are not willing to carry out this is important. You're you're  helping the child make choices. You're helping them make choices, but they're  choices that you can accept. So you say, Okay, you can do either this or this, but it doesn't matter to you which one they do, and either one they choose, you will,  you will accept it. Consequences should be natural and not punitive. The leader  should never punish or act out of anger. Your task is to implement a sensible  and natural consequence. This really is how we raise our children. When they're in our home and they have a problem, they have a natural concept, so they  know that actions have consequences, and when they learn them within the  safety of your home, they're more apt to be equipped to handle situations when  they when they leave your home. But the key is, is that it's natural and not  punitive. You can you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make a drink.  You cannot force a child to behave. That must be their choice, but your handling  of the situation can influence how the unruly child behaves. In my neighborhood. This is hard. I mean, when I was growing up, and my my mom, who is just about to turn 90, when I was, when I was a kid. I mean, I was, I was at least a foot  taller than my mom, but that did not matter. She would say things to me, like, I  brought you into the world, and I will take you out of it. She would stand up,  sending me. Should be looking up like this. And she looked up and said, I want  to grab a brick. I'm going to grab I will deal with you. I knock you out. That that's  kind of way I grew up, and I see a lot of handling of discipline problems in that  way. It's about the adult exercising forceful authority over the child. And the  problem is that when you do that, you take the you take the decision away from 

the child. And so you're, it's, it's, it has to be about the child has made him has  done something wrong, and now they have to live with the consequences. If you get angry, that takes away from the full, the full weight of what they've done and  what the consequence should be and what their consequences are, and it also  keeps them from being responsible. And so it's very important that you give  them choices. It's important that they that the consequences are natural, never  act in a punitive way. Don't do that okay and recognize that it is their choice, but  it's you've given them choices you can live with. And so here's how. How does it  work when we have during our summer day camp, and each our youth leaders,  our youth leadership teams are working with a group of young people, of  children, and we tell them, say, Look, when you're with your group, the first one  of the first things you have to do is find out who the troublemakers are. You need to realize sometimes the troublemaker would just be really loud and voiceless,  and you know, they're going to give you problems. But then there are the silent  ones, the ones that are quiet, and they're kind of, you know, they're behind the  scenes. They're sabotaging your class. Well, for the learning centers, we always have an adult sitting in the back of the room. We're very careful about that adult. That adult cannot be a, what we call a helicopter, Mom or Dad. You can't have  somebody who's gonna swoop in at at the first sign of trouble. Okay, that person will take a take leadership and authority away from your high school leader, but  you so you want them just sitting in the corner and they're reading a book or  they're on their computer. But they are not, they're they're just, they're just  blending into the wall, but the Emerging Leader is leading, and as they lead the  class, they spot the troublemaker, and at the first sign of trouble, they they get  the attention of the adult, and they point to the child, and then the adult comes  up, takes the child out and takes them out of the room, while the Emerging  Leader continues to teach. And that's when love and logic kicks in. And so the  conversation goes like this. This is, well, I see little Johnny that you're having  trouble abiding by the rules of the class. I said, now you know that if you're going to be in the class, you need to be attentive and pay attention and not cause  trouble. It says, so we're going to give you a choice. You can go back inside and  and then you can just decide to to be a part of a class, or if you don't want to,  you, you can. We can certainly just call your mom and our dad and and then  we'll have them pick you up and take you home. It's your choice. What do you  want to do now? Usually they say, Oh yeah, I'm going to behave myself. Okay.  So you say, Okay, great. You put them back in the class, and you almost Pray  that they mess up. You kind of know they're going to do it. And so what happen? Sure enough, they do it, they they go back, and they are disruptive. When that  happens again, you take them out of the class, and this time you say, well, it  looks like you've made your choice. Apparently, you don't want to. You don't  want to abide by the fit in with the class or enjoy the class. That’s okay. That's  fine. I'm going to call your call your parents now take you home, and then you're 

certainly welcome to come back tomorrow. If you choose to be, choose to be a  part of the class. So they go home and then they come back the next day. But  the important thing is, you never took responsibility off the shoulders of the child. It is their decision as to what they're going to do, and so you've dealt with the  discipline problem. The your emerging high school leader continues to teach  and focus on the class, and everyone else in the class continues to learn and  grow in the class. Now, that person come back and hopefully the next day,  they're different. But if not, go through the same go through the same thing. I  remember one summer we had two kids. There were two kids that that were  giving giving leaders problems in their class. One kid went home and decided  that, you know, I want to be there and so I'm going to behave differently. They  came back and had a wonderful experience. Unfortunately the other one did not. They came back a couple of times and they just said, No, I'm just not into this.  This is just not for me. Again. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot  make a horse drink, but you can. You can control what they do and the kind of  what the damage that they want to do in your classroom, and so that is, that's  parenting with love and logic. That's using applying love and logic to your the  discipline problems that you have, that that might come up. I have found it to be  very effective with young people, particularly young people in the in the  neighborhood, who may be used to in other settings, getting away with things in  your setting. Are you showing them that you love them, you respect them, you  respect their decisions, you haven't taken them off their shoulders, and so  therefore even they can, they can make a decision to do wrong, but they can  equally make a decision to do right, and you're giving them the opportunity to do that and not allow them to disrupt Your program. So that's how we deal with  disciplinary problems. That's, that's, that's love and logic.