What if you tell your teen to not do drugs, and try to explain the harms of them and how drug use could impact their future plans, and the child still does them anyway? Saying “no, no, like this” isn’t going to work. The author is against using rewards and punishments. So what else is there?

Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.” —Marcus Aurelius Basil of Caesarea, Letter to Gregory, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 13 Perhaps somewhere in the subterranean chambers of your life you have heard the call to deeper, fuller living. You have become weary of frothy experiences and shallow teaching. Every now and then you have caught glimpses, hints of something more than you have known. Inwardly you long to launch out into the deep.” —Richard J. Foster Kids can disobey even if they have no school and no obligations. They throw a tantrum simply because they’re not getting what they want, whether it’s candy, a toy, or whatever! Knowledge must grow or perish; and it can grow only in a free mind, that is to say a mind which is sufficiently strong to create its own discipline.

An In-Depth Look at Where We Once Were and Where We Are Now

Though the idea of “spiritual disciplines,” defined and categorized as such, is associated with the Christian tradition, many of the disciplines themselves are common to all the world’s religions, as well as philosophical schools like Stoicism. They can be practiced not only by men of every faith tradition, but also by those who espouse none at all. Give two-by-two instructions (issue with two feet on the ground and your child no more than two feet away from you) In this climate, disciplining a “disobedient” child can be quite challenging. We often feel like we are fumbling in the dark. We try so hard to say and do the right thing with the appropriate amount of energy and emphasis. We want to guide our children—­to teach them how to behave and how not to behave. Our ultimate goal is to prepare them to handle themselves well as they set sail into modern society’s often difficult waters.

By now it is clear that the farmer is not going to get his eggs gathered, nor is he likely to accomplish anything else he sets out to do. He is utterly, gloriously spontaneous, buthe is hardly free. He is, if anything, a prisoner to his unbridled spontaneity. The fact of the matter is that discipline is the only way to freedom; it is the necessary context for spontaneity.”

Aristotle once wrote “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit…so then if we repeatedly practice high standards and discipline, and it is the creation of those habits that enable us to defeat a determined and audacious enemy.” Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all. In this chapter, we will examine our misconceptions about disobedience. If we can see our kids’ challenging behavior as an attempt to orient themselves within the frenetic, confusing world they struggle to navigate, our role will shift from Disciplinarian in Chief or Crisis Management Specialist to Governor, Gardener, and Guide. Telling rather than asking my child to do something. Example, instead of politely asking, "Can you get your coat on?", I politely tell him, "Go get your coat on." The author's theory here is that by asking, your child thinks he has some say in the matter, when he really doesn't because he needs to go get his coat on. So when he refuses and then you get angry, he gets confused. More often than not, now, my child will actually go get his coat on without me needing to tell him twice.