One of the Hardest of the Hard Parenting and Teaching Issues

Well, at least that's my opinion about discipline. :(

And the worst part for me is that I've always known that I suck at it.

[Here, finally, is one of my "Issues" post, the "cheap therapy" kind of post. Bear with me if you're so inclined.]

Lately, I've been blaming my problems on my self-diagnosed borderline "ADD" (I'll explain in a minute), but there's a long history to my shortcomings in this area. My awareness of this is the reason I never taught English to 5th-8th grade kids in Brazil, and didn't even consider teaching high school (my two months as a substitute teacher went well, though). It was easier teaching my 45 minute English classes for the 2nd-4th graders, but my difficulties increased with the older children in 4th grade (good thing I'm only teaching K-2, right? hmmm...). I also didn't have many problems teaching English to small groups (4-6) of children. Finally, I obviously knew that I would have problems with disciplining my own kids, but it hasn't been that bad. Teaching, though, has brought this issue back to center stage in my life, both in the classroom and at home. Of course my children are with me in the classroom, and that makes it all the more complicated. I assure you that you don't want to be me right now.

OK, let's backtrack. Why do I think it has to do with my supposed "ADD"? Because I cannot be consistent with anything in my own life, I cannot be "present," focused, concentrating enough to do even the simplest things in a daily "routine." I can't stand routine, actually and I think I've mentioned before here that I'm a "habit adverse" person. Other than taking off my contact lenses and brushing my teeth before bed, I don't really have any regular habits, ever (not even for eating/cooking). This inconsistency and flightiness makes it impossible to enforce all the smallest necessary rules all the time, consistently, the way one is supposed to do in effective disciplining, both at home in the classroom.

Of course in the classroom I don't have as many distractions as I have at home, but teaching seven children, each one doing a different thing is beyond overwhelming, at times. I have one kindergartner, four first graders, one repeating some parts of first grade, and a second grader, but even my four first graders started their books at different times or are in different levels, so it's quite chaotic. And it doesn't help that I was thrown into this not knowing what to do at all. Now I got the hang of things, so I can start streamlining a bit: I will start all first graders on spelling together next week, and I'll have three of them do math together (Kelvin happens to be almost done with 1st grade math -- he's really good at math, like his dad and uncles).

Another problem that I have with discipline is that I'm a very insecure person, I cannot really "impose myself" [not the correct words, oh, I got it:], I'm not assertive enough, particularly not about teaching and my abilities. I don't feel very confident -- at least I didn't when I was teaching atn the university level, I always felt that I was not prepared enough, didn't really know what I was doing, etc. Of course I'm pretty confident that I can teach the kids, but it's hard to find the patience to do it sometimes.

The other part of my "history" with disciplining has to do with the profound differences between my upbringing and my husband's. We've talked about these issues since we started dating back in 1990, so it's been a long conversation that is over 18 years in the making and which won't end any time soon, if ever. In his family, it was like we say in Portuguese "falou, acabou" -- the parents say it and it's done, period, in an "authoritarian" and highly effective way. In mine, my parents punished and everything, but my mom nagged at us and my dad was not very firm, so things were more lax. K never liked the way things functioned at our house, how we talked back to our parents, how things were more "democratic." And I guess these early influences never really leave us. I've tried to be more strict, but it doesn't come naturally to me, and my other issues don't help much. I could go on and on, but I'm running out of time here...

And, regardless, I can talk all I want, but it all boils down to a very straightforward question:
How can a fundamentally undisciplined person (not in the sense of unruliness, but in the sense of orderliness and consistency) discipline others?

So, why am I blogging this instead of being on my way to Maryland right now as I should, going to my BIL's house? (K flew to Brazil today, BTW...)
And the answer is that it's because I'll spend the weekend there and I cannot talk about this subject with them. I just can't. It's a weakness that I feel I have to kind of "mask" and pretend it's not there with K's family, and do my best to be as firm as possible with my sons when I am with them. Because I know that it's an unbearable flaw in their eyes. I just know it because it's one of the issues in which K and we've had our biggest differences in our relationship... OK, I really have to go now, if we want to get there tonight.

Question: Do you think (and that's been my gut feeling for most of my life) that certain people, certain personality types or people with certain upbringing, just are not "disciplinarian"types while for other people it just comes naturally? How do you see yourself in this matter? How can someone get better at this? I some times feel I'm a hopeless case... :-(

I'll probably come back to this topic soon.