Re: When should disciplining start?
P2red, youre absolutely right....no way can you start at age 7. Kids are 5 when they start kindergarten and they are expected to be able to follow direction, routine and proper behavior. I also beleive that a "diaper swat" can do more good than harm - one of my 3 is strong willed to the extreme and this is the only thing that worked. It only took once or twice- after that, we were able to reinforce with timeout or taking toy/privelege away but if we didnt use this tactic, we'd still be really struggling with him.
Then...we have a moroccan family in our school district, they have a son who is in my middle son's class. The mom and dad are kind of new to the country, speak english but have very different outlook than the majority of the parents here...I guess they conform to the "no discipline till age 7 rule". ANYway, the kid is outta control, gets sent to the principals office often, has been sent home occasionally and is generally a huge disruption to his classroom.
You dont need to beat the heck outta them, you need to teach them. They need structure, they need to learn that negative action causes negative consequences (no, not a beating but perhaps a timeout or no favorite tv show today), and they need to learn these things from the time they can walk.