Students Need Self-Discipline — What If Parents Aren't Helping?

If parents are not teaching self-discipline anymore, can schools do it?

Can schools step in and fill in the gaps?

I think a lot of kids currently in school have been raised with phones from the time they were infants, you know, and we probably all put our kids on a phone to keep them quiet for a few minutes here and there and no judgment on that.

But it really seems like a lot of kids are coming into school now with extremely little self-discipline.

And I And I wonder how much we can take on that parental role.

I'm very hesitant and resistant to any kind of scope creep, especially around parenting, around mental health, around doing the job of other people.

I think as educators, we have to do our own job.

And I'm not sure that we can do other people's jobs.

And that includes psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors, maybe parents to some extent.

Let me know what you think about this.

But it really does seem to me to be a big problem if we have kids who are not developing self-discipline.

And one of the reasons that success in school so well predicts success in other areas of life, whether that's higher education, employment, income, other relevant outcomes, is that school develops and inculcates and demands self-discipline.

And if we try to pretend that that's not the case, if we try to excuse kids for not having self-discipline, if we feel sorry for them and, you know, let them off the hook when it comes to anything that requires self-discipline, I'm not sure that we're doing them any favors, right?

Like, we can be patient, we can be forgiving, we can give additional chances, but ultimately, students have to leave their education with some self-discipline or else the knowledge that they gained—well, first of all, they're not going to gain as much knowledge if they didn't have self-discipline along the way— But the knowledge that they gain in school is not going to be very valuable if they cannot apply themselves, if they cannot apply their knowledge by acting with some self-discipline.

And I don't know exactly what our role needs to be in comparison to parents, but I do get the sense that parents...

are not getting it done when it comes to self-discipline.

I think just maybe it's the pandemic, maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it is parenting styles, but I see an unwillingness to hold kids accountable and to push them and to make them uncomfortable and to help them experience discomfort.

And the old saying that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

People actually don't believe that adversity or hurt feelings or hard work or sweat are good for you anymore.

And I think we've got to really grapple with that as a society and say, what kind of adults are we making when we're opposed to the idea of developing self-discipline, of working hard, of developing work ethic, of developing mental toughness?

Mental toughness is necessary for everything that you have to deal with as an adult.

I don't know about you, but I need my mental toughness quite often as an adult.

Let me know what you think and let me know what our relationship to parents should be in our partnership with parents when it comes to developing students' self-discipline, especially if the parents aren't getting it done.

Let me know.