Positive Discipline And Values Parents example essay topic

Children are wonderful. Their beauty and inviting dependence brings palpable meaning to life, a voice that speaks the purpose of life. Their beauty contains our truth, the truth of our purpose here on earth. Their beauty and the feelings they invoke within us are sufficient to know what we should focus upon.

Sacrifices, positive discipline, and values parents implant in their children will help them determine the person they grow up to be. A child is like a sponge that absorbs their parent's thoughts and viewpoints that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Parents make great sacrifices for the care of their children. Day after day, parents protect their children from danger, attend to their cries, and reassure them after a bad dream. Parents give up necessities for their children everyday. In the poem "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, the father displays the sacrifices he makes for his son.

The father builds a fire with "cracked hands that ached" (1-5). He takes no thought for his own comfort or pain. The father would also rise early "in the blue black cold" and relight the fire (1-5). Stacey Burleson describes the father as "not only bringing physical warmth to him by making a fire; he is also bringing spiritual warmth to him". Personal safety dose not concern parents when their child's safety is in doubt.

The mother in "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall illustrates this caring sacrifice. The mother of this young girl tells her daughter she is not allowed to go "and march in the streets" because it is unsafe (1-5). This mother wants to protect her daughter from the violence of the world, the violence in the streets. She instead tells her daughter to go to church where the mother feels it is safe. In the words of Baxter Miller "the mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter". The quiet stories of the immense sacrifices parents make for their children.

The hours they work. The opportunities they sacrifice for their children will have an impact on them latter on in life. As parents, trust and love need to be the motivators in guiding children, authority can become power, and power must not be used to break a child's will. An important factor in discipline is in developing positive and unique relationships with children.

For example, in the play Fences by August Wilson the father uses positive discipline when punishing his son, Cory, for defying him. Cory quits his job at the local A&P store to play football. When his father, Troy, finds out he says, "Get your job back, and if you can't do both [work and play football] then you quit the football team" (1336). Troy requires Cory to work hard so he will grow up to become a successful man. As a result, by insisting Cory to get his job back, Troy corrects his child with positive punishment to make him a better person. "He also succeeds in alienating his son by standing in the way to his playing professional football, preferring instead that Cory keep his job at the local A&P and get a good education" (Sandra 127).

In addition, parents determine which actions are safe or dangerous and obtain a boundary among the two that children may not obstruct. The daughter in Dudley Randall poem "Ballad of Birmingham" wants to participate in "a civil rights rally, the loving and fearful mother refuses to let her go" (Baxter 265). The mother shows she loves her by limiting her daughter's activities. No children are perfect. All will test the waters as they grow up.

It's up to parents to guide children as they learn right from wrong. Parents want their children to grow up with a strong sense of what is right and wrong. It is within the parents to inspire in their children good moral values. It is from the parents where a child learns right from wrong. Parents teach their children that stealing or hurting someone is wrong. Parents give their children guidance and try to prepare them for adulthood.

In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Willy encourages his son by telling him "you got a greatness in you, Biff, remember that" (1277). Willy is establishing positive encouragement in his son by telling him he is great. Often times parents set values through religious training. In the poem "Ballad of Birmingham" the mother "suggests that her child go to Sunday School" instead of demonstrating in the civil rights movement (Mel hem 41). The mother is instilling religious training in her daughter by suggesting church instead of the hazards of the civil rights movement. Family values are the very fabric that holds a family together.

Parents set these values in their children and have these values continue throughout their adulthood. A strong family is like a coat of armor protecting children from the often cold, harsh world beyond the confines of the white picket fence. Children are the future; not only what it will be but how it will be experienced. Parents love their children so much they make sacrifices, set positive discipline, and values in their children. Parents will always have an everlasting effect on their children no matter what.