When I was a teenager someone recommended  I read The Disciplined Life, by Dr. Richard Shelly Taylor.   I picked up the book and eye-balled the Table of Contents:  Chapter 1, Discipline, the Key to Power; Chapter 2, Discipline, the Mark of Maturity.  My eyes perused the page until they caught on Chapter 6: How to Become  a Disciplined Person.  "That’s it!  That’s what I need!", I thought and turned quickly to page 81, skipping all that boring preliminary stuff.   There I read these guilt producing words: "Some of you will spot the title of this chapter while scanning the Contents and, recognizing that becoming a disciplined person is the goal, will suppose that to read only this chapter will be sufficient.  Such an attempt  may be symptomatic of your need for discipline."

 

Busted.  The author, it seemed,  knew me and my weakness.  But, I suspect, I was not the only one to get nailed by Dr. Taylor.  Many of us experience a form of mental malnutrition called discipline deficiency.

 

We see the havoc wreaked by this disease in a world overrun by self indulgence.  How many of our problems are related to a lack of discipline?  Our epidemic of obesity? Divorce?  Behavioral problems in schools?  Drugs and alcohol?  Teen-age pregnancy?  Exercising self discipline may not cure all these ills, but surely it would lower the statistics dramatically.

 

The cause of our discipline deficiency is not in the water we drink or food we eat.  It cannot be cured with a vitamin supplement.  The antidote for discipline deficiency is  in every home.  It is found in parents exercising self discipline and teaching children self mastery.  Neither is easy.  Both are desperately needed.

 

Thomas Huxley once said, "We must learn to do the thing that must be done, when it must be done, whether we want to do it or not.  This is the first great lesson of education."  It is also a great lesson to be taught in our homes.  Our families must be incubators for discipline development instead of discipline deficiency. As parents, we must both model and teach discipline.  Here’s where Dr. Taylor suggests we begin:

 

1.  Don’t look for shortcuts.  There is no virtue in doing things by half measures.  I wanted to be a disciplined person without reading the whole book.  That won’t do.  Whenever you sense yourself--or your children--taking the "easy way", stop short and do it properly.

 

2. Begin with simple things.  Hang up your clothes and make your bed; require young children to do the same.  You may want to use a "chore chart" with kids and reward their efforts with stickers.  These little tasks are the seedlings of a disciplined character.

 

3.  Zig Ziglar says "Be hard on yourself and the world will be infinitely easier on you."  It’s true.  Follow Huxley’s advice and make yourself and your children "do the things that must be done", remember to the reward after doing it.

 

Family is the place to learn this much needed habit so our homes and our world can avoid the deadly disease of discipline deficiency.