We believe there are two different methods you can discipline your children.  The first is you through education.  Educating them comes in 2 parts.  

1. Actions: you can educate your children on how to have positive daily habits and how to follow through with their tasks.  
2. Mentally: this is the more difficult of the two.  When educating your children how to mentally become more disciplined, you are showing them how to focus on positive thoughts when negativity comes, how to stand against peer pressure, and how to make the right decisions for themselves.  

The second method is through punishment.  Many people confuse discipline with punishment, but they are not interchangeable. Punishment certainly is part of discipline in the military setting, but that is not the form it takes at our academy. Rather, true discipline is the ability to select the right action, the right route, based on a new awareness.  This helps the children develop disciplined habits that will take place whether you are around or not.

Here at the academy, we reinforce positive discipline by teaching students to listen carefully for directions, move quickly, respect fellow students, and addressing the instructor or Grandmaster correctly, to name a few examples.  Eventually, all our members adapt to the routines and become more efficient at everything that goes on in the dojang. When they demonstrate improvements in their discipline, they are rewarded immediately with praise, recognition or a class stamp.  We are focusing on the desired behavior rather than focusing on what we don’t want to see.

Where you as parents can help your children is by guiding them through the routines as they come in, and make sure they perform with excellence in these areas. You can help them with their greetings and helping them practice when they get onto the floor. You will begin to see that they follow the dynamic of the academy, answering with a “yes ma’am/sir”, giving things to others with two hands, asking parents w/ respect for help.  We encourage these aspects of discipline through communication. 

This kind of discipline works while they are here with us.  When they get home, it’s a different matter and we are aware of that.  In the next level of their training, we work to help them take the discipline they have when they are here and being watched to having true discipline they utilize every day and everywhere they go.

Unless you educate your children on discipline, other influences (like other kids) will.