Disciplining your child can be the most difficult and draining part of being a parent, however, it is one of the most important things you do for your child. Many children today are lacking discipline from their parents in the first five years of their life, and this ultimately affects them for the rest of their lives. Discipline is important in teaching your children right from wrong, and teaching them how to think about the consequences that are going to come of their actions. The point of discipline is to teach. Making your child apprehensive of the negative consequences can work. For example, to keep adults from speeding, you instill the fear of getting a speeding ticket and paying the large fine. For children to respect the rules that are all around us, they need to be taught to obey and to be concerned about the consequences.

Disciplining your child is not easy. Most of the time, the initial outcome is your child being sad, angry, and frustrated--mostly at you. Although your child often will be frustrated and angry at you, it is important to remember that they do not know you are doing what is best for them. It is important for your child to not always get what they want. Hearing and understanding the word "no" is important. As a parent, it is your dream to give them everything their heart desires. However, even though they are not aware of it yet, it is important for them to be happy human beings living quality lives, and they will only be able to do this if they have value in the workplace, in friendships, and in other relationships.

Relationships are important, especially during the first few years of social interaction in child care or the first few years of school. The friends they make and the development of their social skills are important and will enable them to follow through on their next important years of school. Most people are aware of the saying, "birds of a feather flock together." Children make friends with other children that they find things in common with and prioritize friends according to relatability, even at young ages. For example, if you are a very well behaved, mellow child that understands the importance of listening to authority and having polite manners, and you have a classmate that misbehaves and you can see they don’t listen, you are not likely to seek out that child with the intention of befriending them.

Throughout the rest of a child’s school experience, they will find it hard to make friends, and they might settle for friends that are unlike them, and it will consequently be hard for them to be a good influence on these other children to help them change their behavior. This sometimes leads to under aged drinking and partying in high school. These children who get mixed in with the wrong crowd will participate minimally in extracurricular activities because of having a hard time fitting in and being accepted. Shop lifting at a young age can occur, which will lead to larger issues in the future. These risks are all present if a child did not get sufficiently disciplined in the crucial window of time between one and five years.

After the age of five, the child should have a decent grasp on why they will get disciplined, and in what instances they are going to be disciplined, and they can choose the actions that lead to the consequences they want. Their brain is now able to handle more complex decisions, in which the causal relationships between the choices and their consequences are not so black and white. However, the child needs this foundation of discipline from their toddler years to perform these kinds of calculations. Your child having the self-discipline to sit down for even a couple minutes to practice their micro-motor skills is very important to the learning process they will rely on for the rest of their lives. This self-discipline comes from the discipline their guardians have instilled in them.

Discipline, no doubt, should be left up to the parent or guardian of the child. A large part of discipline is to know the child you are disciplining. For some children, time outs are not enough; they need something more drastic than that. They might need a large privilege being taken away, or a spanking. While some children are much more sensitive, and simple conversation is enough to put them in hysterical tears, it is up to the parent to know their child well enough to determine how to guide them through the many paths of life. Although discipline is hard, in the long run, your child will thank you, and you will thank yourself.