Review: Rule #5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

Rule #5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

Thesis:
Proverbs 22:6 – Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
Or-
Proverbs 29:17 – Discipline your children, and they will give you peace; they will bring you the delights you desire.

Continuing my read

of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s book: 12 Rules of Life – an antidote to chaos with Rule #5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Rule #4 was a painful attempt to give a secular-based reason for a very simple Biblical truth, and Rule #5 veers even closer to a purely Biblical truth. In this Rule, Dr. Peterson is going for a ‘two-fer’, taming the chaos in two different arenas, actually, four arenas if you count temporally. The thesis is that disciplining your children properly results in far less chaos in the present, he (correctly) points out that if your child is not disciplined you will spend literally months of your life chasing your child trying to minimize the quite literal damage they are causing. If your child spends 1 hour, each night, fighting you in going to bed, then you have spent 365 hours each year fighting with your child! Aside from the obvious time drain, Dr. Peterson highlights that no relationship can get better if you are fighting with each other for more than 9 work weeks a year on one subject! And surely the undisciplined child is not only fighting about bedtime, but eating properly, behaving in the shopping mall, fighting with children on the playground, etc. etc. All that time fighting can not help but create an enormous net negative to your relationship with your child. And, all that negativity can’t help but create ‘hidden’ punishments; resentment in you, no friends of any value, not going to ‘fun’ events because you are simply exhausted and can’t stomach the thought of yet another public meltdown… So the child is experiencing punishment of a much more severe, and long-lasting kind, they just don’t know it nor have the maturity to correct it.

The Doctor makes the case for the future.

An undisciplined child is an undisciplined adult – with all the hell that comes along with that. So disciplining your child now will have immensely positive effects now, for both you and your child, but will set the stage for a fulfilling and successful adulthood – one that will bring joy and stability to you both.

My reaction

What isn’t to like? I agree. Which…is the problem with this ‘Rule #5’. This is a great Rule, a great summary, a great intro… but who is he writing to? I already agree, so all the stories and anecdotes – and the Therapist Peterson is on full display here, there are more stories and anecdotes here than in any chapter so far – are a great read for me, validating my already formed opinion. But what if I didn’t agree? What if I wanted to agree, but didn’t know how? What if I disagreed with every.damn.point?! There are only cursory nods to different views here. He does address the counterarguments, but very shallowly and with ‘talking points’ that any advocate of child discipline would nod their head vigorously to, and any dissenter would roll their eyes – having heard that talking point for a couple of decades or two.

Please don’t misunderstand me!

I agree with EVERYTHING he said, but I wanted more. I wanted to see a deep-dive into the science of child discipline. Different forms of discipline and their effects. I wanted to see a look into different cultures that have vastly different social constructs: The Japanese child is remarkably well-behaved – Why? What kind of discipline is practiced in the Japanese home? What kind of society/cultural norms are at work here? Other cultures? What about them? What about, what about, what about.

I wanted to like this chapter, it was well-written and I agreed with everything. But I agreed with everything going in. If I hadn’t, I don’t think there was enough depth here to challenge a dissenter’s opinion.