Camp stories: discipline

During our Easter retreat with our church, some of the ladies in our church told me I was like the churches grandpa. Everyone loved, me especially the kids and it was clear that I love them.   I was a little disconcerted that someone would compare me to a grandpa already, but kinda flattered by what they meant.   But then one of the ladies said, “But you never discipline. You should.” 

It’s true, I have done almost no disciplining in my time here in Ukraine, but from where I stand, that’s with good reason.  At the orphanage, I’m just one of the group of people who visits once a week.  The director doesn’t even allow us to visit during school hours, so obviously we aren’t people with any authority at the orphanage.  At church and a lot of other situations, I just try to help where I can and stay out of the way the rest of the time.  I believe that discipline should be very intentional, and if you can’t have a discussion with a kid about why something is wrong and about the better choices that we can make in the future, then perhaps discipline is better left up to someone else.  And for the majority of the time I’ve been here I haven’t had the language to sit down with a kid and do any form of proper discipline.  The few times I’ve tried to get to the bottom of something that happened, I haven’t been able to understand what the kids are saying to know if they are lying, but trust me, the kids we work with can all lie like dogs. 

But last month at camp that changed a bit.  We brought 34 kids to our camp for a week.  We were with them all day, and we needed them to behave themselves.  We had a reward system set up, where if the kids did all that they were supposed to during the day: listened during the worship times and small groups and didn’t get into trouble, they would get punches on their name badges that they could use at the end of the week to buy stuff from the store.  So not giving them a punch was a small form of punishment.  The other was to send them home, or back to the state-run camp where they were living for the summer.   

There was one boy that we almost sent home because he kept running off by himself.  And it wasn’t till we told him to pack his bags that he actually started caring about following the rules and he ended up having a really good week.

I had to pull one of my boys, Tollik, aside and get onto him about his behavior that day.  It was a first warning so I only kept some of his punches from him but the punches meant a lot to him.  After that, Tollik surprised me by coming and working with me for the next few hours.  Any time I needed something he jumped right to it.  It always amazes me how the kids crave good discipline, they want to be held to a higher standard and react so positively. 

Sasha was another one of my boys and he lost his badge within a day of us giving it to him.   He came to me and asked if we could print him a new one.  But knowing how all the kids have a tough time learning to take care of their things, I told him that I didn’t know if we could print him a new one.  I told him to behave himself, and we would discuss what to do with his name-tag.  My thought was that I would keep track of how many punches that he would have gotten and at the end of the week, I would give him a slip of paper with his number on it.  It would be a good example of grace.  But I also told him to keep looking for his name-tag, because it was his responsibility.

As the week went on, a lot of little things started to wear Sasha down.  I could tell he was worried that he wasn’t going to get anything from the store, and he was pretty sure that he was going to be the only one.  Then the theme of our camp hit a few wounds of his.  The fourth day of the camp our theme was Where is God when I feel alone?  That day during small group Sasha lay on the ground away from our group.  They only time he participated was to say, “I’m completely alone in the whole world.”  Sasha is usually a pretty even keeled kid who gets along with everyone, but he reacted to all of this with anger, both acting out and withdrawing inside himself more and more towards the end of the week. 

The last day, as we were packing up, Sasha found his name tag.  It had just been tucked under some of his stuff.  He ran over to me and said, “Give me my punches.”  So, I pulled him aside to talk.  I asked him why he had acted the way that he had during the week. I asked him why he didn’t trust me to take care of him even when he lost his badge.  I explained to him that I knew he could have acted better, but because of the way he chose to act I wasn’t going to give him as many punches as the other kids had.  But I also explained that we had paid so that he could come to this camp for free and we worked really hard to make sure that he had a really good time.  I asked him after all that if we owed him anything.  He answer that we didn’t (which honestly was a relief).  In the end, I repeated that I gave him less punches than I could have because I know that he is capable of doing better at camp. 

When I was done, Sasha sat there and cried.  So I put my arm around him, and he leaned on me and cried.  As we sat there, I asked him what he meant when he said that he was alone in the whole world.  He just answered, “I am alone.”  I asked him where his mom was.   “I don’t know.”  I asked when he saw her last. “I don’t know.”  Sasha was put in the children’s home very early, before he could remember, and though he has a mom out there, he has been in the system his whole life. 

We talked a little more and then we just sat there for about 30 minutes.  Sasha slowly stopped crying but he stayed snuggled up to my side.  Not for the first time, I wished that I could do more to help these kids. 

As my relationship with the kids starts changing to one where I can discipline them on occasions, things are going to be more complicated.  But my hope and prayer is that I will be able to be wise in my actions and show them what real love is and ultimately point them to my Father who has the highest standard for me, but never ceases to love me when I fail to meet that standard.