Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death (Proverbs 19:18).

My wife and I were riding on the tram, headed toward Amsterdam's Centraal Station, and we found ourselves in a section filled with elementary-school children.  The kids were maybe 8 or 9 years old, apparently on some sort of school trip, and they were bouncing off the walls with excitement.  They were yelling at each other and playing tag as the tram lurched forward, toward their destination.  Some boys were hitting each other -- half in play, half in frustration.  Some girls were climbing over the seats, one standing on top of the back of a seat and holding onto a pole for support.  Another boy was trying to shimmy up another pole in the tram, as if it were a rope in gym class.  These kids were totally out of control, yet the two teachers -- indicated by their occasional, half-hearted attempted to shout out an order for quiet or stillness -- spent most of their time casually chatting with each other.  They never moved from their spot, never went further than a shouted command, and never actively intervened in the insanity of the tram.  They just continued their conversation while the rest of us who were on the tram suffered from the antics of the undisciplined school-children.

When the class finally exited the tram, a few stops before our own, it seemed there was an audible sigh of relief throughout the tram.  One old lady clucked that she had tried to get the teachers to do something about the unruly children.  A middle-aged man simply said he was glad that his destination was different from theirs.  And another couple right in front of us started joking about the absurdity and the dangers of a tram full of riotous school-children:

"Children!" The man mimicked the mannerisms of one of the teachers.  "Please put down the knives.  Stop trying to stab each other and gouge each other's eyes out... No, no -- I mean it!  Stop it this instant..." And then turning to his girlfriend in an exagerated way, he said, "But like I was saying about the slugs in my garden..."

His girlfriend laughed and quipped that she was worried that the kids were going to start hanging out the windows and doing gymnastics routines right through the middle of the tram.

I had to laugh along with them and added a couple of exagerated scenarios myself.  But even though I didn't really have words for it at the time, I realized that the whole scenario represented a much graver danger than an uncomfortable tram ride.  I realized that the lack of discipline in those children really WAS a demonstration of the dysfunctions of laissez-faire upbringing.  The passive reaction to the knife-fighting scenario was just a joke, of course -- but it really wasn't all that far from the truth of the situation.  Later on, when I read Proverbs 19:18, it really resonated with what I observed on the tram that day:  "Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death."  I can't apply this scripture to all school-children everywhere, of course, but it's good to remember with my own kids.  Discipline is life-giving.  Laissez-faire parenting is destructive -- especially (but not exclusively) when it involves trams and knives and gymnastics routines.