What To Do With Discipline, Misbehavior and Defiance

Do you remember getting disciplined as a child? How were you disciplined? How do you think the discipline you received as a child is affecting the way you choose to discipline your children?

I remember being sent to my time out corner in the living room, dessert withheld for a meal or two and some spankings when my misbehavior really deserved it. These discipline methods sure got my attention, but for some of you the methods that your parents used were ineffective, so now that you are a parent you’re determined not to use those methods. So what methods of discipline are you going to use to teach your children about life?

Part of our job as a parent is to teach our children about life. Disciplining our children must be connected to consequences. As parents we have the responsibility to teach our children about consequences. Children need to understand that all choices have consequences whether good or bad. Bad choices have undesirable consequences. Sometimes parents try to protect their children from the consequences of there bad choices. This allows the child to get away with bad behavior. For example, if your child was given the responsibility to clean their room before they could go out and play with their neighbor and they refused to clean their room, the consequence is they are not allowed to go out and play with their neighbor. No matter how much anger, crying, kicking their feet and carrying on they do. Your child needs to understand that there are consequences to not cleaning their room. Eventually your child will understand the importance of cleaning their room.

Parents need to determine a course of action when disciplining their children and stick too it! Consequences need to be enforced early on. It is hard to be an enforcer, we would much rather be a protector.

We need to teach our children more than we punish them. When deciding on a course of action to take when disciplining your children make sure that your expectations are realistic. We need to develop empathy for our children. Empathy is the capacity to see your child in their own skin. We need to teach our child how to calm themselves down. We can accomplish this goal by allowing them to see how we calm ourselves down. Much of parenting is by example. We want kids to see how we handle making mistakes. Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott experts on parenting the early years encourage parents to be consistent, patient and attentive.

I am sure all parents would agree that disciplining our children is a challenge. The questions I remember Jan and I asking were, are we being too tough or too lenient? Say “yes” to your kids as much as you can and save your “no” for the most important issues.

God wants us to trust Him completely and that includes seeking Him when teaching our children about life through discipline. Proverbs 3: 5-6 is a great reminder of what God wants. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight.”

Point Your Kids in the Right Direction

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it,”
Proverbs 22:6 (NIV).

When it comes to pointing a child in the right direction, start by making a connection. This is the single most helpful concept I can share with you on the topic of child-rearing. Connecting with your child is more than just conceiving, carrying, and giving birth. A connection requires initiative, time, undivided attention, watchful eyes, perceptive listening, prayer and wisdom that can only come from God. Our natural tendency is to feel satisfied with providing the basics for our children, (i.e.: food, shelter and clothing). If you really want to connect to the heart of your child, and point them in the right direction, it requires more than just the basics.

The two essential components to connecting with your child are initiative and time. Initiative is your personal choice to put effort into building a relationship with your child. Your initiative to connect confirms in their hearts that you love them. When you don’t connect with your child they are left feeling like they are invisible or without value. But before you can take the initiative to connect with your child you must deal with the things that distract you. You must identify and deal with these distractions before you can provide the focused attention and quality time that your kids desire and deserve. Some of those distractions could be your love for the internet, your friends access to you 24/7 via your cell phone (shut it off when you are at home), your feeling of entitlement to relax in front of the TV (shut it off), preoccupation with unresolved issues from work, unresolved conflict with your spouse, your hobbies, your church commitments, etc…. Your children deserve your initiative of undivided attention, prayer and care.

Connecting with your child requires time. Time spent with your children does not just spontaneously happen; you need to take the initiative to schedule time to connect. If you do not schedule time to connect with your children, they will become like strangers living in your home who receive from you just the basics essentials.

God will honor your efforts to connect with your child. This connection is a major part of pointing your children in the right direction. Our hope for connection with our children rests in the words found in Proverbs 22: 6b, “when they are old they won’t be lost” (The Message).

An Ordinary Home Can Be A Meeting Place With God

A meeting place with God is a place where you can hear, see and experience the truth about God. It is a place where the love of God is modeled through relationships. It is a place where children can grow. Your home can be a meeting place with God.

It starts with the parents.
Parents need to make home a place where the Lord is a part of their everyday lives. This means that God is a part of conversations, decisions, and relationships with family and friends who enter your home. Home is where children hear their parents pray about practical things in life. It is a meeting place with God as parents talk to each other with respect and include children into the flow of conversations.

It happens around the table.
The table is a wonderful place to meet God as you laugh and share together about His love and care experienced each day. It is a great time to let your children know what you are learning about God. It can be a time to encourage your children as they share some of their challenges. Providing compassion and kindness during table conversations is a great way for your children to experience the character of God.

It takes a perceptive ear.
Wise discernment is required of a parent as a child shares their heart. Hearing their worries, unanswered questions and observations about life can provide promptings to talk about spiritual things. A couple of opportunities to talk to your child could be when you pick a child up from school or from a friend’s house. You could also wash dishes together, color together, shop for groceries together. Tucking your children to bed at night can be a great way to connect as well. These moments can become meeting places with God as a parent models their relationship with God as a natural part of daily living.

It happens through communication.
It matters what and how you communicate because your child is very perceptive of how you respond. Parents need to be as real in their conversations about God as they would be talking about their friends or family members. If your tone of voice or your countenance change when you talk about God, your children may see God as fake or disconnected from real life. Encouraging your children to ask questions, even though you might not know the answers, provides the opportunity to go to the Word together to find the answers.

It happens as you pray.
Home can be a meeting place with God as your children hear your conversations with God about them. As you pray think through the day of your child, the challenges and the joys, asking God to protect them with their friends. When your children hear both parents pray home becomes a meeting place with God for the entire family.

It happens when you serve each other.
Parents are called by God to be a spiritual influence in their homes. Home is a great place to serve each other. As you serve, you will grow in the awareness of God’s working in each others lives. Home can be a meeting place with God, and a place to discover His plan for each family member.

Your ordinary home can be a meeting place with God!

Faith – Passing It On To the Next Generation

How can we increase the likelihood that our children will love Jesus and value serving others? There are several things that may impact your child, but I believe that one of the most powerful influences is family. Family, specifically parental roles have a powerful responsibility to model lifestyles, values, and beliefs. Families come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you are raising your child/children as a married couple, single person, grandparent, etc. you have an important role in modeling a committed relationship to the Lord.

 A committed relationship with the Lord involves a person who believes in Jesus as their personal savior and strives to trust Christ with every aspect of his/her life.  A person in a growing relationship with the Lord will grow in character and ability to set and receive boundaries. They regularly spend time with God, connecting with Him and reading His Word.  Moses instructed parents to keep God’s word at the center of life in the home.

“These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and    bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your homes and on your gates,” Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NIV).

A committed relationship with the Lord involves spending quiet time with God through prayer, fasting, and solitude.  It’s an understanding of God’s grace and living in that grace.  These things come by developing solid biblical beliefs and convictions; demonstrate those beliefs through your attitudes and actions.  If you want your children to respect authority and live responsibly, you must model those values in your own life.  This commitment to God can be modeled through your initiative to be a part of corporate worship, engaging in mission and service.  Remember that the likelihood that your children will love Jesus and value serving others is greater if you set these as your own values in your home.

If you have the opportunity to parent as a married couple, do not underestimate what your marriage can demonstrate to your children about the love of God through your actions and attitudes as a couple. When parents are committed to each other they initiate spending time together, and their relationship becomes a priority. Strong marriages provide an atmosphere of trust, security and love for a child.  Communication, focused attention, forgiveness and flexibility are essential within a marriage.  As a couple, view your individual differences as assets in your relationship not threats.  Work hard at resolving conflict, do not perpetuate negative behaviors from the past, and look for opportunities to enrich your marriage.  Seeking advice and mentoring from older couples can be enriching as well as recognizing behaviors your parents used to display at home.  A healthy marriage provides warmth and affection that is essential to children.  To effectively pass the faith on to the next generation, be sure to make your marriage a priority.

Family is extremely important to increase the likelihood that our children will love Jesus and value serving others. Your roles as parental figures will help to shape children’s’ lifestyles, values, and beliefs.  Parents committed to God take their roles as spiritual leaders in the home very seriously. The likelihood that your children will love Jesus and value serving others will increase when as parents you are committed to God and to each other.

Harmful Imbalance!

Every person wants his/her life to really matter. For many, work is a place where they feel a sense of significance. There is nothing wrong with enjoying work, but when a person is consumed with work a harmful imbalance may result. Family is one of the areas of life that may experience the effects of this harmful imbalance. At a specific time when my life was consumed by work and imbalanced, my wife, Jan said to me, “if you give up your family, you give up everything.” Jan was right on! What really matters in life are the people I love and who love me; this is my family.

Family is our most important responsibility. In a substantial study taken of American Teenagers by Search Institute in 1997, researchers discovered that kids who “feel connected to their parents, were less likely to suffer emotional distress, think about suicide, be violent, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or smoke marijuana”  (Strasburger). These parent-nurtured kids also tended to delay their first sexual experiences. In this same survey of high school students, 86 percent said they feel disconnected from and devalued by adults, and only 22 percent said they could communicate positively with their parents (Strasburger).  Family is the primary place to influence the next generation for Jesus.

 So what do we need to do to strengthen our families?  Below is a list of practical suggestions on how to strengthen your family.

• Make a commitment to read God’s word daily.
• Read to your family from age-appropriate bible-based books.
• Establish a quiet time each day to pray.
• Pray with your spouse and kids.
• Share with your kids your personal faith story.
• Share with each other examples of God’s care and love that you are experiencing.
• Gather for a family meeting. Have family members each share their concerns about the upcoming week. Set priorities, make decisions, and establish responsibilities and expectations for the week.
• Help your kids learn how to make “to do” lists.
• Think of ways to serve together, (i.e. clean the yard, bake for someone, and/or visit a nursing home)
• Memorize scripture together by posting a selected verse or verses in a prominent place in your home. A few suggested locations are the refrigerator door or a bathroom mirror.
• Play together, (i.e. board games, catch in the back yard, build a fort in the woods, go on a date, go on a fast-food progressive dinner)

 Family is the most important responsibility, achievement, and legacy we will leave after we are gone. Family is more important than a job, income, standard of living, or personal ambitions. God calls us to care for and nurture our families.

Victor C. Strasburger, “Tuning in to Teenagers,” Newsweek (September 1997).