Over Chinese New Year, I met up with relatives and friends and a common topic of conversation was parenting. It seems discipline is a perennial challenge for all parents. Mum and Dad are always struggling to balance between being strict and just letting the child be.
For my wife and I, we were blessed not with well-behaved children but with God's teaching. Very early on, God gave us two verses to keep in our hearts and minds as we strove to bring up our children.
even when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. (Proverbs 22:15)
Both these verses are very precious to us. From it we draw principles that guide our family life. Here are some of them:
- Early childhood is the time when parents must establish their authority. As soon as a child can refuse, then it's time to discipline. This means that babies who have not yet learn to talk but can show defiance can be disciplined. We only have a window of 10 years or less. If no disciplining is done in early childhood, you have doomed your child to a life of always being on the wrong side of authority.
- Discipline is necessary. It's not for the sake of household peace or parental convenience. Disciplining a child drives away folly and foolishness and evil. We all want our children to be wise, to strive for good, to be humble before God. Discipline is necessary in order to achieve those things. These qualities don't magically appear. Discipline is the key.
- The rod of discipline is the tool by which discipline is administered. Not the naughty corner, not a time out, not the removal of privileges. The wonders of a simple spank on the bottom cannot be overestimated. As says, it drives out folly. If you don't spank, you are not parenting. It's as simple as that. (But remember, spanking is not done in frustration but is a deliberate exercise in discipline. The parent who spanks in anger or for convenience is sinning.)
- Never, never, never "let it go". It's exhausting to catch every little act of disobedience but you need to keep at it. When your child knows he or she can't get away with anything, he or she will learn to obey.
- The corollary to No.4 is never threaten something you know you'll never carry out because you kid will know you're not serious and will carry on disobeying. The flip side is, carry out every disciplinary action that you threaten. Otherwise, your words mean nothing.
- And here's the most important one: learn to differentiate between a obedience of the heart issue and something that just disrupts your sensibility or convenience. There's nothing worse than telling your kid to sit down and shut up just because you don't like loud noise. You need to give the child a creative outlet or just learn to accept the volume. In other words, discipline only because a moral issue is at stake, not because you feel irritated.
Those are some of the things we've learnt. We're not there yet, but already, we can see a stark difference in the way our kids act and behave versus a child who has undergone little or no disciplining. It is our God-given duty to discipline, so let us not shy away from the task set before us. Because in the end, it is not we who suffer, but our children. If you love your child, discipline him or her today.
