Reading: Devotional

August 28

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The Necessity of Parental Discipline

Deuteronomy 6:1–9; Proverbs 5:23; 6:23; 29:17–18

Train up a child in the way he should go;

even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

Supernanny was a reality TV show that featured parents at their wits’ end about how to control their unruly children. A professional nanny responded to their pleas for help and most of the time was able to give parents enough guidance and skills so that order could be restored in their households.

It’s not difficult to see how such chaos originates. It arises whenever parents allow their children freedom without consequences for abusing that freedom. Besides physical care, children need parenting to help them to attain emotional and spiritual maturity. By nature we would all like to be kings and queens in our own little universe; it’s discipline that helps us learn the self-control that, perhaps counter-intuitively, leads to a more peaceable and happy life. To really prosper—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—we must obey the laws under which God created us to live, foremost of which is to love him above all

Positively, discipline involves instruction, training, and rewarding proper behavior. But there’s a negative side too, which addresses improper behavior with correction and punishment. The goal of both is the same—to bring our children to the obedience and self-discipline necessary for life. Often that means they must learn to sacrifice what may appear to be in their immediate interests for the sake of more valuable and longer term goals. Success in this can mean the difference between a good end and a bad one. The least negative result of the failure to learn self-discipline is the loss of potential blessing, but much greater losses and even death can result. So God says, “Discipline your children, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to their death” (Prov. 19:18). 

August 29

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How to Discipline

Psalm 78:1–8; Proverbs 3:11–12; 13:24

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.

Revelation 3:19 (ESV)

A research study from some years ago highlighted how the improper balance of support and control hampered the effectiveness of parental discipline. The kind of discipline children need is more like that we receive from God—always high in loving support and offered with the goal of helping us to reach maturity in our attitudes and actions toward God and our neighbors.

How parents show that support and control may differ in families; Scripture does not require identical parenting styles or complete agreement about the place of physical punishment in discipline. Perhaps we can agree, however, that children must never be punished in anger but always in love, appropriately, and with an eye to what will support them and help them to maturity.

At the risk of oversimplifying the very difficult task that God has given parents, let me offer a few guidelines:

·   Model the behavior you want, and pray continually.

·   Make rules that are defensible and enforceable. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Discipline is not about winning, but about what’s right.

·   Clearly communicate what you expect or how you were disappointed but don’t lose your self-control.

·   Use natural/logical consequences when you can. That ties actions to consequences and helps children learn before the consequences get too big and dangerous.

·   Offer unconditional love communicated physically and verbally, and with control that is age-appropriate—high in infancy, but decreasing with age and maturity. The goal after all, is to entirely replace parental control with self-control through proper guidance and loving correction so that children become equipped to offer their own obedience to God in all of life.