31 Day Challenge - Day 29

"To discipline a child produces wisdom, but a mother is disgraced by an undisciplined child" (Proverbs 29:15). "Discipline your children, and they will give you peace of mind and will make your heart glad" (Proverbs 29:17).

Throughout the scriptures it is evident that the Lord wants us to discipline our children, but I have been confused, at times, about the ways I was not disciplining my children. The on-line Dictionary by Farley describes the word discipline as the following: 1. Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement; 2. Controlled behavior resulting from disciplinary training; self-control; 3. To train by instruction and practice, especially to teach self-control to; 4. To teach to obey rules or accept authority; 5. To punish in order to gain control or enforce obedience; 6. To impose order on. A sense of preparing comes to mind when I read these definitions; we are preparing our children to obey God and to take their place in His kingdom.

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Discipling does not come easy. Children don't understand how difficult it is for parents to train them up. In addition, if we're not using the Bible as our guide book, we can become confused with how to administer discipling techniques. Two things that needed to be corrected in my discipling practices when bringing up my older childre were my forgetfulness of punishments I had prescribed and my wavering "No" that the children quickly figured out could be manipulated into a "yes". My forgetfulness allowed the dishonesty in children to rise up and not remind me of a punishment I had established for them. I wouldn't remember until after the punishment had been broken and the child was able to do that which they had been told they could not, (even if I had written it on the family calendar). Don't get me wrong, I did have the honest child that alerted me to their restrictions, (and sometimes others), but I also had the child who didn't "remember" until I brought it up. I'm not sure why I would forget, but it could have been that the punishment wasn't a good fit for the crime. What may really have been needed at the time was a consequence (something I learned during the second decade of bringing up children).

The wavering "No" resulted in my children's ability to elicit a "yes" after much finagling. I would say no to a certain request, but would soften after repeated questioning and debates, and end with a "yes".  The scripture tells us "to let our "no" mean no and our "yes" mean yes", obviously a word that escaped me at the time. It is better to follow through with a no then to give in, even if we feel we've made a mistake in judgement concerning a punishment. We can always (and should) ask for forgiveness if we find ourself in error, but following through allows the child to learn they can not manipulate their parent, no matter what (because moms no always means no) and a child who learns to accept a "no" becomes an adult who knows how to handle disappointment in responsible and respectful ways.