In Between Age Kids - Part Two

When children start thinking more deeply about things discipline and punishment needs to change. It seems like the "brighter" the child, the earlier this might happen.

I said discipline and punishment need to change because they are two different things. Punishment is part of discipline, it is what happens when there has been a failure in discipline. This failure could be the fault of the parents, the child or both.

For an example - You expect your child to take out the trash. You cannot expect it to be done if there hasn't been some discipline involved. You certainly wouldn't want to punish a child for not doing what he didn't know that he was required to do or if he didn't know how to do the job. So you go through the steps of teaching him. Discipline involves training, that's what the word means, to train. The basic steps to teach a child a job -

• make sure there is physical capability. (Is the child tall enough to reach the trash can?)
• explain the task clearly. (Pull the bag out of the inside can, tie it up, place it in the outside can.)
• walk the child through the task. (Watch him take the trash out, explain anything that needs to be clarified, like - close the lid on the outside can, replace the liner on the inside can.)
• make sure he knows when he is required to do the job and how to keep track of that.
• say thank you for a job well done.

Honestly, all of that is common sense. You don't tell a three year old to go bake a cake and expect a cake. But those steps are the basic foundation to teaching your child to live in this world.

(Okay, the first and foremost thing to teaching your child to live in this world is to show them Christ and give them a proper worldview. Speaking to the practicalities of living in a home with other people, those are about as basic as you can get.)

After all of that has been taught, what do we do if the child just continues to "forget?" I would take a guess that there would be a million different answers if we asked a million different people. There are some very creative people in the world who have come up with some doozy of consequences for disobeying children.

I know one lady in her sixties now that would sleep in her teenagers' bedrooms at night until they got home just to make sure what time they came in. This creative mom also had her son apologize on the loud speaker to the entire school because he yelled at a referee during a football game. Her son is a well respected leader in the community now, so I think she did a pretty good job.

Siblings learning to navigate life together.

Fitting the punishment to the transgression is a tried and true method of discipline. If your child forgets to feed the dog, she should skip a meal. She doesn't pick up her clothes off of the floor, then she has to wear them all day - all of them. Siblings fight with each other, tie them together. Your daughter refuses to sit still at the meal table, then she stands at her spot through the entire meal. Stuff like this can happen without abuse, without humiliation and without embarrassment. The entire world doesn't need to know she "forgot" to take out the trash.

Honestly, the child should be embarrassed if he is in contestant sin. If he isn't, then there may be some bigger problems.

There are child advocates who would go crazy at some of this stuff, I know.  We must parent with a loving hand that teaches kindness, forgiveness and self-control. You don't teach those qualities if you don't discipline and punish without them.

But we cannot raise our children to think that the world revolves around them. They must learn to live in society - peaceably and working with others.  As parents we cannot raise them to think that they will not be held accountable for their own sin.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.(Romans 2:12-13 ESV) 

Our children must obey the law, whether it is the law of the Bible, the law of the land, or the rules of the home. God is the only One, True, Righteous Judge, but He did give us our own children to raise according to His laws. 

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. (Colossians 3:20)