Shaping Your Child with Positive Discipline
What is causing mere children to be a coarse, so brutal? What is happening to our society that kids can be a violent, so callous, so unmindful of right and wrong. Most parent have always complained about the behaviour of their kids. This is maybe the most challenge for all parents how to deal this with their kids---of how to be a parent?
I am not a parent yet, but someday I will. Hmmm...that I don't know when? It maybe gonna take few more years before that happen --- need to marry someone first :) who knows?
As I promised from my last post, here is the article that tells us about "Shaping Your Child with Positive Discipline" . I pray that God will lead all parents to have a righteous relationship with Him, may the Lord will bless your heart.
The article was written by Dr. Ed Young from Second Baptist Church. The article is a little bit long so here is the first part of the article.
"Shaping Your Child with Positive Discipline"
Your first responsibility as a parent is to love God in everything. Children learn by example. They notice what we do and what we believe. Children know what Mom and Dad really love, and they try to attain it for themselves. So a wise father will love the Lord with all his heart, soul, body, mind, and strength. A good mother loves God more dearly than she loves her own family.
Your second responsibility as a parent is to teach your children. If you love God and teach your children well, you will be a successful parent. There is no guarantee that every child will find salvation and learn to love God completely. But if you love God and teach your children fairly, you have done everything a parent can do.
All their lives, your children will know that you truly love God. They will find the lessons you taught them valuable in all they do. How do we teach our children? We teach with words. But words have validity only when they are lived out in action. Unless our lives as parents are compatible with what we seek to teach our children, our teaching will be invalid and ineffective.
If you do not truly love God, do not try to teach your children about loving Him. They will only inherit your hypocrisy. Children will not listen and will not learn if you try to teach them what you yourself do not believe.
EFFECTIVE TEACHING
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
Notice the first commandment in this passage. Love the Lord with all you are. That is your first responsibility as a parent. When you do that, effective teaching naturally results in three ways.
First, we can teach our children when we are sitting down. Take the opportunity at the dinner table to share a real blessing with your children. When the entire family is together at the table, read something from the Scriptures and tell them how you have applied it to your life. Start early and your children will learn a love and respect for God's Word.
They will learn a love and respect for you as a parent if you show something of yourself. When you share something real about yourself, your children have a chance to see inside you, to see what makes you work. They learn about the things you truly care about. Our actions sometimes indicate we care more about our work than we really do. Here is your chance to set the record straight. Let them know that they are really more important to you than your work. Work helps you provide for them.
Second, we can teach our children as we are walking. Do things with them. Treat an appointment with your child like an appointment with a dear friend-not something to be postponed at the last minute.
Pastors get plenty of invitations to do things. Some people don't understand when I say I've got an appointment with one of my children. I hear the dangerous words, "Oh, that's just your family. That can be postponed; you spend plenty of time with them." Yes, I do, and l will hopefully spend plenty more time with them. How important are your children to you? As important as a corporate executive? Then treat them like one.
Finally, we can teach our children when we are lying down and rising up. When they go to bed at night, what a wonderful time to pray. With younger children, we can read a Bible story and tell them what it means. Tell your son or daughter what you thought about the first time you heard that story. They love to hear what Mommy and Daddy were like when they were little. At the right time, they will really listen and begin to understand things about God.
This passage also tells us that God's Word should always act as a signpost. For the believer, the Scriptures are a billboard. They stand as a sign over your life, over your home, and over your family. A sign does three important things:
A sign gives information. Signs tell us what to do. They provide instruction, guidance, and fair warning.
A sign carries authority. Signs call us to obey. I saw a "Candid Camera" episode once where the producers had placed a doormat at the entrance to a supermarket. On this doormat in block letters were the words WIPE YOUR FEET. You would be surprised to see how many people stopped and wiped their feet before walking in.
A sign points to the future. Signs tell us what lies ahead. Psalm 59:10 says, "My God in His loving kindness will meet me." I like to paraphrase that verse to say, "God meets us around every corner of life." We labor and toil over so many decisions, but God is there to meet us around the corner of every single one.
This same verse begins, "My God." God is personal. When He is real to you, when you truly love Him, God is your friend. In times of adversity, trial, temptation, fear, and frustration, we can know that God is there. He is already around that comer.
Psalm 59:10 also gives us the good news that even around the corner of death, God will be there.As a parent, you already know it's impossible to go everywhere with your child and to watch everything he or she is doing. But with the words of the Scriptures, you can post signs over their lives. God's Word can leave a calling card in the memory of your children that will stay with them forever-providing information, calling them to obey, and pointing to the future.
LITTLE SAVAGES
Keep in mind that good teaching is not enough. All of us know that every child needs discipline. Every child has a warp and a bent toward evil. If you understand that, you are already a better parent. But it's not only true of your child, it is true of you. Evil is built into all of us. And I believe the secular world has finally come to agree.
Recently, the Minnesota Crime Commission grew concerned about the increase in the rate of crime among teenagers. With secular psychiatrists and psychologists, they conducted a secular study of children. Here is the result:
Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants, when he wants. His bottle. His mother's attention. His playmate's toy. His uncle's watch. Deny him these wants and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up to be a criminal. A thief, a killer, a rapist.
After reading that, you cannot deny that we all need discipline! Proverbs 22:15 says, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him."
So as a God-fearing parent, you need to understand and to live by God's words on the subject of discipline. Treat your children as God has created them to be treated in discipline, and you cannot go wrong.
GROUND RULES FOR DISCIPLINE
And you have forgotten the exhortation that is addressed to you as sons, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the LORD, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; For those whom the LORD loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure: God deals with you as with sons: for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Hebrews 12:5-11)
Learning to discipline children is so difficult. How hard and trying it is. You may even think how impossible it is. But don't be discouraged. Many people just like you are wondering how to discipline correctly.
How should you act toward your children when doubt enters your mind about how to deal with them? The Scriptures provide the best examples in the world. Consider the way your heavenly Father deals with you. The way God deals with you is the exact pattern you should follow in dealing and living with your children.
Some people are not so sure this is true. Before you decide, first ask yourself this question: How does God deal with me? His discipline involves a balance between law and grace, and a foundation of love and limits.
What is the purpose of law? The law tells us what God is like. The Ten Commandments tell us of the morality, the expectations, the nature, and the character of God. Later, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus elaborates upon the law. The law draws a line around us, showing us how good God really is. It is the external manifestation of goodness.
What is grace? To know grace, combine patience, help, endurance, forgiveness, and sympathy. Grace is the internal working of goodness. Grace grows on the inside.
In God, we see a picture of both law and grace. He always obeys the external restraints of the law, but he moves toward us with His wonderful grace. So as we discipline, God asks us to abide by the law while practicing grace.
Here, discipline becomes difficult. How do you mold the will without breaking the spirit of a child? Once you break a child's spirit, you can spend your life trying to put it back together.
But you have a problem. The will of a child is made out of solid steel. From the very start, they demand attention, they demand food, they demand to be held. They will wear out an army of people. How do you mold solid steel without causing it to snap? It is difficult.
Each of us has damaged emotions. Everyone does. We have feelings of inferiority. We have feelings of inadequacy we carry because somewhere at home, in school, or in the neighborhood, our spirit was broken or harmed.
People who seem to have it all together are most to be pitied. Many boastful, out-going, swashbuckling people have a spirit that's been shattered in a very serious way.
Others respond by becoming introverted and timid; this is a sad response as well. But somehow, somewhere, each of us has been scarred emotionally. And many times, the damage occurs in the realm of discipline.
Here are four principles that will help you know how to discipline your children fairly:
1. Never discipline a child in anger. This is the first and foremost of these guidelines. Continue reading in this booklet, and I will tell you why anger can be so ineffective and so destructive in discipline.
2. Never discipline a child for revenge. Never take your pound of flesh from a child. You may have warned and threatened him dozens of times, but when correction is necessary, never do it only because he deserves it. Discipline your child because he needs correction, not because you need the satisfaction of getting back at him.
3. Never discipline a child in a way that belittles, shames, or embarrasses him.
4. Never discipline on a whim. Be consistent, be very consistent. Poor discipline is unpredictable. Sometimes a child makes one mistake and judgment falls down upon him-he finds himself grounded for six months. Next time, he may do something really wrong, four times as bad, and you say, "Oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. You know, I did the same thing when I was growing up." The mind of the child begins to believe that the little mistakes are really wrong, but the big mistakes are terribly funny.
I am not a parent yet, but someday I will. Hmmm...that I don't know when? It maybe gonna take few more years before that happen --- need to marry someone first :) who knows?
As I promised from my last post, here is the article that tells us about "Shaping Your Child with Positive Discipline" . I pray that God will lead all parents to have a righteous relationship with Him, may the Lord will bless your heart.
The article was written by Dr. Ed Young from Second Baptist Church. The article is a little bit long so here is the first part of the article.
"Shaping Your Child with Positive Discipline"
Your first responsibility as a parent is to love God in everything. Children learn by example. They notice what we do and what we believe. Children know what Mom and Dad really love, and they try to attain it for themselves. So a wise father will love the Lord with all his heart, soul, body, mind, and strength. A good mother loves God more dearly than she loves her own family.
Your second responsibility as a parent is to teach your children. If you love God and teach your children well, you will be a successful parent. There is no guarantee that every child will find salvation and learn to love God completely. But if you love God and teach your children fairly, you have done everything a parent can do.
All their lives, your children will know that you truly love God. They will find the lessons you taught them valuable in all they do. How do we teach our children? We teach with words. But words have validity only when they are lived out in action. Unless our lives as parents are compatible with what we seek to teach our children, our teaching will be invalid and ineffective.
If you do not truly love God, do not try to teach your children about loving Him. They will only inherit your hypocrisy. Children will not listen and will not learn if you try to teach them what you yourself do not believe.
EFFECTIVE TEACHING
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
Notice the first commandment in this passage. Love the Lord with all you are. That is your first responsibility as a parent. When you do that, effective teaching naturally results in three ways.
First, we can teach our children when we are sitting down. Take the opportunity at the dinner table to share a real blessing with your children. When the entire family is together at the table, read something from the Scriptures and tell them how you have applied it to your life. Start early and your children will learn a love and respect for God's Word.
They will learn a love and respect for you as a parent if you show something of yourself. When you share something real about yourself, your children have a chance to see inside you, to see what makes you work. They learn about the things you truly care about. Our actions sometimes indicate we care more about our work than we really do. Here is your chance to set the record straight. Let them know that they are really more important to you than your work. Work helps you provide for them.
Second, we can teach our children as we are walking. Do things with them. Treat an appointment with your child like an appointment with a dear friend-not something to be postponed at the last minute.
Pastors get plenty of invitations to do things. Some people don't understand when I say I've got an appointment with one of my children. I hear the dangerous words, "Oh, that's just your family. That can be postponed; you spend plenty of time with them." Yes, I do, and l will hopefully spend plenty more time with them. How important are your children to you? As important as a corporate executive? Then treat them like one.
Finally, we can teach our children when we are lying down and rising up. When they go to bed at night, what a wonderful time to pray. With younger children, we can read a Bible story and tell them what it means. Tell your son or daughter what you thought about the first time you heard that story. They love to hear what Mommy and Daddy were like when they were little. At the right time, they will really listen and begin to understand things about God.
This passage also tells us that God's Word should always act as a signpost. For the believer, the Scriptures are a billboard. They stand as a sign over your life, over your home, and over your family. A sign does three important things:
A sign gives information. Signs tell us what to do. They provide instruction, guidance, and fair warning.
A sign carries authority. Signs call us to obey. I saw a "Candid Camera" episode once where the producers had placed a doormat at the entrance to a supermarket. On this doormat in block letters were the words WIPE YOUR FEET. You would be surprised to see how many people stopped and wiped their feet before walking in.
A sign points to the future. Signs tell us what lies ahead. Psalm 59:10 says, "My God in His loving kindness will meet me." I like to paraphrase that verse to say, "God meets us around every corner of life." We labor and toil over so many decisions, but God is there to meet us around the corner of every single one.
This same verse begins, "My God." God is personal. When He is real to you, when you truly love Him, God is your friend. In times of adversity, trial, temptation, fear, and frustration, we can know that God is there. He is already around that comer.
Psalm 59:10 also gives us the good news that even around the corner of death, God will be there.As a parent, you already know it's impossible to go everywhere with your child and to watch everything he or she is doing. But with the words of the Scriptures, you can post signs over their lives. God's Word can leave a calling card in the memory of your children that will stay with them forever-providing information, calling them to obey, and pointing to the future.
LITTLE SAVAGES
Keep in mind that good teaching is not enough. All of us know that every child needs discipline. Every child has a warp and a bent toward evil. If you understand that, you are already a better parent. But it's not only true of your child, it is true of you. Evil is built into all of us. And I believe the secular world has finally come to agree.
Recently, the Minnesota Crime Commission grew concerned about the increase in the rate of crime among teenagers. With secular psychiatrists and psychologists, they conducted a secular study of children. Here is the result:
Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants, when he wants. His bottle. His mother's attention. His playmate's toy. His uncle's watch. Deny him these wants and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up to be a criminal. A thief, a killer, a rapist.
After reading that, you cannot deny that we all need discipline! Proverbs 22:15 says, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him."
So as a God-fearing parent, you need to understand and to live by God's words on the subject of discipline. Treat your children as God has created them to be treated in discipline, and you cannot go wrong.
GROUND RULES FOR DISCIPLINE
And you have forgotten the exhortation that is addressed to you as sons, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the LORD, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; For those whom the LORD loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure: God deals with you as with sons: for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Hebrews 12:5-11)
Learning to discipline children is so difficult. How hard and trying it is. You may even think how impossible it is. But don't be discouraged. Many people just like you are wondering how to discipline correctly.
How should you act toward your children when doubt enters your mind about how to deal with them? The Scriptures provide the best examples in the world. Consider the way your heavenly Father deals with you. The way God deals with you is the exact pattern you should follow in dealing and living with your children.
Some people are not so sure this is true. Before you decide, first ask yourself this question: How does God deal with me? His discipline involves a balance between law and grace, and a foundation of love and limits.
What is the purpose of law? The law tells us what God is like. The Ten Commandments tell us of the morality, the expectations, the nature, and the character of God. Later, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus elaborates upon the law. The law draws a line around us, showing us how good God really is. It is the external manifestation of goodness.
What is grace? To know grace, combine patience, help, endurance, forgiveness, and sympathy. Grace is the internal working of goodness. Grace grows on the inside.
In God, we see a picture of both law and grace. He always obeys the external restraints of the law, but he moves toward us with His wonderful grace. So as we discipline, God asks us to abide by the law while practicing grace.
Here, discipline becomes difficult. How do you mold the will without breaking the spirit of a child? Once you break a child's spirit, you can spend your life trying to put it back together.
But you have a problem. The will of a child is made out of solid steel. From the very start, they demand attention, they demand food, they demand to be held. They will wear out an army of people. How do you mold solid steel without causing it to snap? It is difficult.
Each of us has damaged emotions. Everyone does. We have feelings of inferiority. We have feelings of inadequacy we carry because somewhere at home, in school, or in the neighborhood, our spirit was broken or harmed.
People who seem to have it all together are most to be pitied. Many boastful, out-going, swashbuckling people have a spirit that's been shattered in a very serious way.
Others respond by becoming introverted and timid; this is a sad response as well. But somehow, somewhere, each of us has been scarred emotionally. And many times, the damage occurs in the realm of discipline.
Here are four principles that will help you know how to discipline your children fairly:
1. Never discipline a child in anger. This is the first and foremost of these guidelines. Continue reading in this booklet, and I will tell you why anger can be so ineffective and so destructive in discipline.
2. Never discipline a child for revenge. Never take your pound of flesh from a child. You may have warned and threatened him dozens of times, but when correction is necessary, never do it only because he deserves it. Discipline your child because he needs correction, not because you need the satisfaction of getting back at him.
3. Never discipline a child in a way that belittles, shames, or embarrasses him.
4. Never discipline on a whim. Be consistent, be very consistent. Poor discipline is unpredictable. Sometimes a child makes one mistake and judgment falls down upon him-he finds himself grounded for six months. Next time, he may do something really wrong, four times as bad, and you say, "Oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. You know, I did the same thing when I was growing up." The mind of the child begins to believe that the little mistakes are really wrong, but the big mistakes are terribly funny.
posted by mS eLoVe | 10:15 PM
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