Disciplining Children

[00:00:01] Hello and welcome to Become A Competent Biblical Counselor. I'm Dr. Dave Jones and today's episode is entitled Disciplining Children. And what I want to get into today is to establish and discuss a code of conduct, perhaps the use of a switch, the use of structural discipline

[00:00:38] to which both husband and wife were agreed would settle down the home and keep down the yelling and the screaming and the fussing and frustration and the anger and the rest of what goes on in structured

[00:00:51] discipline. And I'd like to amplify those words about discipline and give a few suggestions from the sixth chapter of the book of Ephesians that deals with the disciplinary issue most directly. Let me read the first four verses of Ephesians 6. Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this

[00:01:12] is right. Now let me first of all notice the qualification that Paul makes at this point when he says in the Lord. If a parent, when the child goes to pick up the telephone says to the

[00:01:25] child, if it's so and so, tell them I'm not home. That child is not bound to obey that parent, even though that a parent has authority to ask the child to obey him about other matters,

[00:01:37] because that kind of a commandment is not in the Lord. That kind of a commandment is outside of the Lord's will and outside of the compass of biblical thought, because that parent's asking the child to lie. Now without showing disrespect, the child should say to the parent, Mom,

[00:01:58] Dad, whoever it is. Please don't ask me to do that. That would be a lie. God would not want me to do that and I cannot disobey God. But that does not provide a loophole for the child to disobey

[00:02:12] his parents. The child should obey the parents in everything unless it is an absolute contradiction of a clear and plain commandment of God. If there's any doubt, whatever, the benefit of the doubt should be in the direction, given in the direction of sheer obedience to your parents.

[00:02:31] So children are exhorted. Obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Now that's what we want to bring about here. And of course it's good for the children to be told this to begin

[00:02:45] with and they need to be told it by parents and they need to be told frequently why they are to do it, because it's right before God. As Paul says, it's right. It's right because God has commanded

[00:02:59] it. Notice what he goes on to say in the next two verses. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long

[00:03:12] on the earth. So you see children are to be told that they must obey their parents both in the Sunday school, the church from the pulpit, in Christian literature and by parents themselves.

[00:03:26] They should be told that they should obey their parents because it's right before God. It's what God demands of children. They don't obey because they can be convinced or persuaded that they

[00:03:39] should obey. Too many parents, you see, have been taught that they have to give a reason for everything that they say. Well, they ought to have a reason but they ought not always to be required to

[00:03:52] give it. Every child who was taught to obey only that which he himself can be reasoned into thinking right is going to be in a very serious position in life. He's not going to want to obey the

[00:04:04] rules of superiors and school or in the government or wherever else he turns in business. He's going to want to know answers and reasons for everything but there aren't always reasons forthcoming. In fact, sometimes laws must be obeyed that are unreasonable. Even as we see in many of

[00:04:23] the tax laws that we have and many of the other speed limit and driving laws that we see around us, we obey because we are law abiding citizens even when the law itself has not a good basis

[00:04:35] for it. Take the little child who was taught to obey only when he is given reasons. Suppose he runs out in front of a car or something or starts to run out in front of a truck and his parents

[00:04:47] scream at him, stop, stop, right there Johnny! Well, if he has to wait for reasons it will be too late before they can give him the reasons. The car is going to be on him and he's going

[00:04:59] to be seriously injured. The child must be taught to obey and must realize that it's for his own benefit to be taught to obey because of who tells him, because God tells him to obey his parents,

[00:05:13] not because of the reasons for obedience that he might like or dislike. Now, parents can give and share as many reasons as they want later on but the fact of the matter is that a parent must have obedience from a child simply because he is a parent

[00:05:31] and God says that parents must be obeyed. Now, what kind of discipline ought to be offered to children? Verse 4 tells us that fathers do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It's very interesting that at

[00:05:49] first he warns fathers not to provoke their children to anger and incidentally the father is the one who is single out here because he is the one who in the long run is responsible with discipline in the

[00:06:03] home. All the discipline in that home, even the discipline exerted by the mother or by a babysitter or anyone else must ultimately go back to the discipline of the father. That is

[00:06:16] a discipline that he is charged with exerting by God in that home. And so the father here is the one who is addressed because he is the one who is to see to it that anybody else who

[00:06:28] disciplines as well as his own disciplining is carried out in a manner that is proper before God. Now, it's easy to provoke children to anger or as the parallel passage in Colossians 3 says

[00:06:42] to get them to make them exasperated over a kind of discipline that's exerted over discipline as well as under discipline causes exasperated frustrated anger. You know that those two together those two concepts of exasperation and anger fits so well our modern scene where a child will say,

[00:07:05] oh I've had it. What's the use? And you get those attitudes just in that very expression. You see bound and blended together of exasperation with the kind of discipline that they see and anger over the fact that it's not more consistent. Inconsistency, unfair discipline, discipline that

[00:07:27] moves out of the battle rather than in contemplated beforehand. All of these things lead to discipline that provokes children to anger and so a parent must be very careful about the kind of

[00:07:39] discipline that he exerts on his child. And so let me mention two other things in this passage but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Those are two important things. The first, the way that the Lord disciplines us and therefore the way we

[00:07:56] are to discipline our children is with this first word that is called discipline or structured discipline that is reward and punishment. But the second is the instruction or confrontation

[00:08:10] that you are to bring to the child where you sit down with him and you don't just say you're going to be rewarded if you achieve this new thing or you're going to be punished if you don't do this

[00:08:21] old thing that you know how to do and ought to do reward and punishment. But also where you say to the child, let's not do this just to avoid punishment or to get rewards. Let's do this because

[00:08:35] your Lord said to do it. Do it because you loved him who died for you and out of love and response to his goodness you want to respond in that way. And so we urge you to keep in mind

[00:08:49] whenever you think about child discipline, the sixth chapter of Ephesians, the first four verses. I can only briefly mention them today but there is in that verse, in those verses, a wealth of helpful material for any parent. Lord bless parents who have a difficult but joyous job

[00:09:09] of training their children to love the Lord. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. So there you have it. You having issues with your child? Are you having to reason with your child every time

[00:09:20] that you ask your child to do something? Someone once said that this is not a democracy, the children do not have a vote but they are to be taught how to behave, how to follow

[00:09:35] what the commands of the Lord are and it's you up to the parents to make sure that that is consistent. Anytime when people come to me for counseling and they say they have problems with their child,

[00:09:47] I in turn will ask what the details and the particulars are of that discipline. Only to determine later on that the problems with the child really come from the attitude and the discipline or lack of discipline of the parent so it's not necessarily child counseling,

[00:10:03] it's parental counseling. Anyway continue with your disciplining as I mentioned before and it was mentioned in this episode. You don't have to reason with your child as to why you're instructing them to do anything, they are just to obey. I hope this helps. Have a blessed day.