A Lesson From Arnold

The cat sat against the wall in the hallway—head fixed, eyes intent on Teri as she attached the carpet head on the vacuum. I was fascinated watching those eyes and the one ear that never moved, as if riveted on Teri. 

Arnold obviously uses his ears as a warning system. One ear was trained on her, while the other one, alternated one second on Teri and then one second down the hall behind him. Back and forth, back and forth, he was ensuring he was safe from sudden attack from behind. Arnold had lived outside before we took him in, and his survival depended on how alert he was to threats.

I wonder how many dads are that watchful for spiritual danger. Satan wants your family. Are we merrily strolling through life without a care, or do we hold our family’s spiritual wellbeing as precious? I grieve when I learn what children in professing Christian families are reading and seeing. Some examples would be books such as Harry Potter and “classics” that are wicked and evil, but justified because they are literature. In addition, there are horrific, violent video games and movies galore. Dads I plead with you: cherish your children’s souls.

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Proverbs 8:13).

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Steve

Full Circle

Our country was founded because men were in pursuit of religious freedom. They desired to peacefully serve their God as they understood what the Bible taught. Many Englishmen suffered terribly in prison for being non-conformists to the Church of England. John Bunyan was one who spent twelve years in prison with much hardship to his family. 

In 2019 the accusation has changed, but the concept lives. Today you could be called  “intolerant” if you gently speak out against what God calls wrong. Each must choose who you will align with. There is no middle ground. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Romans 14:5b). 

Steve

Craftsmen

We ate Saturday evening dinner at my oldest son Nathan’s house. He and Melanie have five children from 10 down to almost 2 with another one on the way. The children had baths that afternoon, and after Bible time it was apparently fingernail cutting time. I watched with interest as Melanie cut the little’s nails. She used nail scissors and deftly moved from finger to finger. Actually, it reminded me of a craftsman, due to how smooth and quick she was.

There are many skills that moms acquire and utilize throughout their days with the children, and that spurred my thinking to dads. We typically think of dads’ skills in regard to providing for their families. Could that be wood, hay, and stubble compared to the gold skills of discipling the children?

Are you a craftsman when it comes to leading an interactive, engaging Bible time or having heart-to-heart talks with your children? Can you artfully apply Scripture to the precious, teachable moments that come along as you strive to reach the soul and not just attain outward conformity? How committed are you to bringing up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord that they might love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength?

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

Steve

I Can’t

At my suggestion a man repair or build something himself, I have often heard, “I couldn’t do that. My dad never taught me how.” Pardon my candor, but so what! Anyone of average mental and physical ability can do just about anything he is determined to do. 

From my observation, initiative is usually lacking when “I can’t” is the excuse. This lack is generally due to a serious case of “couchpotatoitis” combined with “workaphobia” and “learnaphobia.” The symptoms become even more obvious in the children of the stricken parent.  

The good news/bad news, is that it is curable, but it is a rough, tough road. Feed the good appetites, and starve the bad. Cultivate a sense of pleasure and excitement from accomplishing things. 

Read these books with your children: Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single-Income Family and Buying a House Debt-Free. Discuss the books, and give your children a vision for an adulthood of enjoying work and being debt free. 

Most of you have mortgages. Do you like that? Why not help your sons buy their first houses debt free as my five sons have? (I don’t say that to brag but so you know it is possible. Come on. If we can do it, you can.)

“I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction” (Proverbs 24:30-32).

Steve

What to Do?

In recent Mom’s Corners, we addressed dealing with negative behavior in children. We started with our mindset in those situations and then moved to being proactive in prevention. Now we arrive at the nitty-gritty of actual consequences, which is what the original question asked. 

“I would love to see some posts about how to handle things like siblings fighting, whining, talking back, etc. I just need some fresh inspiration for practical consequences on how to handle these kinds of things.” Dana

The goal of a consequence is to get a child’s attention so he will consider a new behavior to be a better choice over the previous behavior. This lines up with Scripture and how God disciplines us as His children. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11). 

In our experience, as mentioned previously, it is less about the actual consequence and more about the consistency with which it is used. Plus each child is an individual so a consequence that works great with one child might have no effect on another child. Choosing consequences can be difficult.  

Consequence Criteria

Here are some criteria you might want to consider when evaluating consequences.

  1. Can you live with it? Be careful of consequences that are complicated, take record keeping, or will cause you or a child’s sibling not to be able to do something you should do or want to do. 
  2. Does it de-escalate? It might be that simply given a break from the situation will mean the discipline problem goes away. 
  3. Is it appropriate? You want to find consequences that are age appropriate, and you are looking for consequences that don’t under or over correct the child.
  4. Is it effective? Children are different, and what will get one child’s attention means nothing to another.

Look for something that fits the criteria and works. Remember it is about providing the child incentive to change his behavior. 

Our Personal Go-To Consequences

Here were four of our favorite consequences:

  1. Chair sitting for a designated amount of time. This consequence was one we could live with—no problems while the child was on the chair. It de-escalated the problem by separating quarreling children or ending whining, and it was appropriate for younger children, when we were at home. It was quite effective because our children loved to be active so taking that freedom away for a short time got their attention. Our chair sitting rules were:
    1. Sit up on chair.
    2. No talking.
    3. No playing.
  2. Play alone for a designated length of time. This consequence fit all the criteria, but we reserved it for younger children.
  3. Extra chores. This fits the criteria, but if the child is too young to do chores, it would not be appropriate. Since meal clean up was a daily assigned chore in our home, we would often let children off of meal cleanup who didn’t have consequences and give the clean up to those who did have extra-chore consequences. That rewarded the obedient children and disciplined the disobedient children.
  4. Early bedtime. We could only live with this consequence if we made sure there was buffer time in our evening so a child could go to bed early. It was more effective for older children who understood that they were going to bed early than it was for younger children who weren’t yet time savvy. 

The End Result

Remember when you give a child a consequence, you are doing it with the goal of helping him grow into a mature, godly adult with characteristics that will make him/her a good husband/wife, father/mother, employee or business owner, and also be enjoyable to live with. “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). That makes it worth the time and investment you put into finding consequences that work and using them consistently.

Here is another article with more practical consequence information. 

Trusting in Jesus,
Teri