What a blessing it is, to see the younger generation parenting better than we ourselves were able to do. Here are five tips from recent observations of new parents who are shaping godly character in their offspring.
Aim for consistency in upholding your expectations for acceptable behavior. The principle is that if you discipline 9 times out of 10, you will be constantly disciplining. If you discipline 10 times out of 10 (with no second and third chances), you’ll have a peaceful home and hardly ever have to discipline for crossing your home rules. Disciplining is seldom convenient; if you maintain your standard 100% of the time, the child will internalize the appropriate behavior and you will have less work in that regard in the future. Children are lawyers looking for loopholes; if they know their parents are immovable in what they require, like the Rock of Gibraltar, they will give up trying to find a way to avoid obeying.
The younger the child, the shorter the command. “No fits!” may be more effective than a long dissertation about how you don’t want to see them throwing a tantrum. “No eat!” makes perfect sense to an infant who is about to chew on a rock or a book. Children understand far more than most of us give them credit for. Once you’ve explained enough that the child knows the ground rule, you can speak a short command and expect obedience.
Although the command may be just two words, the words used to prepare the child for the expected obedience can be more lengthy, and spoken by the parent with compassion, empathy, understanding. Especially if you are giving a simple command, no explanation is needed, but if you’ll need to be preparing the child’s heart for a transition before giving a command then you do well to enter into his or her world (where he or she is probably focused on something else.) Be gentle and respectful of the child’s current focus while you make them aware of the upcoming change of events…transitioning their focus from only their small world to the larger social picture. Several minutes before departure time, for example, the parent obtains eye contact with the child and then tells the child, “In a few minutes we will be leaving, to go home so you can go nighty-night. I will be putting you into your car seat and you will not be throwing a fit. If you maintain a happy heart, you will have a snack to eat while we’re going home. Do you understand?” The precursor to a command is much more about preparation than explanation.
Try to see things through the eyes of your child. Some parents are really good at reading their children’s own expectations, desires and frustrations. By verbalizing them (especially when the child doesn’t yet have the vocabulary able to do so), you take the bite out of the obedience you are expecting of that child. Bringing yourself down to the level of the child, physically, you can say things like “I know you’ve been having a lot of fun playing with _______, and you would like to keep playing. We’ll try to arrange another time for you to play with ____, but for now, everyone has to move on.”
Don’t push the child to levels of behavior that are a “bridge too far” at this point. This includes respecting the child’s need for naps, bedtime, and meals within a reasonable span of the regular time. It may mean you (the parent) must curtail your own enjoyable activity right now. The child has much more limited emotional, relational and physical reserves than an adult, and a wise and loving parent respects that.
For more on child training, read our book, Beyond Discipline and the e-Book, Training Children Further.
