Child training requires a delicate balance. Remember, the long-term results of parenting—the parenting report card—aren’t fully tabulated until you’re in your 80s and 90s. The proof of the pudding is whether your children want to maintain relationship with you or not, once they too are adults. In raising them, then, we must seek to avoid two extremes: filling our children’s days with too many “Yes’s” (on the one hand) or, conversely, too many “No’s.” Each is a ditch to avoid.
The positive side of saying No is that it teaches self-denial, the single most important ingredient in emotional maturity. But too many of them, only based on our own conveniences to not be irritated, when the activity has no sin in it, makes the child feel like he/she is in a cage. Endless no’s, naughty-naughties, you should-haves, control of minutiae, expectations of someone else to satisfy our own objectives and progress, using them as our personal servants, drive the heart of a child far from us.
The positive side of saying Yes is that (in wholesome cases), it brings the glory of the kingdom life to the child, now. For example, “All the promises of God in Christ are “YES!” (2 Cor. 1:20). An adult child, even into his own older years, will want to be around his best lifetime cheerleaders = his parents. But “yes’s” as a constant bill of fare, where no self-denial is learned, weaken the child. Wisely fill your days together with both.
For further reading on this topic, read Beyond Discipline and Training Children Further.
