When do you chose to correct your child’s behavior? This is an interesting question. We are often told a quick consistent response is the key to training children. I am in favor of the quick consistent response as long as you protect their privacy. It would be beneficial for parents to remember that having a QUIET, quick and consistent response can protect a child’s spirit. We need to focus on training disobedience or ignorance without belittling people.
Now that nice weather is upon us, public parenting is striking fear into many parents. I often question the motivation of parents when they share their fear of parenting in public with me. Are you concerned about your child’s behavior or how your family will look to people? Pride can be a huge deterrent to effective parenting. If I am worried about earning the “most together family” award at the local pool or park, my heart might need to change.
We can let pride pull us away from our first responsibility of parenting. Training children to become what God desires them to be is an everyday job. There will be good and bad days. I have seen many parents, including myself, resort to verbal abuse when their kids misbehave in public. This can take a few forms:
Attacking a child’s character instead of dealing with their behavior – “You’re a brat! Why do you have to be a brat!”
Shaming your child publicly by yelling across the playground – “Stop being a bully or I’ll come over there!”
Disrespecting your child to draw attention away from yourself – “No wonder I’m crazy! Wouldn’t you be if you had him as a kid?”
We do not have to crush spirits in order to maintain obedience in our families. It is helpful to remove ourselves from the public eye to correct and comment on behavior. Think how embarrassing it is to be corrected in front of people. Do we give that same consideration to our children? A quiet kind word of instruction can bring about a quicker change than shining a spotlight on bad behavior. We need to protect our children and give them quiet, quick and consistent correction. It is important to prep them ahead of time to insure good behavior. Talking about expectations and consequences before hand can stop many bad behaviors. Quietly correcting behavior can assure our kids of dignity in an adverse situation. Our children will respect us more if we show them respect.
Parenting Tip: Take your children aside and use a quiet voice to correct their behavior instead of yelling instructions across the park or pool. It shows them they are respected and acknowledged as people. This will encourage the same behavior from them. “Beck and Call” is for animals not people in my opinion.
Crissy Bontrager and I just attended a parenting conference in Newark by the National Center for Biblical Parenting. One facet that came out of the conference was a conversation about how to help emerging adolescents deal with their feelings. According to Dr. Richard Berry’s book Angry Kids, most children benefit from intentional training on expressing how they feel.
Crissy shared with me how an emotion chart can help train our children to identify what they are feeling. How amazing would it be if we could teach our children how to assess their feelings, be able to name them and share them? Dr. Berry states that “an important step in dealing with anger is identifying the feelings behind it.” Psychologist Neil Clark Warren believes that anger is not a primary emotion but an automatic response to other emotions. Our children can gain problem-solving abilities and character development skills by being trained to identify these underlying emotions.
Once we can talk about and identify feelings, we are in a better place to develop a rational plan for dealing with the emotions. Helping my children manage their feelings has helped me manage my own. It has helped me take steps to communicate more effectively with my husband, my friends and my coworkers. It is always amazing to me how these small intentional steps to understand myself and others lead me right back to who God created me to be. In Ephesians 2:1-10, Paul writes about how Christ allows us to understand who were were, who we are and who were are becoming. Praise God we are not left alone to wander in our emotions. We have a God who created us and promises to recreate us daily if we are willing to follow him.
Parenting Tip: Post emotion charts in your home. Talk about how name how you are feeling. This can begin with children as young as age two. You can find an example of a chart we use in Kids Community here and find charts for purchase here.
Family project: Young children can color or create their own emotion chart as an art project. Adolescent children may want to create a unique family feeling chart with emoticons to use on their phones and send through email. Adolescent’s may be more willing to text or email their feelings to parents rather than talk about them face to face.
Tim and I went golfing recently on a course constructed over a landfill. It was an enjoyable experience and less smelly than we originally anticipated. It was an added plus that we both shot a good round. As we talked about this experience with our children, it was not lost on our family that this landfill exemplifies our way of life: we played golf on top of a landfill ,but in other places in the world people live on top of landfills.
This summer our family has been privileged to spend time with Jen Morgan. Jen is a great friend who happens to be in the States this summer resting from a year working in Cambodia with orphans. Our children have a greater sense of what is happening around the world by sharing a relationship with “Miss Jen”. We also have the benefit of knowing several other individuals and families who help people around the globe who live very different lives from ours.
One of the values we work to instill in our children is a value for all people. Engaging with people like Jen gives our children a wider view of the world. We discuss how our lives differ from other groups culturally, spiritually, and economically. We pray, volunteer and study in order to open our hearts and minds to everyone with whom we share this earth.
While we continue to focus our efforts locally as well, we believe that a complete outward view includes how God is moving beyond the borders of the United States; it is important for our kids to comprehend that the “body of Christ” is universal and faith is not just an “American” entity. Hopefully this focus will allow them to respond to the Spirit’s work in their hearts to develop compassion and servanthood.
We have committed to memorizing Micah 6:8 together as one of the Eisel family verses: “The Lord God has told us what is right and what He demands: see that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern and humbly obey your God” (CEV). Together we can choose to focus on helping change the lives of people who live on landfills, not just play golf on them.
It is fascinating to watch the progression of speech in a home with children. My grandparents thought is was funny to see my parents go through this, and my parents think its funny to see Tim and I go through it. The journey from “Say ‘dog’, Johnny, say ‘dog’. You can do it honey!” to “My child will not stop talking!” is relatively short in parenting years. I have learned a lot over the years about the importance of words, the value of silence, and selfishness in conversation. I could have used this information as a child – it might have saved me some relationships or at least some nasty comments on my report card. Here are some phrases we use to train our children on how to value how and why we use words wisely:
“Please respond to your brother” – shows speaker as valued
“Mommy’s ears a a little tired right now” – takes ownership for choosing to stop conversation and shows that stopping conversation can be healthy and helpful
“I am choosing not to or am not able to connect with you right now” – takes ownership and shows value in conversation as a connection between people not just words
“You are interrupting. Please wait until it is your turn to speak” – shows value of the words of others
“There is nothing good or helpful coming out of your mouth right now” – show values in building up and encouraging others
“You may sing that song or tell that story to me at another time” – shows value for time and place of words
“Please sing or say those words to yourself” – show value of silence
It may seem rather odd to talk about being self-controlled in our speech on a blog site; the blog world could use some self-control. Training our children to value the words they speak and the words spoken by others appears culturally unimportant in the age of twitter, texting and blogging. This is, then, all the more reason to be diligent in following what God says about our mouths, our words and our purpose of speaking.
Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you oh Lord my rock and my Redeemer - Psalm 19:14
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry – James 1:19
Don’t let any foolish talk come out of your mouth, only what is helpful for building other up according to their needs so that it may benefit those who listen – Ephesian 4:29
The last one is the verse we taught our children when they were old enough to form sentences. It has helped us all - reminded us that ears deserve a rest. Hopefully it will save us from nasty comments on report cards also.
Parenting Tip: When Tim or I are speaking with someone, instead of interrupting with words, our children will place their hand on our leg to get our attention when they need to speak to us; it shows them their comments are valued while teaching them how to wait their turn.
Resource: Books we like that help train ourselves and our families with truths from scripture: Wise Words for Moms and Don’t Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Plowman
