Two Sentences on the Discipline of a Child

Chris Brauns today on two sentences that guide the way he disciplines his children:

In the context of discipline I have learned to say and think:

Message #1: I love you too much to teach you that you can make bad choices without any consequences. As someone has said, “Choose to sin, choose to suffer.” Don’t be deceived God cannot be mocked. You reap what you sow. (Galatians 6:7-8).

Or, when my children are upset with me because they think I am too protective, I say and think this:

Message #2: All your life, I have been willing to die for you. I can honestly tell you that it came down to your life or my life, I would give up mine on your behalf. So, if I am willing to die for you, then having you upset with me because I am protecting you is a relatively small thing in my world. If protecting you means you being mad at me, then so be it.”

10 Things to Remember When Your Child is Disobedient

From GraceLaced:

1. You disobey the Lord…and He is the perfect Father.

2. His kindness leads us to repentance.

3. God disciplines those He loves.

4. Your child’s disobedience does not measure your value any more than his obedience showcases your achievement.

5. Your child’s disobedience teaches you dependence on God.

6. And sometimes it’s more than dependence He’s after, it’s complete desperation for Him.

7. Your child is clearly a sinner, and needs to hear the truth of the Gospel, and see it lived out through you.

8. Times of correction serve to remind, or establish within your child, his own sense of need for a Savior.

9. It’s not good behavior you really desire…you want his heart.

10. Your child is a person, not a project.

Quotes of the Day

“When we started watching his shows, we had intended to apply his advice toward our dogs,” said Amy Twomey, a blogger on parenthood for The Dallas Morning News who is raising three children under 10 with her husband, Matt. “But we realized a lot of ideas can be used on our kids.”

****

"Y'all well know that I really don't like Sarah Palin. In fact, more than one of you has yelled at me about this. And I find the whole schtick about how the media is just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her really grating.

"That's why I really wish the media wouldn't act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her. I've coined a new phrase to cover the situation: Palinoia. It's when you think people are out to get you, and then they do their best to justify your erroneous belief."

****

"Predominantly, Christians will need to consider the implications of having the most powerful woman in the world be a career woman who holds such a job despite having young children. While Christians will be pleased to be able to support a woman who is strongly pro-life, pro-family and pro-constitution, they will also wrestle with the fact that she will want to lead the country even as the mother of several young children. And Christians may wonder what she really believes and how strongly she believes it. She is anxious to win over evangelicals but in the end she offers little of spiritual substance beyond what we might expect from any American politician. After all, no President has yet denied being a Christian."

****

"The New Gospel...usually starts with an apology: 'I’m sorry for my fellow Christians. I understand why you hate Christianity. It’s like that thing Ghandi said, ‘why can’t the Christians be more like their Christ?’ Christians are hypocritical, judgmental, and self-righteous. I know we screwed up with the Crusades, slavery, and the Witch Trials. All I can say is: I apologize. We’ve not [given] you a reason to believe.'”

Spot On Advice for Gosselin's from...Adrian Curry?

Well, at least Danny Boneduce didn't say it. Adrien Curry, the original Next Top Model, currently married to Peter Brady (aka Christopher Knight):

Jon and Kate handled the entire thing wrong, their kids are going to grow up to resent and hate them. They should hang up their towel and get a real f***ing job to support their children instead of ruining their lives...If I ever do get pregnant, I don’t know that I would ever share it, and if I did, all the money made wouldn’t be going into Ed Hardy shirts but into a college savings account. But to each their own, if they feel like mistreating their kids then that’s their decision. I like Kate more than I like Jon right now, but I would like her more if she got a real job and took them off TV while they are going through the pain of the divorce.

Parents Now Must Obey the Kids

Or, at least, that's what the new picture books for kids are teaching us. Al Mohler reflects well today on Daniel Zalewski's recent essay "The Defiant Ones." He writes:

Literary critic Lionel Trilling once referred to "the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet." In reality, almost all literature is political in some sense. Oddly enough, the most explicitly subversive literature is often presented to the very youngest among us -- our children. Far too many parents seem not to notice.

In "The Defiant Ones," a recent essay published in the New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski argues that picture books for children now reflect a world turned upside down in terms of the relationship between parent and child. As he explains, in the newest picture books for children, the kids are solidly in charge.

In this sense, the books we read to our children reflect the cultural values of our age. Inescapably, these narratives for children reveal far more than a storyline. Indeed, the books tell us more than we may want to know about the tenor of our times.

[...]

As Zalewski argues, today's young parents "learn that there are many things they must never do to their willful young child: spank, scold, bestow frequent praise, criticize, plead, withhold affection, take away toys, 'model' angry emotions, intimidate, bargain, nag." In other words, "nearly all forms of discipline appear morally suspect."

He continues:

Today's Christian parents must push hard against the prevailing secular wisdom if they are to be faithful. The Bible makes clear (and simple observation affirms) that children desperately need discipline from their parents. Furthermore, the Bible reveals that the faithful and wise parent disciplines, teaches, corrects, chastens, rewards, and punishes the child as a demonstration of true love and parental responsibility.

The whole thing is worth your time and reflection.

Fed Spending Don't Increase No Test Scores

Boy, am I clever. Chart (via JC):

Cosby Show Bloopers

The best.



HT: KD

Parenting in Weakness

I linked to this sermon earlier this week but decided to pull it out into its own post. It is that good. It's by Dave Harvey and is called "Parenting in Weakness." I am also in the middle of his great marriage book When Sinners Say I Do.

Download it here or listen to it below (there are two longish intros to forward through):

Why the John Edwards Story Matters

A close relative of mine has been smoking for years, though she thinks no one knows. Of course everyone knows. And that's the case with John Edwards, former presidential candidate. So fascinated he is with himself that he continues to perpetuate the likely lie that he is not the father of Rielle Hunter's baby. Perhaps that will change soon.

But why does this story matter to us? Russell Moore, in an excellent post, tells us why:

It matters because it highlights, first of all, a key cause of the poverty Sen. Edwards once commendably made a central aspect of his presidential campaign. Numberless children wake up in grinding poverty because their fathers are “deadbeat dads” just like (if the story is true) Edwards, just without the means to secretly transfer funds for child support.

In admitting the affair, Edwards tells us he fell due to his narcissism. He started to see himself as “special,” and exempt from the boundaries of marriage and fatherhood. Of course he did. So does the impoverished teenage boy who skips town when his girlfriend sees two pink lines. So does the middle-aged mid-level success story who offers $300 to his paramour to “put it all behind us.”

Former Edwards aides are stunned by his recklessness. He was willing to put the Democratic Party’s entire electoral fortunes at risk. What, they ask, if he had won the nomination before this story broke? But every man drunk on the buzz of hormonal desire and ego-stroking is just as reckless, just relative to whatever he has.

Edwards risked more than his career or his party or even his country. He risked, if the stories are true, his little daughter’s very identity.

And that’s where it matters to us. Because no matter how many jokes are made about the “Brek Girl candidate,” we’re all vulnerable here.

Whole thing.

The Logocentric Child

Wonderful article over at Touchstone today on the education of children at the expense of their being "normal." Mark Mitchell, the author, writes:

Are we raising kids who won’t fit in? I have asked this of myself regularly over the past few years. My wife and I are educating our three boys at home. We don’t watch television (only an occasional video). We emphasize books. We read to the kids and make them memorize poetry. We pray together on our knees. In many ways, our kids are culturally ignorant. They don’t know about Disney World. The other day, my five-year-old asked, “Who is Mickey Mouse?”

So I guess the answer to the question has to be yes. But the “yes” is a qualified one, for when one considers the concept of “odd,” one should ask, “compared to what?” This moves us in a helpful direction, for if “normal” is merely what everyone else does, then what is normal changes with the times. What is odd in one time might not be odd in another. On the other hand, if “normal” refers to a proper way of being human, and if human nature is unchanging, then what is odd, in the sense of being opposed to the majority, may in fact be normal.

As we consider exactly what, in our culture, sets the odd kids apart, it seems to me that the clearest and brightest line can be drawn when we ask the following question: Will your kids be raised primarily on books or on television? To put it another way: Will your children be educated in a logocentric environment, where the written and spoken word is the primary conveyer of meaning, or will they ingest most of their information through electronically generated images?

The whole thing is worth your time and reflection.

The only caveat I would add--and I most surely do not say this with any undergirded fortitude--is that it seems there is a cost associated with education like this, and that cost is public involvement and evangelism. Perhaps this hasn't always been the case (classical education used to be the norm). But times have changed and education is drastically different (and probably deficient). So my question is, what do we value more? The education of our kids or unbelievers in public school? Or, said perhaps less inflammatorily, is there a balance we can strike between sequestering our kids for their proper education and their involvement with the public so that they may spread the good news?

I met a guy recently who is vehemently opposed to both private Christian school and home school for the simple reason that evangelism can't happen when you aren't around unbelievers. My guess is that Mitchell would say evangelism will be a natural outworking of the grounded and studious "moral imagination." I am not so sure. I have about three years before I have to decide.

Mothers More Profoundly Affected By Childbirth Than Fathers

Interesting review this morn from Kevin DeYoung of Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Though the whole thing is worth reading (Young talks about Murray's discovery that Christianity has had quite a lot to do with societies greatest accomplishments), one quote from the book stood out to me:

Exceptions exist, but, as a rule, the experience of pregnancy and birth appears to be a more profoundly life-altering experience for women than becoming a father is for men. So closely is giving birth linked to the fundamental human goal of giving meaning to one’s life that is had been argued that, ultimately, it is not so much that motherhood keeps women from doing great things outside the home as it is men’s inability to give birth that forces them to look for substitutes.

Choosing Thomas

Here.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Revelation 21:3-4)

Jesus, thank you for life, but please come quickly.

Things Not To Do With Your Kids

From Harvey Bludorn, Ten Things NOT to Do With Young Children:

1. Do not let your child be a passive observer.

2. Do not let your child ignore God.

3. Do not let your child explore the world only from a cathode ray tube.

4. Do not do for your child what he can do for himself.

5. An important corollary to this is: Do not do for yourself what your child can do for you.

6. Do not allow your child to ignore you.

7. Do not let your child rule you.

8. Do not set your child in front of a television screen.

9. Do not let your child waste away.

10. Do not let your child play in a cyber world.

Harsh, but tons of truth here. Click over for descriptions of each.

You'll Love Your Adpoted Kids as Much as Genetic Ones

Jim Caviezel, on adopting a little boy and girl from China:

I don’t even know who I was before (laughs). Dennis Quaid told me a long time ago when he had his son Jack, 'You’ll have emotions in you that you didn’t even know existed before you had a child.' I now know what that feels like. Even though they’re adopted, it’s as strong as any instinct. That’s what blew me away. I always thought if I adopted that I wouldn’t have the same feeling [as I would] if they were genetically my own children. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For Your Kids, Practice What You Preach

J.C. Ryle, swiftly kicking most of us in the face:

Instruction, advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel.

Nine Reminders for Parents

Via Life Together, David Eby's nine reminders in raising kids:

First, know your call to stewardship. Parenting is part of biblical stewardship. God has entrusted children to you. They are not really your children; they belong to Christ. You are accountable to your Lord for faithful, not necessarily ’successful,’ parenting. Parents are pastors and teachers to the church in their home. Children are your congregation. Pastor faithfully with a vision for stewardship.

Second, see your mission clearly. You are training the next generation of laborers, leaders, warriors, and servants for Christ’s bride and the kingdom of grace.

Third, keep the gospel central. Your privilege is to evangelize your children. You’ll have countless opportunities, over many years, even a lifetime. Your message is: ‘See God’s holy character, see the sin and corruption in your heart and in dad’s and mom’s hearts, and embrace Christ in the gospel, the only hope for sinners.’ Keep preaching the gospel of grace to yourself and to your children. It’s the foundation and motivation for everything in life.

Fourth, pray for your child’s true conversion. Never be content with outward Christian conformity. Like you, your child needs radical grace to address radical corruption. Pray for the Spirit’s deep work in the new heart.

Fifth, model servanthood. Let your children see your submission to Christ, your devotion to prayer and reading the Word, your use of time and money, your marriage depending on grace, your commitment to your family and to worship, your love for the church, your hospitality, your passion for world missions, and your compassion for the alien, the poor, and the needy. Indelible learning comes by watching.

Sixth, anticipate many failures and capitalize on them to teach the gospel. Parents are imperfect disciples. Confessing your sins and failures to your children and humbly seeking their forgiveness models the gospel like few things you can ever do.

Seventh, expect great things from grace. God’s grace is greater than parental sins and child sins. God loves to display His grace and power through human weakness.

Eighth, keep praying for your kids after the nest is empty. God is still working. Keep trusting His transforming grace.

Finally, pray for the humanly impossible–the new heart from the Holy Spirit.

Whole thing.

We Are Killing Our Kids' Imaginations

Michael Chabon, on the notion that kids don't have the freedom to roam anymore, and that it is suppressing their imaginations:

Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. For the most part the young adventurer sets forth equipped only with the fragmentary map—marked here there be tygers and mean kid with air rifle—that he or she has been able to construct out of a patchwork of personal misfortune, bedtime reading, and the accumulated local lore of the neighborhood children.

A striking feature of literature for children is the number of stories, many of them classics of the genre, that feature the adventures of a child, more often a group of children, acting in a world where adults, particularly parents, are completely or effectively out of the picture. Think of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Railway Children, or Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy presents a chilling version of this world in its depiction of Cittàgazze, a city whose adults have all been stolen away. Then there is the very rich vein of children’s literature featuring ordinary contemporary children navigating and adventuring through a contemporary, nonfantastical world that is nonetheless beyond the direct influence of adults, at least some of the time. I’m thinking of the Encyclopedia Brown books, the Great Brain books, the Henry Reed and Homer Price books, the stories of the Mad Scientists’ Club, a fair share of the early works of Beverly Cleary.

....

The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.

....

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible.

Completely agreed. I ran wild through the streets as a kid. Today when I see a child on their bike in the neighborhood, I instantly think, "My child will never do that." Though I am sure reasons for this run deep and wide, I can't help but think that we have made idols into our kids, that we believe that we are their protectors, not God. But that inevitably makes tragedy much harder to bear.

HT: Joe Carter

Trickle Down Princess Narcissism

Megan Basham, in the WSJ, on how parents these days are turning little girls into narcissistic princesses:

For only $44 at Nordstrom, you can dress your toddler in a tank top that declares her to be a "Juicy Couture Princess" -- that is, someone whose parents can afford to buy designer shirts that will end up stained with ketchup or jelly. And until recently, numerous Saks stores maintained Club Libby Lu, a spa for 5- to 13-year-old girls offering princess makeovers with tube tops and miniskirts that left girls looking more like Real Housewives than Cinderella. The ailing retailer closed the tween operation in May, but it grossed $60 million in 2008.

Call it trickle-down narcissism. Today, even as the economic crisis continues, many middle-class parents aspire to give their daughters the best of everything, "the best" meaning the most expensive. A quick tour around suburbia will show princess-themed bedrooms (the rhinestoned-and-feathered kind, not the cartoon-character kind) and ostentatious birthday parties, as well as pedigreed dogs being toted in designer bags by 10-year-olds. Maintaining a diva daughter has become one more way to one-up the Joneses.

Sadly, even believing Christians are participating in the princess push. Christian retail outlets like A Different Direction carry "God's Girlz," glamour dolls dressed in princess shirts and spandex with sparkling tiaras on their heads. St. Paul may have exhorted women to be modest in their dress, but many church-going girls proudly wear Christian-marketed clothing imprinted with messages like "Yes, I am a Princess." The small print underneath -- "I'm a daughter of the King" -- is supposed to differentiate the sentiment from secular princess gear (never mind that the King's firstborn declared himself not a prince but a servant of all.)

Heh. Whole thing.

Exit question: How does one go about praising their children while at the same time building up in them humility?

Teach Your Children How to Pray

From Ministry-to-Children.com:

1. Teach children to pray as Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-15).

The Lord’s Prayer, or the Model Prayer as it is sometimes called, asks God to accomplish eternal things that He intends to do; therefore, we enter into an exciting “partnership” with Him as we pray according to His will. Help your kids memorize the Lord’s Prayer and explain to them what each request means (a good resource for this is the book Jesus Teaches Us How to Pray by Sinclair Ferguson).

2. Teach children to pray for the sick (James 5:16).

Use your church’s prayer email or bulletin to make a prayer list. Does your church have a list of widows, sick people, and shut-ins? Have your children pray for specific members on a regular basis, and if you can find a way to involve the children in physically serving members on the list, so much the better.

3. Teach children to pray for the persecuted church (Hebrews 13:3).

Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) has information on persecuted believers and countries hostile to the Gospel that need our prayers. Kids of Courage is an off-shoot of VOM that spotlights children who have made brave stands for Christ in dangerous places. The suffering church is our family; children feel honored by the privilege of praying for her.

4. Teach children to pray for missionaries, your pastors and other leaders in the church (1 Thessalonians 5:25).

The New Testament epistles contain specific requests for prayer from the apostle Paul (Ephesians 6:19 and 2 Thessalonians 3:1, for example) that enlighten us to the prayer needs of missionaries and pastors alike. Find out what missionaries or missions endeavors your church is supporting; ask your pastor how the children’s ministry can be praying for him. Let your children know they can be a vital part of God’s work in the world by praying for missionaries, their pastor and other spiritual leaders!

5. Teach children to pray for their own growth in Christ-likeness (Psalm 119:36-38).

Praying in this way honors God, for we know that in our own strength we are powerless to live holy lives. Children can learn this dependence and trust in God’s sanctifying work right from the start.

Dumb Kids

Erin Thompson reporting on Mark Bauerlein's book The Dumbest Generation:

Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, says Generation Y, ages 16-29, has been shaped by exposure to computer technology since elementary school.

The cost, he says, outweighs the convenience. Kids are writing more than ever online or in text messages, but it's not the kind of narrative skill needed as adults, he says. "Those forms groove bad habits, so when it comes time to produce an academic paper … or when they enter the workplace, their capacity breaks down."

Social networking sites can give young users "the sense of them being the center of the universe," Bauerlein says.

That gives them a distorted understanding of how the world works, he says. "If you go into a room of strangers, you don't know how to relate. You can't replicate your IM habits," he says. "It closes people off from a wider engagement with the world."

Parents must do more to pull their teens away from technology, including being role models in developing intellectual pursuits: "Talk with your kids. Kids can't do this by themselves."

And Liz Szabo on a new study on TV's effect on kids (it's not making them smarter):

A study released Monday adds to the debate over whether television impairs children's language development.It found that parents and children virtually stop talking to each other when the TV is on, even if they're in the same room.

For every hour in front of the TV, parents spoke 770 fewer words to children, according to a study of 329 children, ages 2 months to 4 years, in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Adults usually speak about 941 words an hour.

Children vocalized less, too, says author Dimitri Christakis of the Seattle Children's Research Institute. In some cases, parents may have spoken less because they sat a child in front of a TV and left the room, he says. In others, parents simply zoned out themselves while watching TV with a child. Researchers didn't note the content of the TV shows.

Parents may not realize how little they interact with children when a TV is on, Christakis says. A mother may think she's engaged with a baby because they're both on the floor playing blocks. But if a TV is on in the background, the two of them talk much less, he says.

That may help explain earlier studies finding that babies who watch a lot of TV know fewer words, although they catch up to their peers by 16 months, Christakis says. "Babies learn language from hearing it spoken," he says.