Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No.
Ecclesiastes 8:11
Because the sentence against an evil deed
is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do
evil.
Parents
often discipline inconsistently in two ways. The first is by having different
parental standards of discipline. For example, Father spanks and Mother talks. Father
believes that a certain behavior is wrong. Mother sees nothing wrong with that
same behavior. As a rule, it is better for one parent to tighten up a bit, and
the other to loosen up a little to unify their approach to discipline.
Otherwise, children may become confused by their parents’ different
philosophies or methodologies of child rearing. The time, effort, and thought
it will take for parents biblically to fine tune their parenting to the same
specifics will be a valuable (and necessary) investment that should save hours
of frustrating and ineffective discipline in years to come.
The
second way that parents discipline inconsistently is by vacillating from day to
day on either what is or what is not punishable behavior, and/or on how severe
the chastisement will be. Children ought to know that their parents “yes” means
“yes” and their “no” means “no.” They should know that each offense will be
treated justly and equitably regardless of their parents’ emotional, spiritual,
or physical condition at the time of discipline.
Consistency is so hard when disciplining our kids. Kids are always trying to push and stretch out boundaries and there are some days when your tired and you give in to them.
ReplyDeleteIt's also hard trying to find discipline that work for each kid and the phase of life they are in at that moment.
I couldn't agree more!
ReplyDelete