Discipline – Page 17 – Parenting Like Hannah

When Kids Don’t Need Reasons

Why Kids Need Reasons explains why I believe we need to take the time to give older children and teens the reasons behind our rules and God’s rules. There are times though when children need to learn to obey just “because I said so”.

When your child is crossing the street and a car is barreling towards him, you don’t have the time to explain how much that car hitting him is going to hurt. Your child needs to know your commands are to be respected and obeyed immediately, because you are the parent. God has asked you to care for her and God expects her to honor and obey you.

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Why Kids Need Reasons

For many pre-schoolers, their favorite question is “Why?”. Asking questions is a natural part of learning about the world around them. Often, adults assume this exploration phase ends about the time kids start school. I personally believe though, that children begin to squelch their oral questioning once they discover it irritates many adults.

As adults, we have learned (hopefully) that certain rules and authorities are to be obeyed. We understand God really does know what is best for us. We have a fairly good understanding of concepts like love, manipulation, anger and many others.

Children and teens are still discovering these more abstract worlds. They are figuring out whom they can trust, what works for them in the short term and hopefully what will be in their best interest for the long haul. They are not just trying to learn the rules, they are trying to understand why they became rules and if those rules are really important.

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The Strong Willed Child and God

Parents often say they have a strong willed child. Some children are a little wiser, shall we say, about heeding correction than others. Strong willed children can cause early gray hairs in some parents and moments of counting the days until they leave home for others. Forget trying to dedicate him to God, you are trying to merely survive his childhood!

I believe every child has the potential to be self-willed at any given moment. Remarkably, the behaviors of the self-willed child resemble those of the strong willed child. As parents, we want the “magic” secret for handling those moments when our child has drawn a line in the sand and dares us to cross it. How do we teach them obedience and avoid World War III in the process?

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When Being the Bad Guy Isn’t So Bad

As mothers, we fall in love with our children before they are even born. We can’t wait to hold them in our arms and have wonderful dreams of what their childhood will be like. Those first few months are an exhaustive whirl of diapers, feedings and showing your beautiful baby to everyone.

We are so overjoyed when our children utter their first attempts at words. Many discussions are held (rivaling world summits) over whether the sounds were “MaMa” or “DaDa”. Then it happens. We have told our once precious child he cannot do what he wants to do. Or perhaps she cannot have what she wants to own. Suddenly, the words sound more like, “You don’t love me!” or the ever popular (and permanently banned in our house!) “I hate you!”

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Raising an Anti-Bully

It seems like every where I turn these days, I hear about bullying. Back in the Leave It To Beaver days, a bully appears to have been the largest child in the class. Evidently, his mother never sent enough lunch, as his bullying efforts were always about getting more food. There appears to have been an average of one bully per class. You would think someone would have thought to just ask his mom to send more food, but evidently the idea never crossed their minds.

Fast forward to today and it seems like the halls of our schools are full of bullies. Now, instead of using their tactics as a way to score more food, it appears many of these children are terrorizing their peers just for the “sport” of it or to get their way. Honestly. it is not just children who are experiencing this rude verbal and physical behavior from their peers. I have noticed a steady rise in the same behavior amongst adults.

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