Parenting with Loving Correction E-Book

Sam Crabtree

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 134

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

"A gospel-infused framework for the kind of loving correction that will help all of us train up a child in the way he or she should go."  Bob Lepine, Cohost, FamilyLife Today Parenting can be a challenge. Sometimes it seems like all we do is give directions and all children do is disobey. How can we promote good behavior and a peaceful home without becoming harsh drill sergeants on the one hand or passive pushovers on the other? This book aims to help you better understand loving correction through clear steps and practical tips aimed at transforming not only your children's behavior but also their hearts. Rooted in three principles— keep it God-centered, always mean what you say, and reward obedience rather than disobedience—this is a guide to consistent, faithful discipline that mirrors the grace-giving, truth-speaking God of the Bible and sets the tone for a loving, joy-filled home.

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“In a permissive culture that leaves parents unsure of their authority and confused about discipline, this book speaks with clarity, not only reminding parents that discipline is a critical element of parental love, but also showing parents how to practically discipline their children in a way that is consistent, God honoring, and productive.”

Paul David Tripp, President, Paul Tripp Ministries; author, Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family

“My wife and I were fortunate to attend a seminar on parenting young children featuring Sam Crabtree. He revealed the inconsistency and lack of logic often found in parenting young children and offered better alternatives. We were fortunate because we were able to take his wisdom and apply it to our children at just the right time. I have no doubt that many (if not all) parents experience the same sort of exasperation we did with our first child. And I have no doubt they will find Sam’s wisdom in Parenting with Loving Correction as helpful as we did.”

Paul K. Lim, MD, Trustee, Bethlehem College and Seminary; surgeon

“When my wife and I read this book, we immediately saw its value and wanted others to read it, so I was pleased when our small group agreed to go through it. But I was also a bit nervous—would the subject of parental discipline create conflict during group discussions because of differing parenting styles? Would the concept of correction (which is often considered in our culture to be overly negative) result in gloomy conversations? I needn’t have worried. Sam Crabtree uses definitions, Scripture, and helpful anecdotes to get everyone on the same page. His pastoral heart is shown in each chapter as he writes with care, grace, and humility. I can tell you from personal experience that this book yields fruitful discussion—and parenting. Chapter 3 ends with this statement: ‘There is great hope. And there is help.’ For the believing parent, there is. And you will find both in this book.”

Scott Jamison, small group leader

“As parents, it can seem like we’re constantly training, correcting, and disciplining our children. Thankfully, Sam Crabtree has given us a gospel-infused framework for the kind of loving correction that will help all of us train up a child in the way he or she should go.”

Bob Lepine, Cohost, FamilyLife Today; Pastor, Redeemer Community Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

Parenting with Loving Correction

Parenting with Loving Correction

Practical Help for Raising Young Children

Sam Crabtree

Parenting with Loving Correction: Practical Help for Raising Young Children

Copyright © 2019 by Sam Crabtree

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover image and design: Derek Thornton, Faceout Studios

First printing 2018

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked HCSB have been taken from The Holman Christian Standard Bible®. Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6061-3 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6064-4 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6062-0 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6063-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Crabtree, Sam, 1950– author.

Title: Parenting with loving correction : practical help for raising young children / Sam Crabtree.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018021695 (print) | LCCN 2018041958 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433560620 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433560637 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433560644 (epub) | ISBN 9781433560613 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433560644 (epub) | ISBN 9781433560637 (mobipocket)

Subjects: LCSH: Parenting—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Child rearing—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Discipline of children—Religious aspects—Christianity.

Classification: LCC BV4529 (ebook) | LCC BV4529 .C73 2019 (print) | DDC 248.8/45—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021695

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-02-11 10:39:59 AM

To my father and mother,

who modeled justice and mercy in loving correction

Contents

Introduction: A Parent’s Longing

Part 1: What’s at Stake?

 1  Why the Struggle?

 2  When We Fail to Correct Our Children

 3  When We Faithfully Correct Our Children

Part 2: Essentials of Corrective Discipline

 4  Clarifying Our Aim

 5  Keep It God-Centered

 6  Speak Truth

 7  Reward Obedience, Not Disobedience

Part 3: Getting Practical

 8  Before You Correct

 9  In the Moment

Appendix: Questions from Parents

My Prayer for You

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

A Parent’s Longing

I was observing a scene that blocked the aisle in a busy grocery store. A mother with three small boys was showing a mixture of embarrassment, frustration, and hopelessness. Two of her boys were running here and there, then rushing to her side with loud demands that she buy this item or that. Each boy was out-whining and out-howling the other, their voices no doubt heard throughout the store.

“You’re wasting time!” she told them in an exasperated tone. The boys’ demands grew only louder.

I ached with empathy for this harried mother. We’ve all had similar grocery store experiences of our own. And they’re painful. We long for our children to behave well, and for good reasons—we want them to understand and value the right things and to live in the freedom that comes with self-control.

So often, our hope for all that seems battered or even crushed.

My heart goes out to the downhearted and flustered mothers of young children who know things have gotten out of hand. I’ve spoken and prayed with scores of them. I feel for the mother in South Dakota who asked me how to change the tone in their home. I admire the mother in Wisconsin who invited me to help her and her husband in promoting sweet and godly interactions in their family.

I’ve known what it’s like to earnestly desire help with parenting, and wanting keenly not to squander the early years in our children’s lives. I’ve prayed for readers of this book, that God would use these pages to help you, not shame you.

The aim of this book is to throw you a rope, not an anchor. Think of this book as an arm around your shoulder, a gentle pat on the back, and a nod that says, “You can do this. I’m pulling for you. God will help you. Your children will thank you later.”

Parenting is sometimes painful, but it can also be joyful. I think of these words of John in Scripture: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4). For parents, there’s no greater joy than children walking in truth, yet many parents can identify with the opposite: there’s no greater misery than knowing their children’s behavior is outside the truth, a departure from what’s best for them. How can we correct our children and get them back on the rails of truth and goodness?

Often, correction is done poorly. Our well-intended attempts can be too harsh or too lenient or too complicated. But correction can be done well. How can we correct our children without becoming harsh drill sergeants?

The apostles corrected the churches, shepherds correct straying sheep, good teachers correct student errors—and loving parents confront wrongdoing in their children. But how is this done well?

My aim in these pages is to help you better understand good correction.

Part 1

What’s at Stake?

1

Why the Struggle?

Parents can be confused or even clueless when it comes to correcting their children effectively. Often they have wrong assumptions about it. Wrong assumptions have tripped me up as a parent—and they might be tripping you up as well. These wrong assumptions can center on issues as basic as why our children disobey and why we ought to correct them.

What is correction, anyway? Here’s a two-part definition that I think is helpful.

Corrective discipline means:

(1)  Identifying actions or attitudes of your child that are unacceptable when weighed against clear and explicit standards, then

(2)  acting promptly and decisively to move your child in the direction of compliance with those standards.

Later, we’ll inspect each phrase of that definition more closely. I pray this definition will help you, and that it fits with your own good intentions as a parent. Why do we struggle with making our good intentions happen? The reasons for our struggle grow clearer when we look deeper at why children disobey and why we as parents can be slow to correct them.

Why Do Children Disobey?

Our children can sometimes astonish us with how quickly and repeatedly they disobey. Shouldn’t they just naturally know better? We look at them and think, What’s the matter with you?

Well . . . sin, of course, is the matter with all of us. Including children. Even the most adorable little tyke is a natural-born sinner.

Sometimes we speak our frustration out loud: “What’s wrong with you?” But parents shouldn’t request that kind of explanation for misbehavior (especially since such indicting speech can instill irrational guilt in a son or daughter, like that experienced by children who are abused). What parents should be after is the child’s compliance with clearly understood standards.

Besides your child’s sin nature, maybe there’s nothing “wrong” with him. The problem may be that he has been repeatedly rewarded for behaving the way he does. He’s simply functioning according to the way God designed rewards and reinforcement to operate. (We’ll talk more about this later.)

Children are not naturally obedient. The problem lies in the opposite direction. The little fellows are sinners—and sin hardens. The Bible talks about our daily potential of being “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13). We’re told in that verse to therefore “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today.’” That’s true for our children, too; they require corrective exhortations.

Obedience must be learned. The good news is that it can be! Weary and beleaguered parents can take hope in knowing this: children can be taught to respectfully obey. Children require some assembly—plus clear instruction and guidelines, and the kind of training that demonstrates your genuine love.

We’re All After Happiness

Like you and me, children are naturally prone to pursue their own happiness without regard to what pleases God or anybody else. In their native sinfulness, they stubbornly disobey out of a desire to pursue pleasure in a way that isn’t constrained by any outside authority.

In his Pensées, Blaise Pascal famously gave the world this reminder: “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end.”1 Children are no exception. They’re seeking happiness, and again and again they figure that disobedience will gain them more happiness than obedience will.

After all, what do we suppose makes us happy? We think we know, don’t we? Children believe the same about themselves. And they’re pursuing it. They esteem their own plan above all others, no matter how foolish that plan might be. I can speak from my own personal experience as a child: we’re born naturally foolish and in need of correction, just as the Bible tells us. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15).

The fall—humanity’s plunge into sin—threw all of nature into the need for correction. The culminating event of earthly history is when Jesus returns to make his grand correction, making all things new. But that hasn’t happened yet. Meanwhile, our children need correction. As we all do. We need correction because we affirm wrong things, or we affirm good things over against better things, or we affirm good things from wrong motives. That’s our bent.

When we honestly face up to this sinfulness in our children, do we then give up any expectation that they’ll obey us? No. But we shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t obey us the first time, every time.

And when they don’t, we correct—or we should.

Does this require that I watch my kids like a hawk, looking over their shoulder all day long? No. Good parents enjoy empowering their children to try new adventures, expanding each child’s understanding of the pleasures to be found in God’s world. But parental permissiveness should never make allowance for defiant disobedience.

Why Do Parents Hold Back?

If correction simply means we identify unacceptable actions or attitudes in our child, and then act promptly and decisively to move that child in the right direction of compliance, why do we so often hesitate?

Sometimes, it’s because firm correction makes us feel guilty. No good parent wants to come across as a dictator.

At other times, it’s because we don’t see the value in corrective discipline. It seems to make little difference, so why bother?

At other times, we don’t want to upset the child.

And sometimes, we’re just plain weary.

I’m no stranger to any of those feelings. But a number of wrong assumptions may be lurking behind them. When our children are unruly and disobedient—when the moment’s ripe for correction—all kinds of fears and worries and doubts can cause parents to hold back.

Like these:

My child will think I’ve lost my affection for him or her.

My child will stop loving and respecting me.

I run the risk of damaging my child’s self-esteem.

I’ll stifle my child’s personality, creativity, and drive to explore.

I’ll cause my child to be afraid of me.

If you’ve had those thoughts, it’s helpful to remember certain truths. For example, when a child is rebelling, the child in that moment is far less interested in your affection than in getting his or her own way. You might mistakenly assume that your affection and patience alone will miraculously remedy your child’s misbehavior. Yes, when pigs fly, oceans run dry, and December’s in July. Your child may not take kindly to you in the moment you apply corrective discipline, but a child’s love is swiftly rekindled—and deepened and solidified in the process of receiving wise correction.

Or let’s think about the danger of damaging a child’s self-esteem. I’m a strong proponent of building up a child’s self-acceptance. But that’s not the same as self-esteem. Self-acceptance is necessary and good, but self-esteem plagues the world. Prisons are full of people who esteem no one but self.

Children (like adults) are naturally self-centered. No baby in the nursery is crying because some other baby is wet or hungry. Infants come out of the womb entirely self-preoccupied and quite content to let the entire universe cater to them. Their self-will is fully formed. They are us.

When we worry that our child will perceive our corrective discipline as unloving, we forget God’s higher wisdom about genuine love. He tells us, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (Prov. 13:24). When we refrain from correction, do we subconsciously think we’re wiser than God?

True love means that parents will give their children objective “outside” feedback on the true condition of their sinful little hearts: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Correction exists because errors and omissions exist, and because