A Parent’s Highest Calling

When my girls were very young, I remember telling an older woman that I wanted to be a missionary, but I didn’t know what God wanted me to do. She looked at me and said, “Cinda, what are your children?” It had not occurred to me that my children were my mission field. My first priority should be raising them to be well-balanced, godly adults. As parents, our goals are to have children who love God, who are tenderhearted and obedient to Him, and who have become self-reliant and self-governing. To accomplish these goals, we must learn how to enlist their wills and guide them.

As every parent knows, child training has challenges and rewards. The teen years can be challenging even after you’ve laid a solid foundation in their early training. When my 16-year-old daughter struggled with my authority over her life, talking to her did not resolve the problem. I went to my bedroom to pray for guidance. Fifteen minutes later, she came and sat on the bed and said, “Mom, don’t stop working with my heart. If you stop, who’s going to love me enough to correct me? No one is, so please don’t stop!” After that, we were able to work through her struggles.

Making Training Easier

Training children requires consistent effort on our part, but there are things that make our work easier. Children do best working within a family schedule. A well-constructed schedule makes provision to meet the needs of everyone’s physical, mental, social, and spiritual natures. Our physical needs include time for rest, work, recreation, exercise, play, and healthy eating. Our mental and social needs include time for learning, doing things together as a family or individually, socializing with others, group activities, and helping others. Our spiritual needs include communicating with God, studying the Bible and sharing it, worshiping both with family and corporately, and receiving spiritual instruction. 

With a schedule, we can make time slots available for all these things. A schedule provides children with stability and security, and lets them know what’s expected of them and when. Just by keeping a schedule, 50 percent of our battles in child training are resolved.

Modeling what we teach will also make child training easier. Our children learn by example. Their behavior will reflect how we relate to them and to each other. In order to lead our children to Jesus, we need to be close to Him and reflect His love and character. Our child training should demonstrate His justice and His mercy. 

In the Bible, the wise man says, “My son, give me your heart, And let your eyes observe my ways.” Prov. 23:26, NKJV. Solomon is asking two things of his son: his heart and his obedience. The word observe here means “obey” or “delight in.” Obedience is easier for children when we have their heart, for they will then delight to do our will out of love. It is important that we know how to attract and keep our children’s hearts.

How do we attract and keep a child’s heart? The old saying “Love begets love” is of primary importance. It’s also true that kindness begets kindness, and consequently, anger begets anger. When our children know that we love them, and we are kind and tender towards them, their hearts will be motivated to respond to our instructions. However, if we respond to them in anger or harshness, we can easily lose their hearts. Once lost, their hearts can be hardened and easily stolen from us. We should strive to keep their hearts!

Training for Obedience

As stated above, our goal is to have children who are self-reliant and self-governing. We should train for prompt, perfect, and pleasant obedience from babyhood. When that becomes a habit, we can teach the older child more about the reasons for our standards. We can help them gradually move into self-regulation and learn how to take responsibility for their actions and life. Even if we are starting with teenagers, obedient cooperation is still the first goal of our child training.

So, how do we train for obedience? Our children should know what is expected of them, thus we need standards (rules). When possible, base your standards on God’s Word: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” Eph. 6:1. “Be ye kind one to another.” Eph. 4:32, KJV.

Every standard should also include a positive and negative consequence. When introducing a standard, our child needs to clearly understand how we want it done, what the reward is if they do it, and what the reward is if they do not do it. For our children to understand the standard and the consequences (positive and negative), we need to practice each scenario.

When learning to make their bed, for a few days the child will just watch me perform the standard. Then we will do it together for a few days. Lastly, I will watch my child do it alone, and I will point out anything missed.

Once the standard is taught, introduce and practice the positive and negative consequences. Always start with the positive consequence. For example, every time they make their bed neatly, give them a sticker. When they have four stickers, you’ll make the bed for them on the fifth time. My girls loved that! Positive rewards such as smiles and hugs are great to give anytime!

Once the positive reward is clearly understood, it is time to set up the appropriate negative consequence for an unmade bed. For example, if they don’t make their bed, they’ll have to make theirs and someone else’s. We practice the negative reward until it is clearly understood. Once we know they understand the standard and the positive and negative rewards, we turn over to them the responsibility of making their bed.

We can do more practices as needed to reinforce understanding of a standard and its consequences, but the practices are always done calmly. Never do a training session when there’s a battle going on. It’s vital for the parent to be free from anger or impatience when training or correcting. Both need to be done with a tender, prayerful heart. Sometimes, I would tell my children that we will deal with a situation later to give us all a chance to pray and calm down. 

Turning Rebellion Into Self-Control

When teaching a standard, we want our child to perform it promptly, perfectly, and pleasantly. When that does not happen, a negative consequence will follow. Negative consequences are more challenging for a child. This is the time we will see some type of rebellion: active rebellion, like refusing or arguing; passive rebellion, like pouting while they do it or doing a sloppy job; or “creative disobedience” in which a child partly obeys, like walking fast in the house when asked not to run. None of these show prompt, perfect, and pleasant obedience.

If children are rebelling, it’s time to work directly with their will. Pray with the child that they might surrender their rebellious feelings. If the child refuses, the child gets a sample of something they really prefer to avoid—perhaps one stroke of a rod, a squirt of grapefruit seed extract in the mouth, or whatever we deem appropriate. (This changes with the child’s age.) 

When my girls were young and demonstrated rebellion, I used the “rod of correction” or a small dowel stick rather than a belt. Before ever using the rod, I explained how it would be used and demonstrated on myself. When the rod was needed, I first prayed with my child to surrender her rebellious heart, and I applied one stroke of the rod. I followed up the chastisement by encouraging her to submit to the negative consequence willingly and pleasantly. Usually she complied, but if she was still rebellious, the process was repeated until she took the negative consequence pleasantly.

As parents, we want to be watching for our children’s struggles so we can call for their hearts to surrender their wills before they enter rebellion. Our goal is to teach our children to pray and ask God to change their hearts so they stay obedient to Him. We want them to realize that their consequences (positive or negative) are a result of their choices. In surrendering their feelings and will to God, they gain the self-control we desire for them. This will be liberating for the child who hasn’t known how to overcome their anger or resentment before.

Education for Understanding

In training a child to be obedient, we apply external control on their behaviors until the child learns internal control (self-control). When they have learned internal control and are consistently obeying, we can begin the process of educating them for understanding. This is more fun for us and them! We now have their trust and cooperation, so they are receptive to the many things we can teach them. 

For an obedient child, some examples of this education would be explaining why we need to keep rooms and toys tidy, why we eat good foods, the importance of family worship time, and so on. For obedient older children, we explain things like the importance of respecting authority, how to have a deeper relationship with God, why we choose certain music and entertainment, how to take care of a car, and so forth.

For an obedient teenager, some examples would be driving and car mechanics, cooking, finances, and deep worship methods. I turned all our housekeeping, cooking, and bill-paying over to our girls when they were 16. I wanted them to know how to manage a home.

As part of the educating phase, we also need to teach social skills. When our girls spent time with their friends, we stayed around as a safeguard. Afterwards, we would discuss any challenges they were having and share some guidance. As they got older, we watched to see if they were developing internal control in associating with others. If not, we applied some external control. When they were exercising internal control, we let them make their own choices.

Whether we are in the “training for obedience” stage or the “educating for understanding” stage, we are watching for development to see if our children are taking hold of what we’re teaching. As they do, we can move them forward. Obedience is a means to an end, not the end itself. We want them to become self-governing and healthy—physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. As we see development, we can gradually step back as instructors and enter more into our lifelong roles of being loving friends, mentors, and fellow travelers in life.