Today’s Scripture Reading (August 17, 2016): Proverbs 3
The story is too common. A parent, usually a single one without regular custodial care over a child, feels that somehow he/she cannot discipline their children. After all, they see the child on a minority basis – maybe every other weekend. And they want those times to be fun – they want to make memories, and not memories of mom or dad continually telling the children how they are messing up. So the child gets away with things. Oh, it is usually small things at first. But small things turn into bigger things. Maybe threats are made, but they are seldom carried through. (I have to admit that as I write this, I am sitting on my back deck. I live in an area where the houses back onto each other without an alley in between. Something about the arrangement means that the sound has a tendency to travel and in the last few minutes, a mother has threatened discipline on her children several times – if you don’t stop that I am sending you to the room upstairs with your name on it. The last time the threat was made it was for making a face. So far nothing beyond the threat has happened. In fact, the kids have now decided that they are going inside to watch T.V.) Deep down I think that every one of us just wants to be a friend to our kids and not their jailer.
But the reality that we miss is that our kids are looking to us to put in place boundaries in their lives. To grow up healthy, there has to be limits put in place on behavior. These limits don’t just exist in our childhoods, although, in all likelihood, it is our childhood that will determine how we react to the limits in adulthood. Boundaries are healthy for our psychological development and for our maturing into healthy adults. I am not saying that we all have to learn to color within the lines. Some of the most intriguing personalities venture beyond those lines, but we do have to know what is appropriate and what is not – a lesson that we begin to learn when we were children.
Proverbs simply reminds us of this. It is not just the hard task master that disciplines his children. It is also the loving parent. The different between the two is often more about the reason behind the discipline. The task master disciplines for his or her edification, just as the parent who refuses to discipline does it because they can’t be bothered to make the effort or because they want the child to remember only positive experiences. A healthy child-parent relationship says that I will discipline when the child begins to do things that are not healthy. The parental aim has always been to prepare the child for a healthy adulthood – to be able to set up the parameters that will allow the child to discipline themselves as they move into adult life. Showing up on time at work as an adult has more to do than we may want to admit with whether or not we showed up on time at school. Except that in the case of work, the only one to badger us is ourselves. Discipline accomplished by a parent turns into discipline that we give ourselves. And as a result of that discipline, we succeed.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Proverbs 4
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