discipline or abuse?

[default]

I was just talking with a coworker and they got VERY upset to find out I disciplined my son with a belt across the bottom on a few occasions where he had physically harmed other children when he was younger. She told me I was abusive...which we all have heard in today's rules of coddling a child when they do wrong...
I personally feel that we need more discipline with our children and do NOT believe using the hand to do so is appropriate. I also believe the Bible uses the term ROD for discipline!

What are your thoughts and comments?

 

[Scott Bushey]

Not that I am the best at this, the rod is accurately biblical. The world is at emnity w/ God and His word; why would it surprise you that they disagree with you in this regard?

 

[default]

Actually it didn't surprise me, as this particular individual, ok, EVERYONE in this company, disagree with me on just about everything. I guess I was taken aback at the attack she displayed, though I ought not to have been. As I walked away I thought "this is why we have so many problems, one of the reasons anyway, with our kids." The Bible talks about kids being disobediant to their parents in the last days! So instead of discipline, the psychologists fo the world push to DRUG them up when they don't know how to control them! Ironic if you ask me!

 

[crhoades]

For what it's worth, I have bad memories of "the belt" as a kid. If we are regulative principle type of people in everything else, then why don't we use an actual rod in discipline? Belts tend to wrap around and inflict more pain. A rod would cover less sq. in. and would still deliver a startling pop. And I'm sure all would agree that we all desire love and obedience rather than be forced to discipline.

I also don't have kids either as you weigh this opinion among others.

 

[default]

Chris,

Thanks for that. I too have nightmares from true abuse as a kid... Including a cast iron frying pan upside the head! My son is now 15 and towers over me almost a foot! So my days of this type of discipline are over. I'm bringing this up for discussion and other parents here who do have young ones. You do make a good point, belt vs. rod.. so this brings us another question...

What is a rod? I am not sure the Bible is specific in the demensions etc.

Oh, btw, when they are teens the discipline is an entirely new ball game!

Lori

 

[crhoades]

Originally posted by Loriann
Chris,

Thanks for that. I too have nightmares from true abuse as a kid... Including a cast iron frying pan upside the head! My son is now 15 and towers over me almost a foot! So my days of this type of discipline are over. I'm bringing this up for discussion and other parents here who do have young ones. You do make a good point, belt vs. rod.. so this brings us another question...

What is a rod? I am not sure the Bible is specific in the demensions etc.

Oh, btw, when they are teens the discipline is an entirely new ball game!

Lori

Yeah, my teenage years changed everything. It's pretty hard to abuse a kid who bench presses 300 lbs. and takes harder hits on the football field.

I'll try to research the rod thing tonight. And for all parents on the board, emotional/verbal abuse leaves more scars than the physical.

 

[turmeric]

The child should know in advance what the consequences of his actions will be and the consequences should be consistent. You shouldn't laugh at some act one day and beat the child within an inch of his life for it the next day. That is definitely abuse! It's usually undisciplined people who have little control over their emotions who do this, like some teen parents and people with alcohol & drug issues. However, anyone can lose emotional control. We need to trust God to help us not to do this.

 

[Myshkin]

Originally posted by crhoades
And for all parents on the board, emotional/verbal abuse leaves more scars than the physical.

Not that anyone should care, but I second this statement heartily, Chris. I would also add that it not only leaves more scars, but also deeper scars. The power of the tongue to destroy a person is greatly underestimated. Perhaps this is why James gives so much emphasis on controlling the tongue when he is speaking of self-control in general.

 

[ReformedWretch]

It all depends on the personality of your child in my opinion. Some respond to rational much better than others. I honestly believe that successful parents figure out each of their children's personalities and parent according to the childs needs and what he or she responds best to. If this means treating each child a little differently, so be it.

 

[crhoades]

Adam,

What are your thoughts on discipline? Ideally you follow what you prescribed about dealing with children. What do you do when they are rebellious? Do you increase different measures?

 

[ReformedWretch]

What I do is always based on who they are and what they respond to. This is going to sound HARSH, but we had one girl in our home who never met her responsabilities. We kept giving her consequences. Over and over she racked up consequences like candy and she never changed.

She lost privledges, she earned extra chores, she lost TV, radio, etc. This went on for over a year and nothing about her changed. Finally my wife and I talked and we realized that all she wanted was attention, but she loved positive attention much more than negative.

We began to ignore her.

We spoke to her only when it was a must, and even her negative stuff we did our best to ignore. If it didn't hurt anyone, we ignored it. We cleaned up after her, we helped her fix up her messy room, etc. We told her how much we didn't like it when we did these things for her (we whined about it) but that was all the attention she got for it. No consequences, no long talks, no incentives, nothing but us whining about having to take care of her messes and irresponsabilities.

She began to go crazy not getting the attention and began to do what she thought would get our attention. When she saw that negative stuff wasn't getting to us anymore she started doing the positive stuff!

At one point, my wife even refused to give her a hug anymore until she "earned it". Our administrator HATED that, but guess what? That girl turned around 100%. She is positive, pretty responsible, does well in school, and is generally respectful.

We catered our approach to her personality, actions, and reactions! It was a tough 4-6 months as at times we wanted to scream and jump all over her. But it worked and she is a new person today.

This is one example of what I am talking about.

Another was a girl who simply MUST have the adults in her life have and speak high expectations of her to her. If you treat her like every other kid she will be miserable. She needs affirmation all of the time. Maybe it is something we will need to teach her to stop needing, but as long as we speak high expectations to her, she strived to meet them.

Since we left and no one does this for her anymore, she is falling apart.

We had another child who only responded to heavy consequences. For every little thing she did she had to loose privledges and also earn extra chores. She hated chores.

We had another girl just like her, BUT when she lost privledges you could not assign her chores, she loved doing chores and HATED to sit around. We made her sit around.

Many people we worked with thought we were crazy, but we always felt that treating every child the same was a lazy approach to parenting. It's very hard to do what my wife and I do, but it works almost all of the time.

While God loves us all, and chastises us, does He do it all the same all of the time? I don't think so, and I am greatful that He does not.

 

[tdowns]

Positive Discipline

I was going to start a new thread, but this one seems pretty much in line with what I wanted to post. One of the members in my Sunday school class started a brief overview of a program called "Positive Discipline". Everyone was really excited about it. It is a very popular program with tons of literature, and many spin-offs, many for educators. A search will bring tons of links.
Anyway, immediately a red flag went off with me when they basically said the word and principle of "punishment" was wrong. I tend to get heated quickly (I'm working on it, pray for me) and gave a quick response and brief statement on why punishment was a biblical principle. I went home and did a search, and the word punishment appears 67 times in the bible.
Anyway....
In my search, I came across what I think is a great series on children, here is the link to a series that deals with the role of the rod. He does a great job I think. The third part actually deals specifically with the rod, the link takes you to start of series.

http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=644

I'm reading the rest of his series now, but would be interested to get more thoughts from you all on the subject, specifically the program of "Positive Discipline".

In a nutshell, like many popular social and psychological movements, I think there are some great things to learn from the studies, but they are not biblical at their core, and need to be tested with a very careful eye in order to reap the wheat from the chaff.

With my kids, I try to use positive techniques, but I also do use punishment, and always am there with open arms, ready to rebuild, after the discipline.


[Edited on 6-16-2005 by tdowns007]

 

[default]

I will go to that link later, but have you noticed that after you discipline a child they seem to obey, and love you more? It's like they are secretly saying "you loveme? HOW MUCH?" and then tend to push your buttons any way they can and see how you will act or react.

My son recently lost some priveledges, and since then our relationship, though he'd be first to deny, has strengthened.

 

[tdowns]

Definitley

Yes! Kids thrive on guidance. My friend and I were discussing this. His son was caught in the habit of a bad behavior, and his son seemed insecure and anxious, through a series of punishment and positive reward and discussion of sin, the bad habit was broken, and he seems to have been released from the stress of his bad behavior. The world's ways can be deceptively appealing, but also very dangerous. When I stay firm with the rules of the house, my kids thrive, when I slip, chaos soon ensues and I'm stressed and so are they.

 

[Scott]

There is nothing wrong with using a belt. Your friend was wrong. Judging from her reaction, I would not be surprised if she had some bad experience as a child that she is projecting on you.

 

[Ex Nihilo]

Does anyone see a difference in the degree/type/frequency of physical punishment for girls than for boys? At least, in general? What you say about customizing approaches makes a lot of sense, Adam!

Also, I wonder if most scarring memories of childhood spankings are related to the parents' having spanked the child in anger... It seems that if the parent is calm (but firm), the fact that the punishment is being done out of love and not as an expression of the parent's frustration should be even more apparent to the child. There's just nothing more frightening when you're a little kid than being on the receiving end of an angry adult's blows, regardless of whether they are deserved, mild, or even primarily motivated by love.

[Edited on 6-16-2005 by Ex Nihilo]

 

[tdowns]

I agree

What Adam is saying is all that's right with using good positive techniques without sacrificing biblical principles.

As far as girls and boys, I think it depends on the kid. My daughter is much more strong willed than my son was, he was stubborn, but would learn quickly when enough was enough, my daughter pushes it, so ends up with more time outs, etc. than my son had at the same age.

 

[Ex Nihilo]

I guess I feel like little girls are gentler (mostly!) and that maybe it can potentially affect them differently... also, it seems that many of the biblical references to physical punishment refer specifically to the son (though some are about a child general) so I was wondering if it is more emphasized or more necessary for boys.

 

[puritangirl]

I work in child welfare and the "discipline" methods are horrifying and very unBiblical. For instance, one of my clients the other day told me about a discipline technique she learned in a federally funded parenting class called "Magic 123". I have no idea if what she told me is what she actually learned in class, but she said, "I'm supposed to tell my daughter to do something, and if she doesn't, then I count to three to let her make up her own mind. If she still doesn't do it, then I do it for her." I guess the "magic" part is how you ever raise obedient children! Another client told me of a technique his therapist told him about. "If our daughter starts throwing a tantrum, we just act like we want her to be doing that. As soon as she sees that we want that from her, she stops doing it!" Ahhhh. Taught me two things: much of our social work programs are nothing but chasing after the wind, and the wisdom of the world truly is foolishness to God.

 

[Puritanhead]

Let the beatings begin!

"He that spares his rod hates his son." -Proverbs

Just don't provoke your kids to wrath.

Originally posted by puritangirl
I work in child welfare and the "discipline" methods are horrifying and very unBiblical. For instance, one of my clients the other day told me about a discipline technique she learned in a federally funded parenting class called "Magic 123"...

While there is place for such agencies at state level, I think child welfare agencies have a propensity for being overly paternalistic and overzealous in their conceptions of abuse.
And federally funded parenting classes-- kinda goes against the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment! The feds always stick their noses, eyes and ears where they don't belong, but since when do they care about the Constitution?


[Edited on 6-24-2005 by Puritanhead]

 

[ReformedWretch]

I always liked on the Waltons when Mrs. Walton made her disobedient kids write passages of scripture as punishment!

 

[Puritanhead]

"He that hates his son, dispenses thine Ritalin!"

 

[Michael Butterfield]

Withhold not correction from the child: for if you beat him with the rod, he willl not die.

I not sure how well this will be received because people do not know me nor my children, but the younger you start the better and I am certain that each of my four children (three girls and one boy) have shown gross effects of the fall from between 6 and 8 months and that is really a liberal estimate and only indicates when we actually started using the rod. Yes, I used the rod (a wooden spoon) that early, but at an age appropriate intensity. I was actually disciplining my children the moment I knew they knew what no meant. The wise man of Proverbs certainly had a pretty severe act of discipline in his mind if he needed to qualify it by saying the child would not die. You see, the difference between what some of us experienced as children and what we are trying to do as Christian parents is different. There are some non-Christian parents that spank, but it only has some residual effects, because they do it out of a different context. We do it out of a supreme love for the souls of our Children. Nevertheless, a good balance is always helpful. See Tedd Tripp´s Book Shepherding a Child´s Heart Cotton Mather A Family Well Ordered and some excellent articles by J. C. Ryle originally published the The Banner of Truth one called "˜A Sermon for Parents´.

Nevertheless, each act of disobedience received varying degrees of punishment/discipline. The more serious the more severe the discipline. It is also child specific, because each child will respond differently. I find "œverbal" discipline nowhere mentioned in scripture as far as I know except in the form of a rebuke, which, in our home, is reserved for the less serious offenses. I believe strongly that there is something "œneutral" about the rod in that it is very often not taken as "œpersonal" such as the hand might be taken. My children will cower at the rod, but they never cower at my hand or any other approach I make to them. Physical touch is the touch of filial love. Our discipline regiment takes a good thirty minutes to accomplish. It is not something done in the fury of the moment, though I do not see harm in children knowing you are angry with what they have done. It requires that the child know what they did (i. e, conviction of the law), it requires the child knowing the source of their disobedience (i.e., the heart), it requires knowledge about the consequences of their actions (i.e., the spanking), it requires confession and repentance (i.e., naming the transgression to the offended party), it requires prayer (i.e., asking the offended party for forgiveness) it requires the reception of forgiveness (a verbal yes and a hug and a kiss from the offended party) and finally, it requires the reception of grace (i.e., telling the offender that the only reason the child is being forgiven is because the offended party loves the offender). More can always be said.

 

[crhoades]

Nevertheless, each act of disobedience received varying degrees of punishment/discipline. The more serious the more severe the discipline. It is also child specific, because each child will respond differently. I find "œverbal" discipline nowhere mentioned in scripture as far as I know except in the form of a rebuke, which, in our home, is reserved for the less serious offenses. I believe strongly that there is something "œneutral" about the rod in that it is very often not taken as "œpersonal" such as the hand might be taken. My children will cower at the rod, but they never cower at my hand or any other approach I make to them. Physical touch is the touch of filial love. Our discipline regiment takes a good thirty minutes to accomplish. It is not something done in the fury of the moment, though I do not see harm in children knowing you are angry with what they have done. It requires that the child know what they did (i. e, conviction of the law), it requires the child knowing the source of their disobedience (i.e., the heart), it requires knowledge about the consequences of their actions (i.e., the spanking), it requires confession and repentance (i.e., naming the transgression to the offended party), it requires prayer (i.e., asking the offended party for forgiveness) it requires the reception of forgiveness (a verbal yes and a hug and a kiss from the offended party) and finally, it requires the reception of grace (i.e., telling the offender that the only reason the child is being forgiven is because the offended party loves the offender). More can always be said.

Very good stuff...thanks!