Intro: "Obedience and Decisions"

Obedience and Decisions

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6.)

Sample Methods

A. Design frequent opportunities to make decisions

1. Have two kinds of colors of juice to choose from
2. Let the children draw pictures, choosing only three colors to use.
3. Let the children choose only one tool to work with in sculpting clay or whipped soap flakes.
4. Let the children choose the bedtime story.
5. Set up a treasure hunt where a series of correct decisions leads to a surprise or treasure.
6. Let the children choose what clothes to wear. Help them think it through: "Is it warm?" "Will I get dirty today?"
7. Let the children choose what to spend their nickel or dime on -- or whatever to save it.
8. Make family decisions in a family council. (What kind of tree should we plant in the front yard? What should we do this Saturday?)

B. Discipline. Parents must make their own decisions about the methods of discipline, but certain principles always apply.

1. Children should be disciplined in private rather than in public.
2. Children will repeat the activities that attract the greatest attention. The key, therefore, is to give more attention for doing something right than for doing something wrong. Give lavish, open praise for the right, and quiet, automatic discipline for the wrong.
3. Children should know the reasons for the laws they are expected to keep and should think of obedience in terms of observing laws, not in terms of obeying people.
4. Children find great security in consistent, predictable discipline.
5. Discipline should be thought of as a way of teaching truth.
6. Punishments should be administered only when laws are broken. When children make wrong decisions in areas not governed by law, their punishment should come through the natural consequences of those wrong choices. (If a child forgets his coat, he gets cold and needs no other punishment.)

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