By Jennifer Pinto –
I’d like to share with you something I watched at Mass a few weeks ago. A family of four sat in the row in front of us. There were the parents and two kids, a 12-year old and a four-year old. The younger child was quiet for a while but I think her pesky side got the better of her. She started slowly kicking the older sister. The older one moved away, turned her body to face elsewhere and tried everything to stop the younger one from mischief. The parents? That’s a whole different story. They didn’t lift a finger to correct the child. Next thing, the younger one began spitting on the mother. Yes, you read right…spitting. And STILL, neither the mother nor the father did a thing to correct or stop her from behaving badly. This made me wonder….have we as parents forgotten how to correct our kids? Especially in church?
Pardon me for sounding old fashioned and stiff but I believe in disciplining our children appropriately. I don’t agree to spanking or pinching the child (rather like we got pinched perhaps) but correct we must. Is it alright to let our children loose no matter where they are? Shouldn’t we be setting a good example for them when we are in a place of worship? If we don’t do it, who will? I know of parents who get upset if someone else corrects their child. When one is not correcting one’s kids, then someone else is bound to do it! As it is we have enough and more bad examples in this world – from teen idols to celebrities – that our kids are observing and imitating. What can we as parents do to counter that? For starters, we can make our children understand the difference between good and bad, right and wrong behaviours. We can work on showing them which behaviours are acceptable and which are not.
Another trend I see very often these days, is that parents are afraid of their children especially when it comes time to correct them. I know that in the old days parents took the correction bit too far by beating their kids and offering mean punishments. I’m not recommending that at all. From my perspective as a counsellor I recommend that parents sit with their sons and daughters and talk about things. We think our 4-year olds are too young to understand. It has been demonstrated that children as young as 6 months old can understand discipline.
Let us look at what the Word of God has to say about this – instructions to us parents. The most famous we know is Proverbs 13:24. “Those who spare the rod….” But I really like the latter half of the sentence which says, “but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.” It requires diligence and persistence on our part to discipline our kids! We can’t really outsource it to anyone else. Again, Proverbs 29:17 says, “Discipline your children and they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.” I think what it means is that by disciplining our children, they will be able to handle life better. But if we leave them to their own devices and don’t correct them it will be folly. They will then receive consequences dished out by the world.
In conclusion, I’d like to say, that it is a tough job to correct our kids without them yelling that they hate us! But correct them we must for it is the right thing to do. Eventually, they will come to understand that what we did was correct. On the other hand I have seen a few adults place blame on their parents for not correcting them when they were younger. Where do you want to be?
Jennifer Pinto is a freelance corporate trainer, trained counsellor & Zumba® Fitness Instructor. She can be contacted at [email protected]