Paul J. Bucknell

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Understanding Correction | Avoiding Light | Catch the Sin | Control the Child | Correct the Child

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What would be considered the most effective and caring form of discipline for a disobedient child? And why?

The 3 C’s to Disciplining our Children

There are three aspects with properly discipline our children: catch, confront, and correct.

1) Catch the Sin

Should we expect to find sin in our child’s life?

When we look at the scriptures, it says that foolishness is bound up in the child’s heart. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him” (Prov 22:15).

We should always be on the outlook for sin. This does not mean that we should be as a critical parent anticipating some evil from our child. Instead, it means that we are not naive. We care enough about our children to train them in righteousness.

We love enough to carefully watch over their lives so that they don’t get trapped into evil and destructive patterns.

Some parents don’t think their children sin. There are fancy philosophical terms to describe their various behaviors, but more important is how these perspectives will bring unbiblical influence the way they care for their children. Similar to them are the parents who can’t rightly interpret their child’s evil behavior.

They know what their child does is wrong but can’t bring themselves to think of it as so.

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Their precious child just spouted out some rude words. They say to the child, “You don’t mean what you just said, do you.” The child really did mean it. The question though is rhetorical. They do not want an answer. They wouldn’t know what to do if the child said, “Yes.”

Children are able to sin as adults. The problem is that they are less mature and cannot cleverly cover it up. But still they know how to put the cookie jar cover back on or stir the cookies around on the sheet so it doesn’t look like they took anything.

I need to clarify something, though. By ‘keeping an outlook for their sin,’ I do not mean that we are ready to lash out, “I knew you were the one who lied about breaking my picture.” This condemning statement will foster more lying in the future.

Instead, we hopefully paint a picture of godly living. We warmly encourage our child to do good things. Often in the morning during our family prayers and instruction, I would say to everyone, “Today is a day to be kind to one another. We are to see how we can help someone out. We even might do some secret good things for another.”

I describe my good expectations before them. We lead them to righteous living. “... He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake” (Psalms 23:3).

They will sin, of course, but because of our prayers and patient correction, we are anticipating less sin. We are not to be blind to their nature. Our work is already difficult enough to ignore their evil nature that they were born with (from us!).

Many of us have heard about being born again but never have thought twice about what was so wrong about the first time we were born! Our nature naturally tends to do evil. Neither have we thought about why is it that big people are so mean and ugly. They used to be children. They didn’t all of a sudden become that way but grew up in their sin.

Do we have hope for our children? We sure do. Just as God can deal with us, so He can deal with them. He is the master of grace and mercy. Invite the Lord God to come and help you as a parent to train them in righteousness.

It is not enough to catch our children with their sin. If we leave them there in their sin, then we are terribly irresponsible parents. Why is it important to be on the outlook for sin in the lives of our children? We will see that in the following two points.

=> Continue reading: Confront the child

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Biblical Foundations for Freedom ( BFF )

Rev. Paul J. Bucknell

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