Yesterday my 5 year old was having a fit and did not want to go out of the van. But we needed to go to Mass, so I told everyone else go ahead. Then I pleaded and bribed to no avail. Finally, I thought of spanking her to keep her from turning into a brat. But I considered how this might make her hate Church, so I backed off and prayed. Finally, I resorted to my weapons of spiritual warfare and cast out an evil spirit that may be disturbing her. I invoked the name of Jesus on whose authority I rebuked the spirits and ordered them to leave my girl. Without any exaggeration, she calmed down after that. So, I was able to carry her without any resistance. Before that, she probably would be kicking and screaming and there will be no point in dragging her. I placed her in the stroller then carried the baby. As I pulled the stroller closer to holy ground, I thought that any residual tempters will disperse. Sure enough, her temper subsided as soon as we stepped in. Make of it what you will, it is what happened.
Punishments do not make kids better according to St. John Bosco. So, an educator needs to avoid them. That is not to say that one must condone bad behavior. Rather, one must prevent the need to punish by putting kids in situations where they can do no wrong. This is a tall order but it is the one that works – considering the 20+ saints produced by this method.
There’s something catchy about these images, and the tune by Matt Maher. A friend sent it to me today. It’s more of a Lenten tune but hey…. we’re always called to discipline, right guys?
Have you ever given sage advice about fatherhood and then immediately felt guilty because you don’t feel like YOU follow that same advice?
After a discussion involving a group of parents in which the phrase “I don’t know how you do it with five” was used far too many times for my liking, I was reflecting on some of the comments I made in response to questions about how parenting changes with more children. You see, I made comments like “it’s about consistency and concentration.” And “you need to keep a cool head and an eye for justice.” All this high sounding advice seemed a mite hypocritical when we returned home to the usual weekend chaos.
Act 1, Scene 1. Dad descending staircase into children’s play area, to the tune of Abigail’s high pitched “give it back to me” cry and Isaak’s “go away I’m reading” growl.
[snipped here for the sake of brevity, if you want the rest check it here]
By Matthew S on June 28th, 2007 | Category: Uncategorized
Hey, everyone out their, its Matt from Play the Dad? Be the Dad! and I have a question for ya. One of the things my wife and I have noticed my older child attempting to get out of her “Just Punishments” resulting from her disobedience. Now, I consider this direct defiance of her parents and worthy of harsher punishments than the origional offense entails. Here is the problem, if you punish a child more (i.e. more time in timeout) when they are refusing to serve their punishment, whats the point?
Is not the ultimate point not to control them but to motivate them to choose what is right? This is a question that was posed to me by my dear wife. I know that the balance between control and freedom to choose changes as the child ages but its hard to figure out where it is at times. Also, how do you add punishment for say, an eight year old, when they are refusing to undergo their punishment?
To me it would seem to be similar to what a bank does when you overdraft, they take away more of the money you don’t have. So when a child refuses to go to timeout (really, a problem for my wife and not for me) do you just keep adding time to the punishment they refuse to do? Just curious is anyone has any practicial ideas or even better suggestions from your wife as that is where the problem is in our house. My wife and I are looking for suggestions to help us along. Just trying to keep ahead of the curve and wanting to make sure our kids aren’t abnormal in their want to avoid punishment.
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