Disciplining your child…
July 23rd, 2007 by Nick Tay
I spent most of Saturday at church, at a Conference, where I was helping my friend with Registration and payment. She is a mother of a 5 year old girl, and at one point in the day, the Child, who I am very fond of, was getting a little disobedient, making way to much noise and distracting everybody. The mom then punish the child, in front of everybody in the room, which was definitely the right thing to do, but it broke my heart. I then realized, there and then, how hard it must be for a parent. How you need to be both loving and caring, yet need to be firm and strict at the same time. When the mother punish the child, I knew she did it out of love and not out of anger, and still I felt so heart broken to witness it.
I then remembered a Parenting Seminar I attended in my Church, organized as part of the Youth Church, where I am a leader of. I remembered the Pastor who gave a session about Disciplining your children. He was very elaborate and actually had to trouble shoot at times, showing parents how to do it the right way, and then I realized why. Finally, it hit me. Its not because the parents are daft, but its because some parents just can’t bring themselves to punish their child.
I am worried what kind of parent I will be. I mean, I am good at playing with Kids, and I can capture their attention, tell stories and stuff like that. I have only handled kids for a few hours, never really had to do much more than that. How will I be as a dad? I realized I have soo much to learn about Parenthood! Tons!
A reality check man.
On this day in History..
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July 24th, 2007 at 7:23 am
hehehe
i read with glee this entry…
i see parents and children interact all the time because i am pretty involved in the Kids ministry here and I find that parents do not punish their child as much as I personally would like them to.
It creates all sorts of problems for people who are not parents but in an authority position, out of the home. But then again, I say let kids be kids and it IS fairly easy to ‘teach’ a kid the rules and how to treat other children, etc.
But at the end of the day you have to balance the long-term and short-term gain of punishing a child. Your potential short-term embarrassment vs. the child’s long-learning to be a decent human being. On the other hand, you so do not want a child who is so scared that he/she does not make decisions and won’t stand up for him/herself.
Parents’ main responsibility after all this is to make the child feel that he/she is the only one in the world…
And when strangers stare heart-brokenly at a mom disciplining a child, you only undermine the efforts of the mom to produce a good-behavioured child. hehe Kids know how to use embarrassment to escape punishment (that’s why they throw tantrums in supermarkets/churches/etc). And anyone who has taken care of kids know this and WILL follow through…
God bless!
admin : Spare the rod, spoil the child. I remember that from the parenting seminar. Gee, now I wish I paid more attention.