It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? - Hebrews 12:7 (ESV) 

In the previous article, I shared a definition of discipline and some initial principles. In this article, I share five more principles related to discipline in parenting.  

Discipline Teaches Consequences

Discipline teaches consequences. Consequences are unavoidable. If a kid touches a hot stove, his hand will burn. If he walks into traffic, he will most likely get hit. Children need to be taught to obey certain commands to avoid danger, including death. But as they get older, children need to learn about other kinds of consequences, too. The entire Bible can be read as a study in consequences. The Bible is about the consequences of our sin and the wonders of God’s grace. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:23). Death is the consequence for our sin. Darkness, slavery, corruption, separation, isolation, and misery are all consequences of sin. Many parents wonder why discipline should include any pain at all. This is why. It is not to train children like animals and it is not to vent anger. It is better to see discipline as preventing pain than causing it.  

Discipline Should Be Varied

Discipline can and should take many forms. There is far more to discipline than the use of the rod. Discipline looks different for a one-year-old than it does for a seven-year-old, which in turn is distinct from discipline for a fourteen-year-old. Remember that discipline can be understood as referring to the entire process of child-rearing. Do parents have only one method to guide their children? Is there only one technique for admonishing or reproving? Is there only one single way to chasten a child? The answer is obvious: of course not. There are innumerable ways of getting children’s attention and impressing upon them the necessity of obeying and honoring their parents. There will be a large amount of flexibility depending upon the specific traits and character qualities of children in addition to those of the parents. Different cultures also have an influence. Consider, for example, the emphasis on honor and shame in general in oriental (eastern) cultures compared to the emphasis on justice and fairness in occidental (western) cultures. Speaking very broadly, it is possible for either emphasis to result in a wrong de-emphasis of the other. However, Scripture speaks to both. Honor and shame are important concepts in Scripture just like justice and fairness are. No specific culture or people group balances the two perfectly, and that will affect parenting and discipline. 

Discipline Needs to Be Uncomfortable.

No matter what specific form discipline may take, it must cause discomfort. I use the word “discomfort” advisedly. The gentle parenting movement is well-known for teaching parents that any form of isolation, chastening, pain, or discomfort may cause a child to feel separated or detached from his parents, especially his mother, which always does more harm than good. The problem is not that gentle parents are entirely wrong, but that the case is drastically overstated. The ideological roots of gentle parenting (look up attachment theory and John Bowlby) do not view children as made in the image of God, but animals who have emerged via evolutionary processes. For my purposes in this article, I only state this to make the point that parents are not raising the latest product of evolution, but males and females created in God’s image. That means that parents do not need to worry that any form of discipline that makes children uncomfortable is violating their fundamental makeup. Telling children “no,” enforcing appropriate consequences, and causing appropriate discomfort to children to teach consequences is not a fundamental abuse of their nature and does not destroy the parent-child relationship.  

Discipline Should Not be Excessively Painful

There are approaches to parenting in which parents almost seem to take pleasure in causing pain to children. In the times that I have heard someone talk about it, there has appeared to be a proud confidence that the pain parents cause their children can guarantee modified behavior. This is a reprehensible view of discipline because it wrongly holds that hearts can be transformed by parental discipline as long as the discipline is painful enough. This is simply not true, and encouraging parents to increase the pain in discipline does not guarantee transformed hearts. However, plenty of parents seem to have a view that they are required by Scripture to inflict a significant amount of pain in discipline. Otherwise, part of the argument goes, the discipline will be ineffective. However, this argument is flawed for a few reasons. First, Scripture nowhere specifies the amount of pain discipline should inflict, only that discipline is painful; parents do not have to meet a certain threshold for something to count as discipline. Second, the severity of pain is no necessary indicator of the effectiveness of the discipline. Far more factors are at play in discipline than the mere amount of pain. It is incorrect to conflate how much discipline hurts with how effective discipline is. Third, the role of pain in discipline is not central, but supplemental. The primary goal of discipline is instruction, pointing a child in the way he needs to go. Therefore, the amount of pain in discipline should be measured by what is sufficient to capture the child’s attention. Sometimes, no pain at all is necessary. Other times, some is. A lot of pain never is.   

Discipline Should Not Treat Children Like Animals.

Children should not be treated like animals (I will not offend pet owners by saying that animals should not be treated like children). There are parenting styles that treat children as little different from dogs or horses. Ironically, this can happen in certain forms of Christian parenting as well as in secular methods. It is ironic because Christians should recognize and remember that children are created in the image of God, and so are distinct in crucial ways from animals. I once saw a video of a speaker in a full auditorium advocate for spanking children until they stopped crying. He presented it as a Christian to Christians. The speaker compared children to dogs and other animals who simply need to be trained to do the right thing every time.

Attachment theory is the single most influential theory undergirding modern secular notions of parenting, and it also understands children as basically animals. It is based partly on studies of primates, such that observations of primates served as the basis for conclusions about children and their responses to parents.[1] Children, however, are fundamentally different from animals, and should be treated accordingly. No animal received the breath of God breathed into its nostrils, but only man. Any parenting theory or technique that fundamentally equates children with animals is neither biblical nor true, but sub-biblical and false. It is wrong to infer from animal studies how to raise children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Conclusion

The principles of discipline in parenting in this article are that discipline teaches consequences, that it should be varied and uncomfortable, but not excessively painful, and that children should not be treated like animals. The next article will focus more specifically mostly on principles related to how to communicate with children in discipline.

[1] See John Bowlby’s landmark trilogy, Attachment and Loss, which has defined the field.