Aisle five, a screaming child, and a parent out of options
Almost every parent wants the same thing: a child who grows up happy, decent, and able to stand on his own. Our culture has spent two generations telling parents how to get there, and the results are all around us. There is an older set of instructions, written long before the parenting experts, and it has never needed revising. It is worth hearing, whatever you believe about God.
15The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.
Proverbs 29:15 · NASB95You have seen it, and if you are a parent you may have lived it. The checkout line is long, the candy is at eye level, and a four-year-old wants it. The answer is no. So he drops to the floor, kicks, and screams until the whole store is looking. The parent stands there, red in the face, and finally bends down: “Okay, okay. Mommy will buy you the candy if you stop crying.”
The crying stops, the parent sighs with relief, and a small boy has just learned the most important lesson of his week. Screaming works. The louder, the faster. He will use it again tomorrow, and the price will go up.
That parent is not a monster. Most of the time it is someone who loves the child very much and simply does not know what else to do. Nobody ever showed them. But love that does not know what to do produces a child who rules the home, and a child who rules the home is not a happy child.
A visitor to this country once said that what impressed him most about America was the way parents obeyed their children.
A schoolteacher put the chain of command this way: the teachers are afraid of the principals, the principals are afraid of the superintendents, the superintendents are afraid of the board, the board is afraid of the parents, the parents are afraid of the children, and the children are afraid of nobody. It is a disaster when children make their own way.
The Bible saw this coming. When God described a nation in moral collapse, one of the signs He named was children in charge: “I will make mere lads their princes, and capricious children will rule over them” (Isaiah 3:4). A home run by its children is not a new freedom. It is an old symptom.
And the child in aisle five is not really the problem. For the most part, children do not create problems; they reveal them. What happens on that floor is a picture of what has been happening at home.
For most of history, raising children was not a mystery. Parents taught right and wrong, expected to be obeyed, and corrected a child who defied them. Then a culture decided it had outgrown God. It took the Bible out of the schools and out of public life, and it handed the raising of children to experts who began with a different premise: that children are basically good, and only need to be affirmed.
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.
Romans 1:21-22 · NASB95
God has put three restraints on human sin. The first is the conscience, the law of God written on every heart. The second is the family, where parents teach their children God’s law and use the rod when they break it. The third is government, which carries the sword. When the family falls, the whole weight lands on the police.
Romans 2:15 · Proverbs 22:15 · Romans 13:4
That is exactly where we are. Several generations have now been raised without a stable home, without God’s Word, and without any consistent discipline, and society is watching what happens when the middle restraint is gone. Parents have to be a threat to unruly, disobedient behavior. Without that, the result is disorder in the streets.
We have it exactly backwards. We discipline criminals and punish our children, when God’s design was to discipline our children so that we would not have to punish criminals.
Now a whole world of psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists is trying to work out how to control a generation of children who are out of control, children who were never raised by the principles of Scripture. You need a doctorate to control a child who has not been trained God’s way. You do not need one to train him.
Three thousand years ago Israel went through the same thing, and Scripture summed it up in one sentence: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). A generation that rejects the Word of God and ignores the duty to raise its children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord always ends up there.
Most of what modern parents are told rests on five ideas. Each one sounds kind. Each one has been tested for half a century now, and each one has failed.
Myth one
No parent has ever had to teach a child to lie. By two, children begin to deceive; take a toy truck from a six-month-old and he screams. That is not a phase. It is the human heart. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child” (Proverbs 22:15).
Myth two
Telling an already selfish child how wonderful he is pours gasoline on a runaway fire. It persuades him he is entitled to his own way, and persuades you that you must defer to him.
Myth three
The home that revolves around the child, giving him everything the parents never had, creates a small tyrant. The system should not bend to the child; the child should bend to the home.
Myth four
Brutality is abuse, and it is wrong. But the studies that condemn all spanking usually begin by lumping brutal violence together with calm, loving correction. The evidence was never as settled as the headlines.
Myth five
It takes a lot of time to train a child and very little time to give him a pill. But a drug that sedates a defiant child never deals with the defiance. It only postpones it.
The self-esteem movement began in the 1970s and took root in the 1980s. Parents were told that if their children were taught how good and special they were, they would become better people. We have now raised the most affirmed generation in history, and one of the angriest. Even some of the psychologists have noticed. One professor wrote that if we crossed out self-esteem and put in self-control, children would be better off, and so would society.
The parenting magazines still say it: if Johnny refuses to eat his green beans, give him what he wants, and certainly do not punish him for expressing himself. The important thing is his self-esteem. Meanwhile the child learns that the most important thing in life is getting his own way, when he wants it, how he wants it.
Many parents have said it: “It’s just easier to give my kid what he wants than to try to discipline him.” In the moment, it is. But look at what the easy way costs, and who ends up paying for it.
He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.
Proverbs 13:24 · NASB95
That is strong language, and it is meant to be. God does not say the permissive parent is gentle or patient. He says that parent hates the child, because he is content to let that child grow into sinful patterns that will ruin him. When you hear a parent say, “I love my child too much to spank him,” what you are hearing is love for self. That parent is not willing to suffer the pain of causing the child pain. The child will suffer a much worse kind later.
The supreme act of disdain for a child is not to discipline him. That is indifference, and children feel it. An utterly undisciplined child is very often a child who feels utterly unloved.
Giving in does not buy peace. It buys a bigger demand. Some parents of rebellious children think they can buy their loyalty, their obedience, or their respect. It cannot be done, because a child who is paid to behave is never satisfied. Scripture’s picture of him is the leech with two daughters: “The leech has two daughters, ‘Give,’ ‘Give’” (Proverbs 30:15).
Even the world has noticed. A tongue-in-cheek list for raising a delinquent, printed by a medical doctor, reads like a description of modern parenting: “Never let him suffer the consequences of his behavior. Don’t run his life; let him run yours. And be sure to give in when he throws a temper tantrum.”
A priest of God who let his sons do as they pleased. God judged his house “because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them.” Condoning sin is cruel to children, even in a religious home.
A great king and a weak father. Of one son Scripture says, “His father had never crossed him at any time by asking, ‘Why have you done so?’” Two of his sons tried to take his throne.
The child left to get his own way becomes, in Proverbs’ words, a grief to his mother, a rebel to his father, and in the end a disgrace to both. That is not a curse. It is simply what happens.
What happens next is written in our headlines. Children who never learned to submit to their parents do not learn to submit to anyone. A generation of undisciplined, disrespectful, rebellious children destroys families, then churches, then nations. Any society that allows its children to grow up undisciplined is breeding anarchy.
When most people hear the word discipline, they think of punishment. The Bible means something much bigger. The Greek word the New Testament uses, paideia, comes from the word for a child. It means child training: everything a parent does to cultivate a child’s soul, to correct his mistakes, curb his passions, and bring him up to maturity.
1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), 3so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. 4Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:1-4 · NASB95
That is almost the whole of the New Testament’s instruction on parenting, and it is enough. Children have one duty: to obey and honor their parents. Parents have one duty: to give their children discipline and instruction. Everything else is detail.
Set the standard
Children need to know clearly what is expected of them. You set the standard, you live by it yourself, and you hold them to it.
Reward the right
Discipline is not only negative. God Himself attached a promise, not a threat, to the command to honor parents. Praise, reward, and affirm what is good.
Correct the wrong
When the standard is broken, there is a consequence, every time. Children must suffer the consequences of their misbehavior, or you will never change their conduct.
Discipline is also preventive. You forbid a toddler to play in the street, touch the stove, or put a plastic bag over his head, not because of anything he has done, but because you know what will harm him. And one thing is never part of it: withdrawing your love. Rewards and punishments are never the giving and taking away of affection.
If there are no consequences to your child’s misbehavior, your child will continue to misbehave. Take a sinful nature, give it its rights, and it runs straight into chaos.
This is not a harsh idea invented by stern people. It is how God Himself treats the people He loves. “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines” (Hebrews 12:6). God is not a permissive parent who lets His children do as they please, and He does not intend us to be.
The Book of Proverbs is a father’s instruction to his son, and it is remarkably direct about how a child is trained. Take fifteen psychologists and ask them how to raise a responsible, moral child, and they could talk for months. Proverbs says it in a few lines.
| What Proverbs says | What it means | |
|---|---|---|
| Prov 13:24 | “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” | Discipline is an act of love, and so is doing it again when once was not enough. |
| Prov 22:15 | “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” | The problem is inside the child, and the rod reaches it faster than any lecture. |
| Prov 19:18 | “Discipline your son while there is hope, and do not desire his death.” | Start early. It is possible to wait too long. |
| Prov 23:13-14 | “Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. You shall strike him with the rod and rescue his soul from Sheol.” | He will tell you he is dying. He is not. The stakes are higher than his comfort. |
| Prov 29:15 | “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.” | Correction and explanation together. The child who always gets his way shames the parent who let him. |
| Prov 29:17 | “Correct your son, and he will give you comfort; he will also delight your soul.” | The end of it is not a broken child but a delightful one. |
It is not that complicated. You have a foolish child, because every child is born that way. If you want him to be less foolish, correct him, and when words are not enough, use the rod. You do not need a child psychologist, a thousand seminars, or every parenting book on the shelf.
Timing matters. “Discipline your son while there is hope.” There comes a day when he is too big: try to use a rod on a sixteen-year-old and he will break it over your head. The years for this are the early ones, when defiance first shows itself. And do not stop because he cries. He is cleverer than you think.
Nor is it sending him to his room to think about what he did. It is brief, it is painful enough to be remembered, and then it is over. Parents who have raised children this way can tell you: a few swats and it’s done, and they remember. Many children, asked to choose between a spanking and a long lecture, will take the spanking.
Scripture never permits injury. You never need to bruise a child to make your point, and you must never spank in a rage. Do it in private, to spare the child humiliation, and do it calmly. Discipline done in anger is not discipline; it is abuse, and it wrecks the very trust it was meant to build.
One old saying has it that the best board of education is the one applied to the seat of learning. It is a joke, and it is also true.
The same verse that commands discipline puts a fence around it: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger” (Ephesians 6:4). Paul says it again elsewhere: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart” (Colossians 3:21). The goal is a child who is sorry, not a child who is angry. You want him sorry that he violated your love, sorry that he dishonored God. An angry child has learned only that you are bigger than he is.
There are many ways to provoke a child, and not all of them are harsh. Some of them look very much like modern parenting.
Too tight
Never letting a child make a mistake, fence him in, and he will despair of ever having any liberty except by rebelling.
Too loose
Give him everything he wants and the next thing he does not get will enrage him. Permissive parents produce insecure children.
Unfair
“Why can’t you be more like your sister?” Isaac favored Esau, Rebekah favored Jacob, and the family split for generations.
Crushing
Grades, sports, trophies. When it is really about the parent’s pride, the child learns that nothing he does will ever be enough.
Cold
No time, no praise, no approval. And never punish by withdrawing your affection. Lack of discipline is itself a form of neglect.
Cruel
Bitter words, physical cruelty, discipline to satisfy an irritated parent instead of to help the child. An angry child is often a beaten one.
Consistency matters as much as firmness. If you overlook something three times and punish it severely the fourth, you confuse and exasperate your child. Both parents need to use the same rules, so the child cannot play one against the other. The opposite of provoking a child is encouraging him.
Researchers at Harvard studied what predicts whether a child becomes a delinquent. They found four factors: the father’s firm, fair, consistent discipline; the mother’s supervision; the parents’ affection for each other; and a family that spends time together. It took sociologists years to discover what the Bible has said all along.
Discipline this way hurts the parent too. Every honest parent has walked away from a moment of discipline wishing it had been gentler, and then gone back to hold the child. That reluctance is right. It is what keeps discipline under control, and it is how God Himself feels: “In all their affliction He was afflicted” (Isaiah 63:9).
Every response to a tantrum teaches something. The question is what. Choose what you would most likely do, then look at the others.
Back to the checkout line. Your four-year-old wants the candy. You said no. He is on the floor, screaming, and people are staring. What do you do?
Try the other answers too.
You chose: Give him the candy so he stops
You have just paid him to do it, and the price will rise every time. “A child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother” (Proverbs 29:15).
Years from nowA teenager who knows that enough pressure always moves you.
You chose: Promise ice cream later if he is quiet
A bribe teaches that doing right is a transaction. Rewards have their place, but a reward offered to end defiance rewards the defiance.
Years from nowA child who asks “What do I get?” before he does anything.
You chose: “One… two… two and a half…”
Threats you do not carry out teach a child to wait you out. Inconsistency exasperates children (Colossians 3:21).
Years from nowA child who ignores you until you shout, and then ignores the shouting.
You chose: Lose your temper and yank him up
Discipline to relieve an irritated parent is not correction. “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).
Years from nowA child who is angry, not sorry, and learns to be afraid of you instead of respecting you.
You chose: Pretend he is not yours
Walking away, or letting the tantrum run its course with no response at all, leaves a child to himself, which is exactly what Proverbs warns against.
Years from nowA child who concludes that nobody cares enough to stop him.
You chose: Calmly carry him out, correct him in private, then hold him
The answer stands. Defiance has a real consequence, delivered calmly and away from an audience. Then it is over, and he is held and forgiven. “Correct your son, and he will give you comfort” (Proverbs 29:17).
Years from nowA child who rarely needs it again, because he knows two things for certain: your word stands, and your love does too.
None of this requires perfection. It requires deciding who the parent is, and then acting like it, lovingly and consistently, day after day. Here is what that looks like at home.
God gave you authority over your child for his good. Children are not naturally going to obey their parents. They have to be taught, and they have to be disciplined for disobedience and disrespect. That is your job, not his teacher’s, his coach’s, or the state’s.
Better five rules enforced every time than fifty enforced when you feel like it. Say it once, calmly. Then follow through, the same way, every time, with both parents saying the same thing.
Children quickly learn to comply outwardly while defying you inwardly: the rolled eyes, the slammed door, the sullen “fine.” Deal with the attitude. You can prevent an act; you cannot prevent an attitude, and if you catch it early it does not grow into the act.
Tell your child plainly that the punishment will be far worse if he lies about something than if he tells the truth. A child with a strong aversion to lying has a guard over every other temptation, because he cannot sin and cover it up.
Never in anger and never in public. Explain what he did and why it matters, carry out the consequence, and then it is finished. Do not prolong it, and do not bring it up again.
Hold him afterward. Tell him you love him. Forgive him fully. We raise children in an environment of discipline, but also in an environment of forgiveness, and the two run together.
Praise honestly and often. Reward obedience. Give your time. A child who is secure in your love can take your correction.
Whatever you want in your children, they have to see in you. You cannot discipline a child into honesty while he hears you lie on the phone. If parents do not discipline themselves, they can never discipline their children.
Here is where biblical parenting parts company with every technique on the market. The goal is not a polite child. It is not a child who says “yes, sir” on cue, or who makes his parents look good, or who is merely under control. Parents who work only on outward behavior can end up training skilled little hypocrites, children who behave when watched and do as they please when not.
The real problem is the heart, and the heart is something no parent can change. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). That is why every act of discipline is also a chance to teach. A child who has just been corrected is ready to hear that his disobedience was not only against Mom and Dad but against a holy God, and that he needs forgiveness from Him, too.
These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 · NASB95
Consider one boy whose teachers sent home the same note year after year: talks too much, will not listen, has no self-control. There was no diagnosis and no pill in those days, so his parents called it disobedience and disciplined him. He still got into enough trouble that his father once had to come and get him out of jail. Was that because his parents did not love him, or because the spankings wounded his psyche? No. He was just like every other child, sinful to the core. But persistent discipline, persistent instruction, and persistent prayer from loving parents led him to Christ, and he spent the rest of his life preaching.
You cannot save your children. What you can do is bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, point them to Christ at every turn, and pray. The rest belongs to God, and He is very good at it.
Step back for a moment and consider what has happened. For fifty years the experts told parents not to spank, to build self-esteem, and to let children express themselves. The results are in. And the researchers who looked honestly at which homes produce healthy, responsible children kept arriving at the same list: a father’s firm and fair discipline, a mother’s presence, parents who love each other, a family that is together. Scripture said all of it thousands of years ago.
That should make anyone wonder. If the Bible was right about your children when the experts were wrong, what else might it be right about? About marriage, about money, about work, about how to face suffering and death? It is not an old book of rules. It is the instruction of the One who designed the family in the first place, and who knows exactly how it works.
Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Matthew 7:24 · NASB95
There is a way that seems right to us, the Bible warns, “but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). Parents feel that in their bones when they watch a child slipping away. The alternative is not a stricter technique. It is a different foundation.
And notice what kind of God stands behind all of this. He is a Father. He disciplines the children He loves, not to destroy them but so that they may share His holiness (Hebrews 12:10). He is also the father in Jesus’ story who saw his rebellious son coming home from a long way off, “and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). Firm and tender at once. That is the kind of parent He asks you to be, because it is the kind of Father He is.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). Every parent lacks wisdom. That promise is for you.
If you have read this far, you may be feeling the weight of it. Perhaps you have been the parent in aisle five. Perhaps your children are older now, and you wonder whether it is too late. It is never too late to start doing what is right, and it is never too late to come to God.
The hardest thing about parenting is that you cannot give your children what you do not have. You cannot teach them to fear God if you do not know Him, or point them to forgiveness you have never received. So begin there. Open a Bible, read the Gospel of John, and read a chapter of Proverbs a day. Ask God, honestly, to show you whether He is real. Jesus’ invitation still stands: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
The same God who tells you how to raise your children offers to become your Father. He corrects those He loves, He forgives completely those who come to Him, and He never gives in, because He never stops loving.
Correct your son, and he will give you comfort; he will also delight your soul.Proverbs 29:17
A pastor who had preached on disciplining children once received a thank-you note from a boy of eight or nine for a birthday card. It read: “I really liked your message on disciplining kids. One day while getting spanked my Dad broke his switch. A few days later I decided to make him a new switch. It ended up being bigger than I wanted it to be.”
That is not a frightened child. That is a child who knows exactly where he stands, and knows he is loved.
