Shepherding a Child's Heart

by Tedd Tripp

have exhausted themselves and their audience.

Have they now? Perhaps a few have but not all. Another condescending broad-swath statement.

Other parents strive for more psychological goals. Driven by vivid recollection of their own childhood, they are preoccupied with Billy’s and Suzie’s psychological adjustment. Books and magazines pander to these parents. They promote the latest pop psychology—all tailored to insecure moms and dads.

children who esteem others?

Not true. I've read nonChristian books that teach respect and esteem for parents.

He used to knock me around once in a while. I didn’t like it, but I turned out okay.” What has this parent done? He has unquestioningly accepted and employed the same method of childrearing his parents used. He has not assessed whether it was biblical. He has not assessed whether it had a good impact on him. He has simply drawn from his survival the implication that it wasn’t that bad.

Good

You see, grounding is not designed to do something for the child; it is designed to do something against him. Grounding is not corrective. It is simply punitive. It does not biblically address the issues of the heart that were reflected in the child’s wrong behavior. It simply punishes for a specified period of time.

Yes

Your first objective in correction must not be to tell your children how you feel about what they have done or said. You must try to understand what is going on inside them. Since the Scripture says that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks, you must engage your children to understand what is going on inside.

Right

What are you learning? Your child is struggling with feelings that you can identify with. There is a genuine pressure out there in his third-grade classroom. He is feeling the pressure to be approved by his peers. This circumstance is bringing out the hopes and fears of his heart.

To summarize: You want to understand your child’s inner struggles. You need to look at the world through his or her eyes. This will enable you to know what aspects of the life-giving message of the gospel are appropriate for this conversation.

Yes

I would have to confess, to my shame, that often my children had a father who was unable to sympathize with their weaknesses. I was too focused on correcting external behavior and not focused enough on understanding my kids.

Excellent!

are hypocritically distanced from their children. You must remember

Communication Communication must be multifaceted and richly textured. It must include encouragement, correction, rebuke, entreaty, instruction, warning, teaching, and prayer. All of these must be part of your interaction with your children.

This is a healthy and helpful area that really ought to be expanded upon even more than the punitive side of discipline (spanking).

“shepherding the heart” to embody the process of guiding our children. It means helping

them understand themselves, God’s works, the ways of God, how sin works in the human heart, and how the gospel comes to them at the most profound levels of human need. Shepherding the hearts of children also involves helping them understand their motivations, goals, wants, wishes, and desires. It exposes the true nature of reality and encourages faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The attraction the “wrong crowd” holds is not a license for being bad. The attraction of the “wrong crowd” is camaraderie. Children long to be known, understood, discipled and loved.

Yes! Quite so, and these ought to be excellent points to repeat in order to drive them home to the parent.

As a child grows, the ability to control him that way diminishes.

As parents, we really do not control even with serious threats. We influence.

But I fear the majority reaction against spanking is a matter of fashion or style. The world of ideas is continually in flux. Ideas have their periods of popularity and unpopularity. Like color combinations that go in and out of vogue in the world of fashion and decorating, ideas go in and out of style.

Another condescending opinion. Not everyone, not even every Christian believes spanking is legitimate for little children. I know many who have come to that conclusion through much serious study of Scripture and perhaps other resources. They have not made these conclusions lightly nor out of fashion, style, or faddism.

Children are not born morally and ethically neutral. The Bible teaches that the heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV). The child’s problem is not an information deficit. His problem is that he is a sinner. There are things within the heart of the sweetest little baby that, allowed to blossom and grow to fruition, will bring about eventual destruction.

It is biblically correct that people are not born morally and ethically neutral. The Bible does teach that the heart is deceitful and wicked. In fact, it brings out just how bad we are when we stand before a holy God. Most of the contexts in which these verses are found have to do with diagnosing the symptomatic behaviors of wicked, evil men. The statements in the Bible describe their behaviors, then the Bible defines why that is. Context is very important.

The fool’s life is run by his desires and fears. This is what you hear from your young children. The most common phrases in the vocabulary of a 3-year-old are, “I want … ” or “I don’t want … ” The fool lives out of the immediacy of his lusts, cravings, expectations, hopes, and fears.

This is not totally true. A 3-year-old child doesn't always want or not want something because he is a fool living out of the "immediacy of his lusts, craving, expectations, hopes, and fears." Some of it is because he's a human who had needs. He will articulate this in the best way he knows how. What parents might interpret as utter selfishness may not be at all what is going on. There is an age appropriate developmental thing going on that ought not to be identified with sinful selfishness of a a fool.

God has ordained the rod of discipline for this condition. The spanking process (undertaken in a biblical manner set forth in chapter 15) drives foolishness from the heart of a child. Confrontation, with the immediate and undeniably tactile sensation of a spanking, renders an implacable child sweet.

The rod of discipline, while it brings pain, also brings a harvest of righteousness and peace.

The child whose parents use the rod in a timely, appropriate fashion learns to submit to authority.

This is one of the problems with spanking children at school. When a teacher undertakes the spanking, the spanking process is removed from its context in the parent-child relationship. The same mother and father who comfort the child when he is sick, who take him to amusement parks, who remember his birthday, give the spanking. A spanking is very different when administered by a non-parent.

But while implied that the FATHER uses the rod , the context does not say who administers the rod.

Failure to obey Mom or Dad is, therefore, failure to obey God.

But it obedience is not the only thing. Honor is the overarching command.

Is this really talking about the rod?

This is your task in shepherding your children. You must make a point of appealing to the conscience.

Correcting with a Central Focus on Redemption

Biblical goals must be accomplished through biblical methods. Therefore, you must reject the substitute

methods that our culture presents.

every stage of development,

Social sciences such as psychology and sociology came up with theories of developmental stages. To reject psychology or even some aspects of pop-psychology because they are not explicitly biblical and then to accept this theory from the social sciences is plain silly, if not hypocritical.

The function of the rod and communication is rescue. Correction and discipline moves your child from the peril of rebellion and disobedience back into the circle of safety.

Obedience is the willing submission of one person to the authority of another. It means more than a child doing what he is told. It means doing what he is told— Without Challenge Without Excuse Without Delay

Sounds good but where in the world do we find this in the Bible?

biblical appeal.

These might be decent guidelines for an appeal but how can the author say this comes from the Bible and therefore be biblical?

You begin to obey immediately, not after appeal.

There are always conditions and scenarios where this cannot or should not happen. Such a "rule" set up as a guideline can be legalistically harmful.

Even though the child will not be able to fully appreciate the importance of submission, training him to do what he ought, regardless of how he feels, prepares him to be a person who lives by principle

Agreed!

rather than mood or impulse.

It's not that simple. Children need to learn how to self-regulate, how to understand their emotions and ultimately how to control them. Moods come and go depending on so many variables. Children's brains do not have well developed pre-frontal cortexes. This portion of the brain is responsible for impulse control.

He must have a reference point out...

Unclear here - The reference point needs to become internalized which then leads to trusting himself to a degree to judge right and wrong.

Submission to parents means honoring and obeying. Within that circle is blessing and long life. As soon as your child steps out of that circle of safety, he needs to be rescued from the danger of stubborn independence from your authority. Your authority represents God’s authority. (Remember, you function as agents of God.) The rescue squad is Mom or Dad, armed with the methods God has given—namely the rod and communication.

When does a child need a spanking? When you have given a directive that he has heard and is within his capacity to understand, and he has not obeyed without challenge, without excuse or without delay, he needs a spanking. If you fail to spank, you fail to take God’s Word seriously. You are saying you do not believe what the Bible teaches about the import of these issues. You are saying that you do not love your child enough to do the painful things that God has called you to.

The “when” of spanking is so simple that parents miss it. If your child has not obeyed, he needs to be spanked. If he has failed to respond to your direction, he has moved out of the circle of safety. If obedience is to be absolutely mandatory for him, you cannot ignore or overlook disobedience. If disobedience is okay sometimes, then why not at all times?

Sometimes, the challenge to God’s authority (mediated through you as his agent) is not just failure to obey. Sometimes it is verbal. Perhaps the child says “No” to your request. Perhaps you receive a whining “Why?” Perhaps you receive a look of disgust and disdain. Whatever form it takes, rebellion must be challenged. Remember, the issue at stake is your child’s good. Your disobedient child has moved out of the context of blessing—submission to parental authority.

We could think of it like this. The child who is disobedient is living as a fool. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The fool is one who says, “I refuse to acknowledge that there is a God, to whom I am accountable.” Such a stance is pure folly, from which you must rescue your child with all due haste.

Remove his drawers so that the spanking is not lost in the padding of his pants. This should be done at the last possible moment. They should be returned as soon as you are done. It is best to lay the child across your lap rather than over a bed or a chair. This puts the spanking in the context of your physical relationship. He is not being removed from you to a neutral object for the purpose of being disciplined.

There is nothing in the Bible that teaches or promotes this action. As the Bible, especially in the original Hebrew text brings out, the punishment was for an older child, using a rod on the back, not on the butt. Further, this certainly would not be considered dignified.

At this point there should be complete restoration between you and your child. If he will not be restored to you, if he is mad at you, if he refuses to receive your affection, then something is wrong. In such cases, check two things.

Check his spirit. Is his anger a reflection of rejection of your discipline? Is he mad at you? Is he trying to punish you for what you have done? If so, the discipline session is not

over.

We have always been guided by Hebrews 12:11: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” If discipline has not yielded a harvest of peace and righteousness, it is not finished. On some occasions I have had to say to our children: “Dear, Daddy has spanked you...

if the foolishness bound up in your child’s heart is never driven away?

How will your child ever see his need of Christ’s forgiveness and grace if he never faces the native rebellion of his nature and his inability to obey God from the heart?

When he is resisting you, he is disobeying.

What I find is this. Spanking is most effective in dealing with young children. They fear being spanked. The spanking gives weight to your words. The spanking sobers and humbles the child. As children get older they get more stoic about spanking. They learn how to deal with it. The intensity of spanking required to make the same impression on a 12-year-old that you make on a 2-year-old would be excessive.

Not always and not completely. Speaking from experience, I do not remember the reason why I was spanked, just that my father spanked me. It certainly humiliated me and seriously discouraged my spirit.