The Importance of Discipline

Sam Crabtree is a grandfather who recently was watching his grandchildren while their parents were gone. And before they went to school, Sam let them know about a boundary he was putting in place. After school, they could have a snack until four, but not after that.

Pick them up after school. Okay, reminder, you can have snacks till four o'clock. After four o'clock, no snacks. Well, four o'clock comes, no snacks, and I'm starting to hear, I'm hungry.

And then the tone starts to intensify. I'm hungry, I'm so hungry, Grandpa. Well, supper will be in a little bit. And held the line, no snacks till supper. And the next night, only one said, I'm hungry, Grandpa.

Third night, no comments. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. Are there boundaries in place for your kids at your house? And do you enforce those boundaries? Do they get tested?

Of course they do. We're going to offer some help on how you can hold the line with your kids today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks for joining us. I get excited about programs we're going to do where I feel like, okay, we're going to help some moms and dads with some real, honest stuff you're dealing with. But then I think to myself, I come across a book like the one we're talking about today and I go, what I really want is to send this to my kids and say, start doing this with the grandkids, right? Don't you feel the same way?

Yeah, I was just going to say, you know what I get excited about is finding out little known facts about Bob Lapine that I just found out in the last minute. Our guest today is from Minnesota and I didn't know you were born in Edina, Minnesota. I was born in Edina, Minnesota, which I understand is kind of like old money, Minnesota. Is that right? I don't think it was in the fifties when I was there because we didn't have old money.

We didn't have much money, right? But I understand when I say Edina, now people go, oh, you're from that part of town. Yeah, well, you're trying to get away from what I'm going to say because I just found out Edina stands for, it's an acronym for every day I need attention. And I thought, there it is, Bob Lapine.

I hope they let me fly home. Our guest is not from Edina, but he is from the Twin Cities, Sam Crabtree joining us on Family Life today. Welcome back. Glad to be here.

Really glad to be here. Sam is an author. He's the executive pastor at a church in Minnesota called Bethlehem Baptist Church, which if people have heard of Bethlehem Baptist, it's probably because you had a pastor for a number of years who you worked with who became pretty well known. Yeah, John Piper brought me there. He was there 30-some years, and now he's full-time with Desiring God Ministries, and I'm on the board, and just incidentally, we're also next-door neighbors. Is that right? Oh, really?

So we roll our garbage to the curb together. Well, and you continue to serve at Bethlehem Baptist, although Dr. Piper matriculated about five years ago and is, as you said, full-time with Desiring God. Sam's an author. He's been here on Family Life today before, and when I saw your new book, I'm thinking a grandparent had to write this book. Your heart here is really to help young couples understand that they can serve their children really well if they will correct them really well. That's right, and it's been my heart's cry to God and my prayer that this would be helpful to parents, not just a book to put on the coffee table or add to the product line or something like that. I love Dennis and Barb Rainey's book on parenting recently out, emphasizes children as arrows, which is a biblical motif, and this book that I've written, Parenting with Loving Correction, is just a little tiny subcomponent of parenting, but it aims at making sure that those arrows are straight so that they'll fly to the mark where you're intending to aim them. As you look at young couples today raising the next generation of children, would you say that in this area of loving correction, young couples are getting it or that they need some help in this area?

Well, there's a continuum, as you know. There's a spectrum, and some young parents are well-trained maybe by their parents or grandparents or well-read or they've followed family life and they're just sharp as a tack on this. And then there are other families that I've observed that seem clueless, and I don't mean to be pejorative or condemning of them. It's my ache for them that prompted me to want to write this book to try to help them mean what they say when they speak to their children, so they'd get it. Those that are clueless, are they just checking out of correction altogether with their kids?

Is that what you're seeing? Well, again, I would hate to generalize and put everybody in the same bucket as to why they would do it. I think there can be different reasons why people don't correct their children well.

And I don't mean become dictatorial, tyrannical. That's not what I'm talking about here. That is not what I'm talking about here. But they don't hold a line with their children, maybe because they don't know how to, maybe because they're afraid of their children, maybe that they've been influenced to think, if I'm too consistent, that equates to harshness and rigidity and my child will grow up warped and will hate me and despise his childhood. And some parents are just weary.

They're just bushed. They're tired. It takes energy to correct your children.

So there can be multiple reasons why parents don't do it or won't do it. We just spent four days watching our grandkids, a four-year-old girl, two-year-old boy, and a one-year-old boy. And, you know, we're grandparents, right? And so when we got on the plane to fly home after four days, my wife looks at me and says, so, how you doing?

We haven't talked in four days. I'm telling you, Sam, I remember like, oh, I forgot how all-consuming this was, that stage is. And how did I have any time to spend with God?

How did I have a marriage, you know? Because it really is so demanding when our kids are so little. And I think in this culture, the loving piece, like we all want to love our kids. But what about the correction piece? What does that mean and why is that so important?

Well, just to identify with the energy part there. I mean, we love when our grandkids come. And we love when they go. And we love them dearly.

I mean, I would guess I don't pray for anybody more than my grandchildren. They're a high priority. How many do you have? Six. Six from age soon to be 14 on down. And they take energy.

They do. My daughter-in-law, because of her work, was on a work trip and her husband was able to go with her. So, they asked us if we would be the grandparents and Vicki was not able to be along.

Because she has a music studio and she had stuff scheduled in there. So, I went to be solo grandpa for four days and nights. Wow. How old were the kids at that time?

Well, I'd say they probably were 11 on down. Something like that. Okay.

Yeah. And so, I'm going to get them up in the morning, I'm going to breakfast them, make sure they're ready for school, have their hair brushed and whatever. And get them off to school, except for the four-year-old who was with me all day, Peyton.

And then get them after school, after school snacks, meals, supper, bedtime, scripture, memory, all that stuff, baths. I am very impressed right now. I'm exhausted right now. Yeah, that's the point. Yeah. And so, one of the things that I did, and this is germane now to this book, Parenting with Loving Correction, is I decided that while I was there and while I was the adult who was going to be responsible for stewarding these four opportunities, when they come home from school, snacks are in the order of the day and that's fine, appropriate snacks. But after four o'clock, no snacks.

Yeah. And it's a new rule at their house. So... Is that a new rule you brought or is their parents have? No.

No, so you're bringing it. And what was the reason behind the no snacks after four? Well, multiple reasons. One is if they just continue snacking into the evening, then they don't eat the good meal that's going to be provided. My wife is right now shouting at the radio going, yes, yes, Sam, you can't do this grazing all afternoon and then sit down for dinner. Please continue. Well, Bob, Bob, you got to look excited there.

Gee whiz. I've just heard this from my wife over and over again. And the later it gets, you know, the hungrier they can be and the more they're eating right before the meal is served. So no snacks after four o'clock. Right. Well, I was fully anticipating that this would meet with some pushback because it's new rule and besides, they're hungry.

And so they had multiple reasons to think, you know, could we have another king? But establish the rule early in the day. Now, when you get home, when you get home from school tonight, you can snack, you can have snacks as much as you want. If you want to have all the yogurt you want, you have as much as you want. At four o'clock, no snacks until supper.

So you prepped them early. Yeah, right. We talk about it. That's fair. You know, tyrants spring rules on people. Right. And good legislators prep the people and have listening meetings and all that. That's wisdom.

And I think so. So pick them up after school. Okay, reminder, you can have snacks till four o'clock. After four o'clock, no snacks. Well, four o'clock comes, no snacks, and I'm starting to hear, I'm hungry.

And then the tone starts to intensify. I'm hungry. I'm so hungry, Grandpa. Well, supper will be in a little bit. And held the line, no snacks till supper. And the next night, only one said, I'm hungry, Grandpa.

Third night, no comments. They knew. When supper gets here, we can eat. But at four o'clock, there's a cutoff. Well, they ate better at supper. We enjoyed conversation better at supper. There just was a better family dynamic that we're in this together, and this rule isn't hurting anybody.

Nobody is becoming malnourished because they can't graze till supper. Now, my enforcement, I'm on the energy question, you know. Yeah. That took energy.

I don't know how many times I had to say, nope, nope, sorry, supper will be in a little bit. It's on the stove. That takes energy from parents. And, you know, when you're burning through energy, there's a grace for it. But the more grace you're burning through, the more you want to, you know, you can run your engine at high speed a long time.

But once in a while, you've got to stop and change the oil, as it were. Right. So it does take energy from parents.

But I think the payoff is well worth it, and it was in that particular instance. So I think that the children win and the adults win because by, you know, the third night, nobody said a thing. So you hear that story and you're like, of course, why wouldn't any parent do that? Here's the question. Why don't parents do that?

Well, I think we're revisiting some of the rationale mentioned earlier. Some are tired. Some don't know that they could do it.

Some don't want to invest the energy. I'll tell you what it was for me. Because Mary Ann tended to be the more authoritarian parent in our household. I tended to be the more permissive. I'm the fun dad.

She's the rules mom. Oh, yes, this is Dave Wilson. Does this sound familiar to you? Yes. But I'm not resentful at all.

Not at all. Always having to be the bad guy. Honestly, part of, I think, what motivated me in this direction was I think there was some fear in my heart that if I was too rigid with my kids, I would lose their heart, that the relationship would somehow deteriorate. Looking back, I recognize that was more about my fear than it was about what was there in reality. I mean, if I could do the do-over, I would know that when I say no and they say you're the meanest dad there is and get mad and storm out, I haven't lost them.

That's a momentary, childish eruption. That doesn't mean they're not going to snuggle with me that night, right? But as a parent, I was fearful, Sam, of I don't want to be too rigid because I don't want my kids growing up going, I just hate my dad.

Yeah. My experience has been both with my children and my grandchildren and those rare episodes, and I'm so grateful they were rare, very rare, where I most sternly had to consistently chasten the child, punish the child. Within 30 minutes, they're sitting in my lap and we're playing a game together and the endearment is there, the belongingness is there, the past is the past, we've buried the hatchet. Yeah, I don't think we need to fear that. But we should hasten to say that correction takes place best in an environment where there's lots of affirmation. The reason loving correction is in this is because unless loving is the atmosphere in which correction is taking place, you're going to have problems if it's all correction and no loving, right? Yeah, in fact, you used the word no loving. No is loving, but if all they get is no, no this, no that, no never, no, knock it off, and there's not enough yeses, the no's become very unappetizing. In fact, they're hard to take anyway.

But if the child knows there's lots of yeses, lots of permission, lots of let's do this together, lots of let's experiment with this, lots of happiness and smiling and laughing and a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Well, I like that in your book that you talk about rewarding obedience and not disobedience. What's that look like? Oh, yeah, Crossway approached me and said, you know, if you got something you want to write and I thought that. So let me illustrate it. I was at the store just a couple weeks ago in line behind a woman with two small children, one of them in the cart, and she has a cart full of stuff and she's trying to get it on the conveyor belt for the checkout clerk. And the child, little boy in the cart is having a hissy fit, being demanding. And I would say, I would insert in here, parents, you can tell the difference in the cry of your children. You know, when there's a hurt, injured cry, they just pinched their finger. And you know, when there's a tired cry and so on. Well, there's also a defiant, I want to be in charge cry.

I want to have my way. I want that candy at the checkout line. Well, apparently she led him to believe somehow, I'd say he was maybe two years old, that she was going to buy some Twizzlers. And there they were, they were in the cart, but she hadn't gotten rid of them yet. And he's demanding.

And most of the checkout area in the store is aware that this is going on. And she's feeling embarrassed, I'm sure. Oh, the poor mom is humiliated.

Right, right, right. I'm not on her case about this. You're asking, how does it work? So, she fishes through the cart, finds the Twizzlers, hands them to the clerk so we can pay for the Twizzlers first. Then she opens the package while he's crying, pulls out a Twizzler and gives it to him.

Now I would ask, what did she just do? She rewarded his disobedience. She rewarded his hissy fit.

So, the principle that God has wired into the universe is that behaviors that are rewarded tend to be repeated. So, she rewarded his hissy fit, his demanding cry, his actually her, his defiance because she told him no several times. So, she hands him a Twizzler. So, I watched.

He bit the end off of the Twizzler, held his hand out over the edge of the cart. No. And dropped it on the floor. On purpose.

On purpose. Oh boy. And demanded another one, a hissy fit, just a screaming fit. So, she pulled out another one and gave him another Twizzler. And, you know, she's paying him to do this. Right. Instead of rewarding his cooperation, she's rewarding his hassle factor. And so you're going to get more of it.

Okay. I'm hearing this story and, you know, and I agree with what you're saying, but I'm thinking of this mom who is in crisis management mode. She's got somebody behind her who's trying to get into the shopping cart, the whole place. She's just trying to get through this moment. Yeah, she might have had a big fight with her husband that day and she's exhausted. Or she just wants to get the whole thing kind of under control in the moment so that not everybody's staring at her and the people behind her aren't going, Could you hurry this up? And the cashier's going, Can't you manage your kids? She's just trying to solve that instant problem and she'll worry about the obedience and disobedience thing later.

So, Sam, tell us what to do. Is there something she could have done in that moment that would have been better? Did you say anything to her?

I didn't. Jurisdiction matters. I mean, if it's your own kid, that's one thing. And if it's a stranger in a checkout line and a lot of judgment calls there and I wouldn't fault somebody if they did say something. And there are people who would handle it maybe different than I did, which is just to watch it happen and then wish her well as she went on her way.

And you wrote your book. And I tried to engage both of the children in the conversation. What I would say to her is that if you want to just placate the child so that you can get done with the shopping and get out of the store, just beware, you just made your problem worse.

Are you sure you want to pay that cost to get out of the store? Because the child would not be injured if you just let him cry. He can learn to wait. Isn't waiting one of the hardest things in life we do, even as adults?

We so hate to wait. But delay of gratification, that's part of maturity. And we help our children when they have to wait for some things. Not that we, you know, intentionally torture them by extending wait periods, but a reasonable wait is get out of the store and you can have your twizzler. Would you have in this situation, say it's your granddaughter, grandson, and the same thing's happening, or it's your son, years ago, daughter years ago. Would you have said, no, you're not going to get a twizzler now? Or would you have said, if you can ask more politely, I'll give you a twizzler. If you stop the crying, stop the whining, and ask for one more politely, rewarding the good behavior, not rewarding the bad.

Well, it's a good question. And my answer would vary based upon how old the child was. And I didn't know this two-year-old in the shopping cart. But with my children, we had the conversation before going to the store, and my daughters loved going to the grocery store with me. We would get two carts. For a number of years in our marriage, I would go to the grocery store, Vicki would stay home, and I'd take the girls. And it was an adventure, one girl in each cart. Are you pushing both carts?

I'm pushing one and pulling the other. And as they grew older, I would invite them into decisions I think they could make. Now, early on, I just would hand them stuff, and then their decision is where to put it in the cart.

And they'd stack and re-stack and then re-stack and re-restack. But later I'd ask, which kind of soup should we get? Which kind of cereal should we buy? Do you think we're out of lettuce? And invite them into the shopping.

This one costs this much, this one costs this much. What do you think we should do? But we had the conversation ahead of time, and they knew that if you are belligerent, which is different than just being active or mischievous or you happen to knock something off the shelf inadvertently or something like that. If there's a belligerence, we'll just leave the carts right there, and we'll get in the car and go home, and you won't be happy about it. Did you ever have to do that? I did.

I'm thinking once. You remember? Mm-hmm. I can remember being in a grocery line with three little boys. And I was always jealous. I'd look at moms with girls, and I'm thinking, why are they girls so content just to sit?

And the boys had so much energy. And I had some of those moments in the growth. I think every parent has moments that you just feel like, my children are out of control, and I'm so embarrassed. And so I learned quickly that we had to have the conversation before we walked in the grocery store or chaos would ensue. And so, yeah, I think in the grocery store, we kind of set the limits.

Boys, here's what's going to happen. If you get crazy in there and disobedient and screaming, we'll go back to the car and we'll go home. And then I would go back alone. And they loved the grocery store, too, because we had fun there. I'd throw them things like it's basketball, and they'd put it in the cart.

And so it would become this great adventure, and if they didn't get to come, they really missed out. But you hit on something, and we talk about this in the Art of Parenting video series, and it's what you're talking about in the book, Sam. For correction to occur, there has to be instruction before there's correction.

And I see a lot of parents assuming that a child is going to know how to behave, not coaching a child, not doing the instructing, not having those huddles in the parking lot before you go in and execute the game plan in the store. When you pull in and say, okay, here's what's going to happen. We're going to go into the store.

It's going to take us about 20 minutes. You may get bored at some point. But here, I want this behavior to be like this, and it'll be a good experience if we get this. And maybe we'll go to the park this afternoon if it all works out well here. But if it doesn't go well here, it's not going to be a good day the rest of the day. And you get them understanding that, and then in the middle of it, you can say, remember what we talked about in the car?

And you can draw on that. Not only talking in advance in the car, but it can happen in the moment in the store. So, something happens in the store. You can say, you know, you're not in trouble about it this time, but if you do that again, are we clear? Look at me in the eye now. Do you understand? If you do that again, that's an offense.

That's trouble for you. The key here is that there needs to be loving correction. And for this to be loving, you have to have a foundation in place for that correction to occur properly. That's what is at the heart of what you've written about in the book, Parenting with Loving Correction, Practical Help for Raising Your Children. And we're making this book available to Family Life Today listeners who can help support the work of this ministry.

We're a listener-supported ministry. Your donations are what make this daily program possible. So, if you can pitch in and help with the ongoing work of Family Life Today, we'd love to send you a copy of Sam's book as our thank-you gift for your support.

Again, the title of the book is Parenting with Loving Correction, Practical Help for Raising Your Children. You can request your copy when you donate online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make your donation. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. The number to call is 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Be sure to ask for your copy of Sam Crabtree's book, Parenting with Loving Correction, when you make a donation. And then find out more about Family Life's resource, The Art of Parenting, the video series that we have available that's being used in small group settings, at least when we're able to have small group settings or Zoom classes or whatever you're doing to connect with people. The Art of Parenting is a great resource to help you think about the key issues we face when we're raising toddlers or raising teenagers. Find out more about The Art of Parenting when you go to familylifetoday.com.

One more resource I want to mention to you. We're aware that a lot of marriages have been facing strain and pressure because of the uncertainty of what's going on in our world and in our lives these days. That stress has put pressure on marriages, and so we put together an online resource that is called Taking Your Marriage from Good to Great. This includes a couple of online mini courses, one on resolving conflict in marriage, another one called Lightbulb Moments for Your Marriage. There's access to audio teaching from Paul David Tripp, Gary Chapman, Vodie Baucom, Julie Slattery, and then some downloadables, a quiz you can take to determine whether you're a good listener, conversation starter questions for you and your spouse. And then there's an additional incentive to get you to engage with this content. One couple who signs up for the Taking Your Marriage from Good to Great resource, one couple is going to join us here at Family Life for an upcoming Family Life Today recording session, as our guests will fly you in, put you up, and after the recording session, you'll have dinner that night with Dave and Ann Wilson. So we thought maybe that would just give you a little extra incentive to build a stronger marriage. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com for all the information, all the details.

There's no purchase necessary. Again, the information is available online at FamilyLifeToday.com. Now tomorrow, we're going to talk about why it's so important for parents to not only set boundaries, but not to capitulate, not to weaken on those boundaries. Sam Crabtree joins us again tomorrow. Hope you can be back with us for that as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.