Discipline? Punishment? Course Correction?

As we are finishing up going through the book Spiritual Parenting by Michelle Anthony, she has a very interesting chapter on "course correction", the words she has chosen to use with her children instead of discipline or punishment.  "Punishment" has a negative connotation and so does "discipline".  As she studied Hebrews 12:11-13, Michelle proposes three steps that are involved in the way she explains "course correction". 

Step one is that the consequence for sin, breaking a rule or doing something wrong has to be painful to the child.  This is where we need to ask God for something specific that will speak pain to the child.  God has created this child and knows best what the child needs in this pain to bring him/her to a place of repentance and remorse.  God customizes life experiences, specific trials and loving environments for each of us to train us to repent of our sin, which is the root cause of our doing evil/bad/wrong things. 

After our child has gone through the season of pain, step two is to build them up in love, strengthening what we broke down in step one, bringing restitution in love in reassurance and in encouragement as our Heavenly Father does for us when we sin.

Step three, we are to "make a straight and level path so the lame will not be disabled but rather healed."   God wants us to learn what is the right way to do something so that we will be healed from the root issue of sin instead of becoming disabled by the issue.  God's promise then is that the harvest produced will be a harvest of righteousness and peace for those trained by the process of course correction.  We can then celebrate when the healing takes place and the sin has been dealt with openly and honestly. 

As parents, this was a new and refreshing way of looking at disciplining our children to accomplish true spiritual changes in our children's lives instead of just modifying their behavior.  Behavior modification may work in the short term and look like a true change of behavior but it hasn't dealt with the heart issue of the child. 

An interesting website that also has some excellent issues on dealing with heart issues of our children is  www.biblicalparenting.org.  They send out a couple tips a week if you'd like to subscribe at their sight.  They have also published a book called Parenting is Heart Work by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN.

Am I listening to the Lord and discerning His voice?

I walked into a situation this morning where the thought "what needs to be done here?" came to my mind as I was walking through the Children's Wing here at church.  One of the ladies was looking for a particular item for the MOPS meeting and the lady helping her had no idea where the item was.  Overhearing the whole conversation, I had a choice to make as I continued walking down the hall.  Do I want to step in and help this lady find what she needed or do I just continue walking and ignore the need.  Because this thought was fresh in my mind about being aware of what needs to be done, I couldn't just ignore it.  So, I went back and found the lady, showed her where the item was that she was looking for.  I have been here for 16 years and know our resources intimately, so was able to show her 3 or 4 other possibilities for what she needed to accomplish.  That made her day because she had been struggling to do her job in MOPS.

In our Sunday School class last Sunday (11:00, Room 9 through Nov. 28), our topic was "What Needs to be Done?", teaching our children to look around and see what needs to be done.  Michelle Anthony (author of the book "Spiritual Parenting") relayed in the book that she had chosen to not use the word "chores" with her children but instead used "acts of service".  She wanted her children to understand that we all have certain things that need to be done, just being part of the family, but we are interdependent on each other and sometimes need to do things above and beyond the call of duty.  She feels that our children need to be taught that their calling from the Lord is to be servants, so it can be taught to children while they are young and  learning life habits. 

How about you?  Have you ever thought about what needs to be done as you walk into a particular situation?  Did you respond to or ignore the need?