Sometimes it’s a vicious cycle.

My child misbehaves. I get frustrated. I respond in anger. Then the child gets angry and their behaviour becomes worse, which only serves to increase my frustrations.

And soon the situation spirals downwards and I’m left wondering how we got here so quickly.

I’ve signed up for a parenting devotional, and every morning scripture related to parenting is sent to my BlackBerry. On day 3 of this Bible reading plan, James 1:20 appeared in my inbox. “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” It went on to say that my anger, even if it’s in response to their misbehaviour, will not produce righteousness in my kids. In fact, the opposite will result. My anger will only cause them to become angry, and ultimately sets a very poor example of godly behaviour.

Parents can provoke their children by being to harsh, demanding, controlling, unforgiving, or angry. Children who grow up with parents who exasperate them, will become discouraged. They will lose heart.

We want to break rebellious, disobedient, or selfish streaks in our children, but we don’t want to break their spirits.

Instead we need to season our parenting with lots of grace.

Discipline = training through corrective discipline

Instruction = teaching

As you know, this is an on-going, daily, even minute-by-minute process. Deuteronomy tells us to talk about the things of God when we lie down and when we get up and when we walk along the road. Basically all the time. We are to continually raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

After only six years of parenting, I’ve learned one thing high and above the rest, and that is, I need to spend most of my energy as a mama on my knees for my kids.

Family Defined by Christ

We’ve been looking at four tiny verses tucked in the book of Colossians. They are ones that totally define family and how we are to relate to one another biblically.

If your family doesn’t line up with the Word of God, there is grace, and there is a new day to take a step closer to Christ.

How are you fulfilling your role(s) in your family before God?

What step can you take this week towards having a home where Christ is honored in the centre of your relationships?

My children know what their biggest job is.

It’s not to set the table, it’s not to put their toys away, and it’s not to make their beds – although these are part of their responsibilities around our house.

When you ask them, they will say …

Their biggest job is to obey Mommy and Daddy.

(I’m not saying they always obey. Some days they need to be reminded of this scripture many times!)

You see, we want them to understand and operate under our authority. Because we realize that when a child respects the authority of the parent, they are learning to live under God’s authority.

Children are to honour and obey their parents. This command has a promise attached to it. When children obey, it will go well with them, however when they step outside that circle of blessing, disobedience brings consequences.

The motivation for children to obey is out of love and devotion to God.

We must remind our children that obedience is to be in all things, not only those things in which they are happy to comply.

Training in obedience takes time, just as it does with our own obedience to our Heavenly Father. Daily situations provide ample opportunities to develop obedience in them (just as they serve to develop patience in us!).

I remind myself of this often when the sibling squabbles escalate and their sin natures rise to the surface. The training of children is a process. The time and effort I invest now in discipling them and pointing them to Christ will reap rewards in the future.

It’s the last thing he says before slinging his backpack over his shoulder, hopping out of the van, and turning to wave to me as he runs down the sidewalk towards school.

It leaves me frozen.

There was no time to say, “But…”

No time to correct his thinking. To explain that perhaps the way I’ve parented up until this moment may have been fundamentally wrong. To beg him to understand that his Heavenly Father is nothing like his earthly mother.

We’d been seeing signs in him over the last number of weeks. Signs of his need to please – his need to do everything perfectly. To base his self-worth on his accomplishments.

These tendencies are easy to spot in him because they are so very real within me.

He had cried long and loud over his sin, proclaiming that he couldn’t ever do anything right. Then he had showed me his creation and asked me if it was good. But not only good – was it perfect Mama? Did I do it perfectly, Mama? And then throughout an evening at Great-Grandma’s – the house with all things breakable – he asked multiple times if he was being good. Am I being good, Mama. Really good? Do I deserve a treat, Mama?

I sat long at his bedside one evening trying to tell him that God doesn’t expect perfection. That no one was perfect. I pointed to my own sin and my daily struggles. Then I explained God’s love and mercy and grace and forgiveness, ready and available when we ask. I told him of the righteousness God gives when we turn our hearts toward Him and believe in His Son.

God is not looking for perfection, only perfect hearts toward Him.

He nodded understanding and I wondered if he really did. I wanted to save him years of striving to please people, years of working hard to be good enough, years of basing who you are on what you do. How could I take what I know now and plant it deep into his little six-year-old mind and save him the grief?

Then this morning – here it was again. More evidence of this misguided thinking. On the way to school, we had been talking about what he wanted to be when he grew up. Maybe a policeman. Maybe a fireman. No, a policeman, he finally decided. Pulling up to the school, I turned around and reminded him that he had to ask God what He wanted him to be because God had a plan for his life. And the most important thing was to follow God.

Then he said it.

“If I’m good, I think God will let me be a policeman. But if I’m bad, He won’t let me.”

He closed the door with a resounding bang and I sat there surrounded by all the implications of that one tiny comment.

Although not likely able to articulate it, he believed if he was good enough, God would reward him with what he wanted to do.

Had I taught him that?

I think back to the little pep talk we had had before walking through the doors of Great-Grandma’s house. If you are good, you will be able to play video games with your friends tomorrow, but if you misbehave, video games will be taken away as your consequence.

(Video games – always the parenting trump card with him.)

I had taught him that. Those very words had come out of my mouth.

How to go back and teach him that God is not some being you have to appease with good works? How to change my parenting to model God’s love and grace toward us based on His character and not our behaviour?

Pulling the van back onto the road, I realize that same grace meets me in my parenting. There are second chances and new days and more opportunities to teach and guide little ones.

And as He teaches me, I can pass these truths on to my children. I’m learning that this parenting journey is as much or more about what God wants to develop in me, as it is what I desire to develop in my children.

Thank the Lord for grace.