What is the practical goal of parental discipline? Obviously, the Christian goal is children who love God, and live holy lives. But we set up a Standard of expected behavior for our kids: with respect to that Standard, what is our goal? Here’s the best answer I’ve heard:
“The goal is not to get children to conform to the standard: the goal is to get children to love the standard.”
Thus Doug Wilson, in more than one place, I believe (don’t have the source at hand). And I agree wholeheartedly. We want our children to love the Standard of goodness, truth, and beauty we set before them. When they do, we know we truly have their hearts. We know they are not just outwardly conforming, but inwardly seething (“just wait until I’m old enough to blow this place!”). It’s fairly easy to get kids to outwardly obey. It’s much harder to get them to love obedience, to love being good, for its own sake. The question of course is, “how do we accomplish this noble task?”
I wrestled long with this, agreeing with the principle, but somewhat uncertain how to put it into practice. Here then are some beginning thoughts towards this end.
First, a thesis: the goal of children who love the Standard is achieved through wise, loving, consistent discipline. This is obviously simplistic, but it will serve as a starting place. It is based on the observation that children cannot love what they do not know. They have to see that we love the Standard, first. But if we are lax, complacent, inconsistent in our discipline, they will never, ever believe that we love the Standard—because we don’t. If we did, we would show it by getting up off the couch the first time the child disobeys. Instead, too many of us go with, “If I have to tell you again…” or “I’m counting to three, and then…” Such language is the hallmark of those who do not truly love the Standard.
Then, too, if we do not achieve at least conformity to the Standard—if we do not have generally well-behaved children, and peace in the home—they will never even see the Standard in actual practice. Many children grow up never having even seen the Standard of their parents lived out. But if we achieve discipline and obedience, then, even if the child does not at first like it, he will, in time, grow to love it, for he will live it; and in the living, he will know peace and joy, interrupted only by the occasional need for discipline. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6, emphasis mine). Peace and harmony will be the pattern, with problems only an occasional exception.
Children will only love the Standard if their parents love it first. Wise, loving, consistent discipline shows that the parents do love the Standard, and creates an environment in which children can see the Standard lived out.
