Blessing Our Children with Discipline

The first thing we think of when disciplining children is spanking. But the word discipline comes from the word for disciple. We long to train our children to want to be as much like Jesus as they can possibly become. Consequently, our Sunday morning alternative class in the multi-purpose room for the spring quarter (April-June) is “Blessing Our Children with Discipline.” For this class we will begin by viewing and discussing a series of videos by Dr. Thomas W. Phelan entitled, “1-2-3 Magic” and “More 1-2-3 Magic.”

Kathy and I have been using these videos and question sheets to help train parents at our local crisis pregnancy center. We found ourselves so blessed in teaching the classes that we bought our own sets of videos and materials. According to Dr. Phalen this program can help ‘manage difficult behavior in children’ and ‘encourage better behavior, independence and self-esteem.’ Personally, I have not found a better way to impress children with the immediacy of the relationship between actions and consequences.

We hope that if you have children at home or hope to someday, that you will choose to be a part of our class. While Dr. Phelan’s principles are very helpful and I wish that they would have been available when my children were smaller, the best direction for training our children will still come from God’s word. As the class progresses, we will also discuss Grace-Based Parenting, by Tim Kimmel as well as other parenting resources from a Christian perspective.

What we want most is for our children to absolutely love Jesus. Whatever we can learn and do that will lead them in that direction is what we desire. Please come and add to the discussion.

Because He lives,

Jack