Vlog: How To Give Your Child An Effective Time-Out

Tedd Tripp in Shepherding a Child's Heart (a book I highly recommend) says "You must not be embarrassed to be authorities for your children. You exercise authority as God's agent. You may not direct your children for your own agenda or convenience. You must direct your children on God's behalf for their good."

Remember that just as you are in authority over your children - you are under authority to God. You are both in the same boat - under the authority of God. When your child disobeys God by disobeying you - and we fail to be loving, kind, self-controlled and gentle while we are training our children - then we are also disobeying God.

Our goal should not be to change their outward behavior but to change their heart. And those changes can only come through loving discipline and Godly instruction.

I have chosen to share how I do time-outs in my home. But I want to add, we do spank. I use the identical "conversational" loving manner - and exchange the time out for a couple of swats. The Bible speaks clearly in Proverbs about spanking but I have chosen to keep this matter private due to the controversial nature of spanking in our culture. If you are looking for verses pertaining to this form of discipline you can find them here: Proverbs 13:24; Proverbs 19:18; Proverbs 22:15; Proverbs 23:13,14; Proverbs 29:15.

Here's how I do time outs:

Proverbs 1:7 says "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline."

If we as moms fail to teach our children the fear of the Lord and the greatness of God daily through role modeling it in our life, reading Bible stories, memorizing verses with them and prayer - then we can expect the heart of our children to be hard. We must remember to teach them God's word in fun moments along the way of life - so when we pull out verses during training time they don't feel thumped over the head by God's word but rather lovingly instructed.

Remember that when you train your child, you train generations to come - so persevere! Galatians 6:9 "Do not grow weary in doing good for in due season you will reap a harvest IF you do not give up."

Walk with the King!

I am linking up here :