The biggest resource I had when my children were little, other than the Bible, was a small book from Michael and Debi Pearl, To Train Up A Child. One of the biggest things I learned was to expect first time obedience from children. This meant no counting . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . because that only teaches the child that you don’t mean it until you get to three. Shocking, I know.

Now I have to admit that it has been ages since I read that book, as in sometime in the 90’s, but I believe that it had a lot of valuable tips. I probably don’t agree with it 100% but then the only thing I do agree with 100% is the Bible. If you are in need of some help in this area, I recommend getting this little book. I found that it is now available on Amazon.

A book Tiffany read in the last couple of years and told me about, is Bringing Up Bebe, which shares the experiences of an American family living in France and how child rearing is different in the two places. There were so many good points in this book that I bought it. It talks about having specific times children eat, ensuring they eat healthily, greet adults properly, and how they are taught to be sage or wise. (There are a few cuss words in it though. We are removing those words from our copy. )

We didn’t do “time outs” much when my children were little. There were probably some occasions when I did but I don’t recall that being a big part of disciplining them. However, when a time out is used, it is important to be diligent and not let the time go beyond what is appropriate. I did some research and basically learned that if time out is used, it should only last as many minutes as the years of age. For example, a six year old would have a six minute time out and a two year old would have a two minute time out. I also learned that a timer should be set in the child’s view, so that they can see when it will be over.

These are important points because you do not want to provoke your child to anger. I am certain that longer time outs than what is appropriate for the child is anger provoking and thus probably not very helpful in the long run.

Another thing I found was that the time out should be in the same area where the family is at the time  not sent to another part of the house. Of course, I’m sure there are exceptions to this.

I’ll close today with this link to an article I thought had some good Biblical tips on parenting. I hope it blesses you.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº