Too Strict?

Dear Mr Pfister, my husband and I are struggling with parenting our two young children. He believes we don’t discipline severely enough, and this has led to our children acting out, while I believe we discipline too much, and this has led to our children rebelling and acting out. My husband and I are in a constant disagreement about this and it is affecting our marriage now as well. What is a healthy approach to parenting and discipline?

The first thing I ask parents to do when it comes to parenting and discipline is to work towards being on the same page with one another regarding their approach. If a husband is approaching parenting from one perspective and a wife from another there will inevitably be conflict. As a result, the children will receive a series of mixed messages and feel uncertain about how they are to respond or what is expected of them in any given situation. They will also see that dad and mom are on different pages – and apart from being confused – they will experience times where to obey one may mean disobeying another, which sends the undesired and detrimental message that authority can or should be challenged or ignored.

The approach we take to parenting needs to avoid two extremes: over- and underparenting. Overparenting is encapsulated in Colossians, where we read, “Fathers, provoke not your children to indignation, lest they be discouraged” (3:21). The message here is that if we are constantly correcting our children after every single thing they do wrong they will lose heart and begin to believe there’s little to nothing they can do right. This belief will show in their behavior through either shutting down or rebelling against our requests or directions.

Underparenting is also encapsulated in Sacred Scripture: “He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes” (Proverbs 13:24). The message provided here is that correcting or disciplining our children too infrequently (or not at all) will lead to the child not understanding well the difference between good and bad behavior, and so as a result they will struggle to make morally good choices and therefore struggle to fit in well with their peers or society. They will also constantly disregard our authority as their parents.

A healthy approach finds the middle ground between these two extremes. When our children are rebelling and struggling to listen to us as their parents, it is beneficial to determine amongst the spouses whether they have been over or underparenting, and correct appropriately. Just because the children are being misbehaved does not mean they are being underparented and need more discipline. Rather, the problem could be that they are being overparented, and this is depriving them of the love and affection they need from their parents. As a result, they are acting out as a way of trying to get the parents’ attention and love. As the expression goes, “negative attention is better than no attention at all.” What they’re really asking for in their childlike way is for more time with their parents.

Lastly, regardless of the approach we take to parenting, if it is not guided by love it will inevitably miss the mark and lead to over or underparenting. Whether we are teaching, disciplining, or punishing them, love should always be present in order to avoid this pitfall. Love is defined as willing the good of another, and therefore if love is present, we will naturally be seeking their good in the decisions that we as parents make, which is at the very core of healthy parenting.