Transcription
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Debi Pearl: Pop and I are going to record, so, you all go ahead and shut the door.
Child 1: Will you push me on a swing?
Child 2: Yeah sure!
Child 1: OK, yeah, let's go...
Announcer: Welcome Vintage Answers. This week, we get advice on how to handle teenagers that step over the line.
Debi Pearl: Hi, we are Michael and Debi. We have been so blessed to be learning the principles that you have been sharing with us through your books, especially to train up a child. We have been ordering quantities of this book and have been sharing it and the principles with a number of families in our church. The result is the beginning of a revival of families within our fellowship. The hearts of the fathers is being turned towards the children. We hope to soon see the hearts of the children being turned towards their fathers. One area that we are struggling with however, is the fact that several families have early to mid teens where early discipline and training were not properly applied.
As the children have entered their teen years, the parents have become more and more distant, and permissive. There is great resistance to mom and dad, and even some rebellion showing up as these teens attempt to display their independence.
My wife and I are seeking God as to how to counsel these hurting families. We believe that it is not too late for them to get things straightened out. We believe they need to confess to the children their failures to date, and explain how they understand the importance of firm loving discipline.
We believe they need to establish well defined boundaries, and take an uncompromising stand to uphold those standards at all costs. We know that in doing so, there will be quickly come that great confrontation, the conflict of wills. We believe that when that occurs, it is crucial that mom and dad will win the conflict.
The question we are struggling with and would greatly appreciate, in your counsel is, what kind of consequences is appropriate for a teenager when they step over the line? Coming short of saying it directly, we have strongly implied in several cases that the rod be used.
In these cases, they have tried things like grounding them from outside activities and cell phone and really haven't got anywhere. We believe they need to do something immediate and significant. However, we are just not sure about the wisdom of using a paddle on a 14‑year‑old child.
Michael Pearl: All right, this is so common, it is so rife with possibilities. We have often said, the best time to train the child is before one year old, and the time at two and a half, over a half of their training has been done. By the time a child gets four or five, if you have maintained good control and you have trained well, then you can pretty well be confident that 90 percent of the training is behind you. It is over with.
By the time a child gets 12 or 13, you can just about shut your training book. There is not much left in terms of child training. Now there is still a matter of relationship, just as a husband a wife can grow together, or two men, or three or four men and a prayer group can relate to one another and grow together.
All of us can minister to each other as adults, and there is still plenty of room for growth. But there comes a point when that growth is not something enforced upon us from without, but it's something that springs from within when we make a decision that we have a need and we want to grow.
When a child gets to 13 or 14, 15, 16, it depends on the child. Some children mature three or four years behind another child. By the time a child gets up around that age, at the time they grow through puberty or a little before, or maybe a little after, right about that time, the child comes to a full knowledge of good and evil.
Comes to a full awareness of themselves as an individual, a distinct person, and at that point, it's natural for a child to take control of his own life. It is natural for him to become an individual, distinct, in a sense separate from the family, separate from all other beings on the earth, and to stand alone before God.
It wouldn't be natural for the child to continue to be emotionally, psychologically, and physically dependent upon their parents. The power play is over with, by the time a child gets that old, in other words it's too late to put pressure on and say, "You will do this or else..."
It's just too late for that. Now, there is a way in which a parent can...without passion, can objectively bring pressure on a teenager, but you can't do it like you did when they were young. You said early to mid teens.
A child who is in the mid teens, or an adult nearly, who in the mid teens, that individual should be mature enough to be a parent. Should be mature enough to be a mother or father. Should be mature enough to be counseling other people, and if they are not, then what you have is a terrible failure, a terrible wreck. The only way you're going to win that child, change that child is through mutual consent. Now you made a statement.
You said you feel like the parents need to confess their failures. You're making that suggestion. It's a good suggestion, but the parents have to come to the place, individual parents have to come to the place to where they feel genuinely feel, understand, think, have an intellectual conviction that my child is as he is, because I have failed.
When a child knows that...when a parent knows that, then with sincerity, he can go to the child and he can say, "Look we have learned some things since we raised you, and we have failed. We realize that some of your stubbornness and some of your hostility, some of your bitterness, we bred that in to you.
We bred the laziness and the indifference and the hostility, and we share fault. We don't want to do that with our smaller children. We want to make a change. We want to make a difference, and we want you to help us.
We want you to help us raise and train these smaller children. We want you to have some input in this." If you'll approach the child that way as another human being, if you approach the child humbly, rather than haughty and arrogant and with demands. Then, you are going to get a whole lot of more compliance and a whole lot more participation.
You said there is a conflict of wills. That's it exactly. The child now has a mature will, an early teen to a mid teen, now has a mature will, and the parents will cannot win over the child anymore than the child's will can win over the parents, anymore than your will can win over your neighbor's will.
You have to solicit a response from the child and the child has to comply with you willingly. OK, you said what kind of consequences. Again, that is going to depend on the parents, it's going to depend on the child, it's going to depend on the relationship you have to that child.
But let me start with the oldest teens. When a child gets up to 17 or 18 years old, at that point, it's too late to spank them, to deny them, to make them stay in their room, to do all those sorts of things.
You have to reach a point to where you are willing to say if you are not willing to keep the rules in this house, you can leave. You do that without a lot of emotion, you do it like a landlord would do, when he would say, if you're going to keep knocking the windows out, then move out.
You got to come to the place to where you can treat that child as an adult and say, "Listen, as long as you are in this house, you will pick up your clothes. You will not scream at your mother. You will not beat on your brothers and sisters. You will not this and that..." and give him a list of rules that are not invading their personal, private space.
A list of house rules, rules that govern the social order. That's not unreasonable. That should not create hostility. Then stick by your guns. In other words say, "If you are not going to go by these rules, then get out."
When a child gets old enough, for you to run him out of the house, I guarantee you that they will either conform or leave, and you have to be willing to let them leave. When a child is say, 13 or 14 years old, then you just have to be firm.
You have to have some house rules, you have to establish them, you have to say, "You will do this, you will do this, and you will do that." Then if they don't comply, then all you can do is, give them without emotion, without a lot of stress, give them added workload.
For instance, you can tell a child, he has got to cut the grass, and if he doesn't cut the grass, then he cannot go and play ball on the Saturday afternoon, and then you give him plenty of time to cut the grass. If he doesn't get the grass cut, then you don't take him to play ball.
Something like that, where you can win, where you can maintain control. When a child is small, the boundaries have a lot to do with attitude, have a lot to do with the spirit of the child, and as the child gets older, you have to turn loose of that spirit.
You have to turn loose of the attitude, because at that point all you can really make demands on them are physical, circumstances that exist there within the home.
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Announcer: Well, that wraps up this week's Archives. We hope that you found it as encouraging as we did. Don't forget to check out the specials at Cane Creek Corner.
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I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. 3 John 4
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http://www.gordontraining.com has good advice on how to deal with delinquents and other rebels from the detention centers to the school classroom and regular workplace.
Keep in mind the above resource is psychology (the associated change of words and phrases to bring change) so it won't give that full spiritual lift and comes from the bible. Christian values can't be enforced anyway.....they are a naturally driven truth.
I have used the http://www.gordontraining.com methods of Empathetic listening and creating win-win situations and my TWO year old ACTS like an adult! Imagine "mommy may I please try a cup of coffee" comming out of the mouth of a two year old.
The down side is that if you haven't been practicing GOOD HONEST-SERVANT-GUIDE style psychology for many years with children, it is difficult to change the routine.