Christlike Discipline, Part 1
Doctrinally, most of us understand the charge to become like Christ. After all is said and done, that quest should be paramount in our lives. When Jesus visited the Nephites, he asked then, “What manner of me ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27). This verse especially applies to our parenting. What kind of parents should we be striving to be? Even as Jesus Christ would parent!
We will not entertain in this book if Jesus Christ was married, and if he had children. We’ll save that discussion for another day. However, because of His nature, there are several attributes that we can bank on when it comes to Christlike parenting.
1. Christ would teach his children what is expected of them. In the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7, Jesus raised awareness with his disciples. He directly taught them, and inspired them to live a higher law. In fact, he taught his followers so plainly that there was no room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. He laid out, with exactness, what His disciples needed to do in order to become like him, have happy lives, and inherit the Kingdom of God.
Likewise, parents should teach their children with the same “laser-like” accuracy. It is the duty of each parent in the Church to teach their children the gospel of Jesus Christ (see D&C 68:25-28), principles, values, and life lessons. Frankly, we are to equip them everything they need to become productive citizens, strong parents, faithful and devoted marriage partners, and committed disciples of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the sacred duty of parenting centers on teaching our children. This is not the duty of the Church; it is a parent’s sacred duty.
Part of the teaching process includes educating our children on what is expected of them. Too often, we expect that our children will be just like us; that they will think they way we are thinking, and they will do things the way that we as parents think they should be done. We even expect our small children to act like adults, and when they do not, parents are often quite surprised. Perhaps you have heard the story of the three-year-old boy who walked out of his house, down the street, and to the busy intersection near his home. His mother, upon finding him, scolded him by asking, “How many times have I told you not to go down to the corner?” The little boy responded, “Mom, what is a corner?” In this case, the mother just assumed that her son knew what she was talking about. He didn’t have the foggiest idea!
Let us share with you another typical example. On a Saturday morning, a mother and father may wake up from a deep slumber and think, “We have so many projects to do around the house today with our family. Where do we begin? With the yard? With the garage? What about the kitchen?” At the same time, a teenager may arise for the day thinking, “where am I going to party today?” “Where is the dance tonight?” You can see the potential crash coming with these two, completely unrelated, chains of thought.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland shared the following experience from his life as a parent. We believe that it is something all parents can relate to. This illustrates that sometimes we expect more from our children than we should.
One evening I came home from long hours at school, feeling the proverbial weight of the world on my shoulders. Everything seemed to be especially demanding and discouraging and dark. I wondered if the dawn would ever come. Then, as I walked into our small student apartment, there was an unusual silence in the room.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked.
“Matthew has something he wants to tell you,” Pat said.
“Matt, what do you have to tell me?” He was quietly playing with his toys in the corner of the room, trying very hard not to hear me. “Matt,” I said a little louder, “do you have something to tell me?”
He stopped playing, but for a moment didn’t look up. Then these two enormous, tear-filled brown eyes turned toward me, and with the pain only a five-year-old can know, he said, “I didn’t mind Mommy tonight, and I spoke back to her.” With that he burst into tears, and his entire little body shook with grief. A childish indiscretion had been noted, a painful confession had been offered, the growth of a five-year-old was continuing, and loving reconciliation could have been wonderfully underway.
Everything might have been just terrific—except for me. If you can imagine such an idiotic thing, I lost my temper. It wasn’t that I lost it with Matt—it was with a hundred and one other things on my mind; but he didn’t know that, and I wasn’t disciplined enough to admit it. He got the whole load of bricks.
I told him how disappointed I was and how much more I thought I could have expected from him. I sounded like the parental pygmy I was. Then I did what I had never done before in his life—I told him that he was to go straight to bed and that I would not be in to say his prayers with him or to tell him a bedtime story. Muffling his sobs, he obediently went to his bedside, where he knelt—alone—to say his prayers. Then he stained his little pillow with tears his father should have been wiping away.
If you think the silence upon my arrival was heavy, you should have felt it now. Pat did not say a word. She didn’t have to. I felt terrible!
Later, as we knelt by our own bed, my feeble prayer for blessings upon my family fell back on my ears with a horrible, hollow ring. I wanted to get up off my knees right then and go to Matt and ask his forgiveness, but he was long since peacefully asleep.
My relief was not so soon coming; but finally I fell asleep and began to dream, which I seldom do. I dreamed Matt and I were packing two cars for a move. For some reason his mother and baby sister were not present. As we finished I turned to him and said, “Okay, Matt, you drive one car and I’ll drive the other.”
This five-year-old very obediently crawled up on the seat and tried to grasp the massive steering wheel. I walked over to the other car and started the motor. As I began to pull away, I looked to see how my son was doing. He was trying—oh, how he was trying. He tried to reach the pedals, but he couldn’t. He was also turning knobs and pushing buttons, trying to start the motor. He could scarcely be seen over the dashboard, but there staring out at me again were those same immense, tear-filled, beautiful brown eyes. As I pulled away, he cried out, “Daddy, don’t leave me. I don’t know how to do it. I am too little.” And I drove away.
A short time later, driving down that desert road in my dream, I suddenly realized in one stark, horrifying moment what I had done. I slammed my car to a stop, threw open the door, and started to run as fast as I could. I left car, keys, belongings, and all—and I ran. The pavement was so hot it burned my feet, and tears blinded my straining effort to see this child somewhere on the horizon. I kept running, praying, pleading to be forgiven and to find my boy safe and secure.
As I rounded a curve nearly ready to drop from physical and emotional exhaustion, I saw the unfamiliar car I had left Matt to drive. It was pulled carefully off to the side of the road, and he was laughing and playing nearby. An older man was with him, playing and responding to his games. Matt saw me and cried out something like, “Hi, Dad. We’re having fun.” Obviously he had already forgiven and forgotten my terrible transgression against him.
But I dreaded the older man’s gaze, which followed my every move. I tried to say “Thank you,” but his eyes were filled with sorrow and disappointment. I muttered an awkward apology and the stranger said simply, “You should not have left him alone to do this difficult thing. It would not have been asked of you.”
With that, the dream ended, and I shot upright in bed. My pillow was now stained, whether with perspiration or tears I do not know. I threw off the covers and ran to the little metal camp cot that was my son’s bed. There on my knees and through my tears I cradled him in my arms and spoke to him while he slept. I told him that every dad makes mistakes but that they don’t mean to. I told him it wasn’t his fault I had a bad day. I told him that when boys are five or fifteen, dads sometimes forget and think they are fifty. I told him that I wanted him to be a small boy for a long, long time, because all too soon he would grow up and be a man and wouldn’t be playing on the floor with his toys when I came home. I told him that I loved him and his mother and his sister more than anything in the world and that whatever challenges we had in life we would face them together. I told him that never again would I withhold my affection or my forgiveness from him, and never, I prayed, would he withhold them from me. I told him I was honored to be his father and that I would try with all my heart to be worthy of such a great responsibility.”[i]
Elder Holland’s dream will resonate with most parents. Too often we expect things from our children that they are not capable of giving. Perhaps we expect our children to read our minds, to share a passion for something that we care deeply about, or to do a household job the way a thirty-seven year old should do it– forgetting that our child is only seven. If we want to parent as the Savior, we need to communicate expectations that are age appropriate. We certainly should not punish our children for things that they did not know or understand.
Moreover, if parents can teach and model the expectation, for example, of work before play in a Christlike and loving way, then things tend to work out for the better. In fact, research demonstrates that when parents and their children have a great relationship, children are more likely to adopt their parent’s ideals, values, and beliefs. Therefore, in the example of the parents who wake up on a Saturday morning ready to take on the chores for the day, and the children wake up wondering where the party is– clearly laid out expectations in a loving, kind way could help soften and sooth a potential train wreck. Remember, teenagers don’t like surprises, especially when the surprise is related to them working and sweating!
[i]. Jeffrey R. Holland, “Within the Clasp of Your Arms,” Ensign, May 1983, 36.
