I am sure most of you have heard of this somewhat new approach to parenting and maybe some of you have implemented it into your household. For those of you who have not heard of this, it is a method of disciplining your child to make better choices based on looking logically at the consequences. The parent is to let the child find out for themselves why a choice is wrong by allowing them to go through the natural consequences of their choices. I personally have not read any of the books based on this approach pioneered by Foster Cline and Jim Fay but I have read up enough on it to be concerned. My main concern is that I see this method being heavily endorsed within the Christian community. Just a quick peruse on the internet will yield classes galore being offered by churches across the US. So what's wrong with teaching our children to seek to make better choices? Isn't this what God wants us to teach our children? To govern themselves by making wise choices?

Well, yes - these things are good things and definitely an important goal in parenting. The problem lies within how this is taught. and why.  According to this method children will learn how to make choices based on subjective external circumstances rather than objective truth. The lines between right and wrong will become hazy as children use the circumstances of their lives to guide future decision making. God has given us His Word to use to measure all our choices by. This is the standard we are to use in instructing our children in their decision making. 

The second problem I find with this approach is that we are not teaching our children that obedience is of utmost impotance. The Bible tells us that foolishness is bound up in our children's hearts thus they will make foolish decisions based on their own foolish whims. The parents job is to train them in the way they should go showing them how to govern themselves through obedience. Heart is the key to this as they learn to be led by the Spirit by obeying God. God has directed them to obey their parents and so obeying mommy and daddy is obedience to God. When we are not setting a standard in which they are to obey then they are learning to be led by their own foolishness  based on their own understanding. This is contrary to blindly following and obeying God. He may ask us to do something that seems foolish and/or illogical (think Joshua) and God wants our obedience no matter what the consequences may be.

Lastly, motives come from the heart. Every decision we make proceeds forth from what is in our hearts. Teaching our children to make future decisions based on the consequences from past decisions alone will only encourage them to look at situations selfishly seeking what is good for themselves. When the Word of God is placed at the heart of why we do what we do then the decisions will flow from love of God and love of others. These are the two greatest commandments God has given us to use in the governing of ourselves (decision making). This is not to say that we should not review the consequences of our actions and learn from them, but only in light of what Scripture says about our actions because doing what is right will always be right no matter what consequences came. In fact, doing what is right often causes others to be upset and sometimes angry at us.

So in light of all this we can clearly see that God has given us everything we need to train our children in the way they should go and so instead of seeking out this world's advice and/or philosophies on parenting, we need go no further than His Word to find wisdom on how to instruct our precious little ones.

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness"  2 Tim. 3:16