Being an authoritative parent

by Brandon George
Published July 20, 2004

In psychology we are taught that being an authoritative parent is the best kind of parent to be. So what does this mean?

Well the definition given to psychology students about being authoritative are parents who have strict rules and guidelines, and who push their children to follow them. Discipline their children when these rules are not followed, and then reaffirm this discipline with the parents love and warmth.

Now I know that this is not verbatim, of what some psychology books teach, but you get the idea. Now lets look at what being a good parent means, according to scripture.
One of the must often quoted and sometimes maybe abused statements of the bible is "Spare the Rod, Spoil the child".
These are wise words, but to often are used to justify someone who beats or uses the Rod but does not follow up with love to reaffirm the discipline.

If you would Turn to Proverbs 13:14 (Holy Bible - NIV): "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him."

I think we should pay close attention to this. "...he who love him is CAREFUL to DISCIPLINE him..." Careful. This must be emphasized. You must carefully discipline your child. Now when these words where written by David they were in Hebrew. What occurred in the NIV version of the bible was common English of today (NIV was composed in the late 60's early 70's) was used in place of Old English that had no striking meaning to today's common bible reader.
So the careful selection of the word 'careful' is very intuitive to what the Hebrew word Meant. Now I am by no means qualified to judge on the translation but I believe it to mean that we should take great care, when dealing with children and how we discipline them. Let's take this a little further and look up the meaning of the word careful.

According to dictionary.com careful means: "Attentive to potential danger, error, or Harm. Cautious, Thorough, Protective." Some of the synonyms of the word careful are: "heedful, mindful, observant, and watchful."

So taking what we have just learned about the word careful, which is stated and applied before and to the word discipline. We can see that we should be mindful of how we discipline, watchful of it, and thorough with our discipline. We should take time to talk through our discipline.
For me this goes back to anything that is good, takes time and effort. So in order to raise children correctly and according to scripture we should be mindful, and thorough of our discipline concerning them. And we should follow it with CAREFUL love that reaffirms that discipline. This will in turn, also answer in the child's mind the question of "Why" they are in trouble.

Now many papers, and much research can go in further and great detail into the internal psyche of the child mind and the effects of discipline, but that is not the point of this article. Instead the goal is to point out that I believe modern psychology is correct in the statement that authoritative parents is the best style of parenting to be. I also believe that modern psychology is just restating something that is taught to us from long ago. Right out of proverbs. (Even though some of them may not admit it!) That We should all strive to be authoritative parents, reaffirming to our children through love by example.

May YHWH God guide us parents to love our children as he wants us too.

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