Parenting by Paul David Tripp

Author:Paul David Tripp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012030/REL109020/REL019000
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2016-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

8

Authority

Principle: One of the foundational heart issues in the life of every child is authority. Teaching and modeling the protective beauty of authority is one of the foundations of good parenting.

She was in tears as she spoke to me. Her frustration and dismay were written all over her face. She pushed through the crowd during a break at a weekend parenting conference. She was determined to talk to me, and it seemed nothing was going to stop her. She said, “I came here this weekend because I had to talk to you. You guys make parenting seem easy, with all your stories and principles, but it isn’t easy. I have a four-year-old son who I cannot control. There is nothing that I can do or say that will make him obey me. And if I raise my voice and say no, he throws a fit and will not stop until I finally give him what he wants. Rather than me parenting him, I feel he is controlling me. I know it’s wrong, but every morning I dread when he wakes up, and I can’t wait for the evening when he goes to bed. In between is just battle after battle; nothing is easy or enjoyable. The new thing now is that if I even hint at saying no to him, he hits me. I know he’s only four, but he has really hurt me a couple times. I’m at the end of my rope, and I don’t know what to do.”

How could your heart not go out to this poor, exhausted, discouraged, and frustrated woman? How could you not relate to how awful those battles are with a child that you love and you’re trying to help? But I want you to stop and consider one phrase. I want you to let it sink in. “I have a four-year-old son who I cannot control.” Four years old and he’s already out of control. Four years old and he knows what to do to get his own way. Four years old and he has brought a thirty-two-year-old woman to the end of her rope. Four years old and his anger strikes fear into the heart of his thirty-two-year-old mother. Four years old and he sets the moral and relational agenda in his home. Four years old and his mother dreads the next day with him. Four years old and he see his mother as an adversary, not a loving helper placed in his life by a loving God. Four years old and he sees authority as a very bad thing that he must fight at every point.

Now as you would probably understand, I couldn’t give that dear mother the specificity she was hoping for, because in order to do that I would have to ask a whole lot of questions that would help me understand how things had gotten so bad. But I want to examine with you the significance of the issue that was at the center of the dysfunction between this tired mom and her angry son.

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