1. My husband and I have started attending the Gospel Principles class in our ward. The lesson a couple Sundays ago was on the nature of our Heavenly Father. I was impressed when the teacher brought up God's response to Adam and Eve after they ate the fruit. God didn't yell at them and immediately kick them out of the garden for making a mistake, but he asked them what they'd done and why. It struck me that when my kids make mistakes, rather than losing it with them, I should stay calm, ask them what's happened, to get the full picture of the situation, then give the consequence. I loved it. That's some of the best parenting advice I've ever gotten from the scriptures.
2. I wish I'd written it down, but I heard (or read probably on Facebook) recently somewhere that when a child is put in time out, the reaction in the brain is the same as when the child is spanked, so really, I guess it doesn't matter how you punish because the child will feel the same isolation. This reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend Gina. She said that when her little girl acts up, rather than having a "time out," they have a "time in," where they talk about what happened and try to figure out what went wrong. I bet with a "time in" the child doesn't experience that same negative brain activity as he or she would because of a spank or a time out. More good advice, and it also parallels Heavenly Father's questioning reaction to Adam and Eve.
3. As I've been studying about domestic violence for a post I'm preparing to write, I came across this wonderful advice from Joseph F. Smith in 1939 from the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manual:
… If you will keep your boys close to your heart, within the clasp of your arms; if you will make them to feel that you love them, that you are their parents, that they are your children, and keep them near to you, they will not go very far from you, and they will not commit any very great sin. But it is when you turn them out of the home, turn them out of your affection—out into the darkness of the night into the society of the depraved or degraded; it is when they become tiresome to you, or you are tired of their innocent noise and prattle at home, and you say, “Go off somewhere else,” it is this sort of treatment of your children that drives them from you.
You can’t force your boys, nor your girls into heaven. You may force them to hell, by using harsh means in the efforts to make them good, when you yourselves are not as good as you should be. The man that will be angry at his boy, and try to correct him while he is in anger, is in the greatest fault; he is more to be pitied and more to be condemned than the child who has done wrong. You can only correct your children by love, in kindness, by love unfeigned, by persuasion, and reason.
Fathers, if you wish your children to be taught in the principles of the gospel, if you wish them to love the truth and understand it, if you wish them to be obedient to and united with you, love them! and prove to them that you do love them by your every word or act to them. For your own sake, for the love that should exist between you and your boys—however wayward they might be, or one or the other might be, when you speak or talk to them, do it not in anger, do it not harshly, in a condemning spirit. Speak to them kindly; get them down and weep with them if necessary and get them to shed tears with you if possible. Soften their hearts; get them to feel tenderly toward you. Use no lash and no violence, but … approach them with reason, with persuasion and love unfeigned.
