He made me laugh as I was trying to get him to understand what he had done, and why he needed a spanking. I was rolling. I just couldn't spank him while laughing. What would you do?

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Clark Brooking
Pastor
Living Hope Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Clarksville, MD

um, er, um....


guilty as charged. The same thing has happened several times with me. My girls are unwittingly funny when they're trying to get out of the whole they've dug and in doing so dig themselves so deep that it's both too funny and too pathetic to spank them for at the time. I should have better resolve, but when I'm about to bust a rib laughing inside it's awfully hard to compose myself to take it as I ought to.

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Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://inprincipiodeus.solideogloria.com
http://puritanwisdom.blogspot.com

"As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low."
John Flavel in Keeping the Heart



Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Double up.

j/k, but I have no idea!

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Andrew Thornquist My Photo Album
Calvinistic Baptist
Ukiah, California
To follow Christ was the best decision God made for me!

That's happened to every parent, I'm sure!
I usually try very, very hard to hide the laughter and just say something stern while looking away!
What did he do that was so funny?

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Shalom,
jessi
PCA
Steelers fan exiled to Virginia


“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”
Martin Luther

He had responded inappropriately to his mother's instruction -- he threw a fit, so to speak. I was trying to explain that obedience includes attitude (on a 3-year old level, of course), and he kept saying in a forlorn, half-cry, "but I stopped crying, see?; but I stopped crying, see?."

Not so funny in text form. But if you'd been here, you just could not have kept your composure.

5 minutes later, he responded to something I said, "yes ma'am." I said, "I'm not a ma'am". Without missing a beat, he said, "Are you sure?"

Whenever my great nephew is scolded he says, "You hurt my feelings" and if that doesn't work he says, "But I want to be a good boy!"

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sarah
WI
OPC
My Pastor's Sermons: Mark Jenkins...he's awesome!!!

hahahahahahahahaha
Oh man, that is still funny in text form! My two year old (well almost three) son will say, if I'm going to give him a spanking, "Mommy, be kind, be kind!" (He likes to quote scripture to me in backwards ways.) He'll also say, when I remind him of a verse like Honor your father and your mother..."I don't remember that one." Even though we have a great CD with that verse as a song and a ton others that he definitely does remember!

Now with teens who are bigger than me, I can say from the lofty perch of impending senility that my wife and I always (and fortunately rarely) used spanking as the last-ditch way to get attention and to push the behavior reset button--like a nuclear weapon, what to use when all other reasonable options have failed. I sounds like in the case above the behavior was already changed, and attention gotten--a switch from bad behavior to laughing is probably as effective as a switch from bad behavior to crying, and a whole lot more memorable! We always tried to focus on changed behavior rather than the emotions around the changed behavior, since children from 3 to (believe me) 18 have a hard time with the "do this and this happens" chain of consequences.

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Eric
Deacon, PCA
Slow-moving seminarian
South Carolina

chbrooking;

Gain my composure and go back and discipline my child, then go in the other room away from my child and bust a gut..

Something else you could try is send him to his room, and let him know you'll be there in a couple minutes, laugh, gain your composure and then go discipline, start to walk out the door, look back and tell him you love him.

But if you don't gain your composure and discipline when you need to, your child will learn as long as he can get daddy to laugh, nothings going to happen, not only daddy but other adults as well.

Parenting and training a child up in the way they should go is NOT EASY!!
It is so much easier to give in to those cute little faces--but you can't do that, if you give in one time, discipline the next, give in the next, it confuses the child..


as an aside..

I can remember when my now 16 year old was little, and she did something, I honestly don't remember what she did, but I do remember her reaction to me telling her to go to her room. She picked up her blanket, dragging it along the floor, lip puckered out, shoulders slumped, head dropped and started a long slow walk out of the living room and down the hall to her room, stopping every couple of seconds looking back at me, sniffling.

As a parent, watching that, you WANT to laugh, but you have to suck it up and be stern. At least for a little bit..

I was sharing this thread w/ the above mentioned daughter who now works at a daycare, and she said one of the little girls in the daycare got in trouble one day "telling the teachers no" and she called the girl over and told her "you don't tell teachers NO" the little girl started saying..."Mommy, daddy, Strawberries" (which apparently makes her parents laugh to where they don't discipline)

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Bobbi Clark
Covenant Member
Pinewood Pres. (PCA) Middleburg

When I kept Silent, My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Psalm 32:3

Keep your composure long enough to sternly tell them to go to their room and think about what they have done. Then get the laughing out of the system. Then go find them again.

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Fraser,
Trinity Reformed Baptist Church
Hamilton, New Zealand.

I guess I'm mean enough that I'm able to think my kids are funny but still spank them.

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Ben
Chaplain, US Army
Ft. Riley, KS
TE Ohio Valley Presbytery, PCA

Good grief! We were always too terrified of my dad to try to make him laugh. Never joke around with a man holding a one and half inch thick wood rod in his hands.

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Ian Kemmerer
Trinity Bible Fellowship, Blandon, PA
Fleetwood, PA

"Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart, And all is darkened in the vale of tears, Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart, Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears. Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay From His own fullness all He takes away."

"Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee."

Thanks everyone. The "go to your room and I'll be there in a minute" advice appears to me the most helpful. But for those of you who said, "maintain your composure," I'm sorry -- I'm not that strong.

chbrooking;

as a parent, your going to need to learn to be or your kids will walk all over you.

I know so many parents who never disciplined their kids when they were little, 'they were just too cute' and now that those kids are teens...it's not cute anymore when they are disrespectful and talking back to them.

I was thinking about this thread while I was out grocery shopping today..and I started thinking about this situation..

I know of one mom that when her pre-teen daughter started getting into trouble and back talking her, wanted to turn her over to the state, neither she nor her ex-husband disciplined the daughter when she was little because 'she was just too cute to spank'. her dad came to Christ and started disciplining her, even fought for custody when the mom tried to get her sent off to the state, the mom backed down when she realized she would no longer get child support. Now, the mom lets her do whatever she wants, lets her have boys stay the night, lets her stay the night at boy's houses, let's her come and go as she pleases. now she refuses to see her dad, because 'he's mean' as he no longer tolerates her back talk, wouldn't let her stay the night at some boy's house or let some boy stay at his house w/ his daughter..and the courts...left her w/ her mom..go figure..

Ben,

I learned to discipline through their trying to make me laugh as well..it got much easier, as I focused on the verses "train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he shall not depart from it"

I also started focusing on the fact, this is only my child for as long as God allows me to raise them on His behalf, and those 18 or so years is such a short time, compared to the many years they will live after they leave home..
that's not a long time to teach them the things they will need to know in how to survive in this sinful world..so I really do need to start as early as possible..especially knowing they learn a lot of it before they ever hit their teens years, and it is during those younger years they learn to respect those in authority over them or not..and if they learn not to respect authority they have a much more difficult time once they move out.

I can't even imagine why a Christian parents would not discipline their children.

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Ivan R. Schoen, B.A., M.A., M.L.I.S.
Pastor of Maranatha Baptist Church (SBC)
Poplar Grove, IL, USA
http://maranatha-sbc.org

Okay, now I'm sorry I started the thread. I was asking for a little advice as well as offering a bit of humor. I got what I was asking for from most of you. But a few of you are presumptuous enough to lecture me on not getting walked over by my kids. First of all, you don't know me. If anything, my tendency is in the opposite direction. I have to be very careful not to crush my children. You read too much into the situation. Secondly, we're talking about a 3 year old who was desperate to get out of a spanking. He wasn't trying to be funny. But what he was doing was hysterical. I simply could not help laughing. If you could have, I'd be convinced you have no sense of humor -- and that's something I wouldn't want to emulate. I appreciate the advice to send them away so that I can regain my composure. But I don't appreciate the suggestion that I don't discipline my children or get walked over. Since we are into giving advice beyond what is asked for, might I suggest that you read a thread carefully, and approach a person carefully in any rebuke you offer. Otherwise, you come off condescending.

We've all been there. The hard part can come later, when they think they've got your funny button and try to do the same thing on purpose.

We were driving along with my precious little 2 year old son one time when he heard the derogatory term for poopoo. Well, this sweet little boy just blurted it out. His endearing grandmother, my mother, busted a gut. Well, that got him thinking he was the most clever little two year old on the planet, so the expletive came out repeatedly, like a semi-automatic. The situation was all but hopeless. After a short time of low grade chaos, we simply told him to stop and he did. When next he uttered it we had a talk and I don't think he's used the word since.

Cute kid, eh?

__________________
For the Glory of our King,
Joe Johnson
Slave of Christ, husband, father, Preacherboy at Cornerstone Community Church, Escanaba, MI. and TMS graduate. Personal website - SoundLife.org

I do not know, and I do not say, that a person cannot believe in Revelation and in evolution, too, for a man may believe that which is infinitely wise and also that which is only asinine. ~ CHS

Hahaha! When my niece was little she would say "See it?" but it sounded like the "derogatory term for poopoo" only drawn out. So you know how kids are....she wanted you to see EVERYTHING....oh, brother!

Don't worry, Pastor B. Most of us got it.

Don't know how many sticks I broke on the back sides of my boys. And they still instantly obey me. Even though three of them can beat me up, and the fourth is almost there. And we laugh the whole time we're together nowadays.

Personally, I liked your post.

Here are some of the the brats this week. I'm just glad I got the spankings in when I could:

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Tim Vaughan
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian, OPC,
Santa Maria
California

chbrooking;

don't be..and I'm sorry my post offended you, that certainly was not my intent..

I wasn't meaning to come across as presumptuous, that you don't discipline your children. I was just sharing things I have witnessed happening with parents who don't. More to stress the why we shouldn't give in to those little things..especially when our children are so young in age, when we can be more tempted to do so..

I understand, it could happen to anyone..

Personally, I've had to step between my ex-husband and my oldest daughter at one time when she was little, because he was so angry at her for not moving to another room fast enough for him (she was trying to pick her toys up to take w/ her), he took a belt to her and didn't want to stop. (not implying you would do that or even that you are implying you would, but some folks do take what should be discipline to the extreme the other direction)


I understood, and wasn't reading to much into it..and most all kids, no matter their age try desperately to get out of being spanked..

Again, I really do understand, however, I've seen first hand kids use to learn to manipulate their parents using this tactic..it doesn't start out as 'trying' to be funny..it just is..like in your situation..however, it had a desired effect..
He didn't get spanked..so what did he learn from that one instance? If I can make dad laugh..I won't get spanked..(kids really do learn those things at that age)


I wasn't meaning to rebuke, just share things I've witnessed first hand..

good word. Thanks Bobbi.