Reality Discipline
7 Principles of Reality Discipline
(Excerpts rom Dr. Kevin Leman's, "Making Children MIND without Losing YOURS")
1. Establish a healthy authority over your children.
-Ephesians 6 says, God has placed parents on authority over children.
-If you don't establish your parental authority, no one else will.
-Your authority needs to be a display of love more than power.
2. Hold your children accountable for their actions.
-As parents, we're all home-schoolers. We should be teaching our kids every day that there are consequences for their actions, some positive and some negative.
3. Let reality be the teacher.
-Look for teachable moments when you can use reality to deliver a powerful lesson.
-Don't be afraid to let your kids fail.
-Your home needs to be a place where your kids can fail-and learn from their failure. Surround them with love, show them how important they are to you, but don't try to undo their failures.
4. Use action more than words.
-With reality discipline, you need to state your expectations clearly. Let your children know their responsibilities to the family, to the school, to others. But then you don't need to keep repeating yourself. Let your actions speak for you.
5. Stick to your guns, but don't shoot yourself in the foot.
-You're the boss. You made the decision, so stick with it.
-Your decisions won't always have the wisdom of Solomon, but you need to teach your kids that what you say goes.
-Outlast them, and they'll learn that it's pointless to whine.
6. Relationships come before rules.
-The principles of reality discipline aren ot set in concrete.
-The goal is always the same: teaching your children to love others, to put others first, to be givers and not takers, and to realize that it makes a difference how they conduct themselves.
-As children see that their parents are committed to the family, they will commit themselves too.
-Josh McDowell says, "Rules without relationships lead to rebellion."
7. Live by your values.
-Your children learn from watching you.
(Excerpts rom Dr. Kevin Leman's, "Making Children MIND without Losing YOURS")
1. Establish a healthy authority over your children.
-Ephesians 6 says, God has placed parents on authority over children.
-If you don't establish your parental authority, no one else will.
-Your authority needs to be a display of love more than power.
2. Hold your children accountable for their actions.
-As parents, we're all home-schoolers. We should be teaching our kids every day that there are consequences for their actions, some positive and some negative.
3. Let reality be the teacher.
-Look for teachable moments when you can use reality to deliver a powerful lesson.
-Don't be afraid to let your kids fail.
-Your home needs to be a place where your kids can fail-and learn from their failure. Surround them with love, show them how important they are to you, but don't try to undo their failures.
4. Use action more than words.
-With reality discipline, you need to state your expectations clearly. Let your children know their responsibilities to the family, to the school, to others. But then you don't need to keep repeating yourself. Let your actions speak for you.
5. Stick to your guns, but don't shoot yourself in the foot.
-You're the boss. You made the decision, so stick with it.
-Your decisions won't always have the wisdom of Solomon, but you need to teach your kids that what you say goes.
-Outlast them, and they'll learn that it's pointless to whine.
6. Relationships come before rules.
-The principles of reality discipline aren ot set in concrete.
-The goal is always the same: teaching your children to love others, to put others first, to be givers and not takers, and to realize that it makes a difference how they conduct themselves.
-As children see that their parents are committed to the family, they will commit themselves too.
-Josh McDowell says, "Rules without relationships lead to rebellion."
7. Live by your values.
-Your children learn from watching you.