compassion

The rough-looking teen’s tough veneer had softened. I detected tears in his eyes. “No one has ever said anything like that to me.” Just minutes…

Disciplining misbehaving kids is often a difficult and emotion-laden task. Our oldest son Daniel, sometimes said to Lynne, “Mom, you just bursted all over us!”…

You know how sometimes you look back and think, WHY in the world did I say that!? I had a moment like that last week. It was ugly……

  Although I’m 62 and won’t be giving birth to any more children any time soon, I recently reflected that God gives us children in…

Have you ever noticed that kids rarely misbehave when they feel truly happy and deeply secure? There’s a reason for this. When our children misbehave,…

Sometimes it takes a while for parents to change in ways that lead to deeper respect from their kids. Sometimes it can happen fast. When…

Is dinner at your house a bit crazy? Perhaps it needs a little injection of purpose. When the meal is all about getting kids to…

Sometimes, in spite of parents’ most graceful efforts to stay calm, connect well, and parent with grace, their kids still misbehave. They are “beloved sinners” (just like us) and need corrective guidance (just like we do), with the goal of helping them learn the powerful message, “You are responsible for your life, your relationships, and your decisions.”

Communicating “love no matter what” when kids misbehave can seem like a tall order. But when these five simple changes come from a calmed heart, they can powerfully turn the tide of negative discipline encounters.

There is no more important time for kids to know they’re loved than when they misbehave. If the love message misses them then, they may think that love is conditional. People who believe that tend to rise and fall with their performance and compromise themselves for approval. Not what we want for our kids. So communicate love through empathy!