Many parents find that parenting growing children is a stressful time of their life. Because of the broadness of the topic, only a few bases can be covered, but I trust that the pointers given will be helpful. Let's begin with "coping with our children when they don't behave, or rather, when they misbehave." People always behave, but behaviour is either good, bad, or deviant. In order to get some idea how we can best deal with our children's behaviour, we will look at the behaviour itself.

What is good behaviour? Good behaviour can, I believe, be defined as, "Behaviour that abides by the rules and is pleasing to us." It is really quite simple. When children do what parents tell them to do there is no problem. It is even better when children do what parents like them to do without being told. But much of the time it is not that way. So then we are in either one of the other two categories, bad or deviant behaviour.

What is bad behaviour? To find a definition for bad behaviour is not so easy. We can say, bad behaviour is not abiding by the rules and making things difficult for the parents. Yes, we can say you are wrong, you disobeyed, that is, if the child understands the rule. But what if the child does not know the rule or does not understand it? What if a child does what children do, but it is inconvenient for the parents? Is that bad behaviour? You see that to define bad behaviour is not so easy.

Then we still have deviant behaviour. What is deviant behaviour? Deviant behaviour is behaviour which is different from the generally accepted norm. It is not necessarily good or bad, just different. Such behaviour is often viewed with suspicion and judgment.

All three categories of behaviour can be observed among adults, but also in our children. Now how do we teach and nurture good behaviour, while we cope with bad and deviant behaviour? What is it all about "to raise children?" What is the goal?

Is this not the goal, to help our God-given children to grow and develop into adults who serve God in whatever task and place He gives them? Yes, we may enjoy our children. The Bible refers many times to joy and delight in our children. But we do not have our children solely for our own pleasure. There is too much of that kind of thinking in today's society. We have a God-given task to raise our children, or better said, God's children; and a given task means work and work means effort.

So, what do we do when a child "misbehaves?" We must begin by asking ourselves, "Is this particular behaviour misbehaviour; or is it just inconvenient for me?" For instance: when your little boy begins to walk, he will go to the coffee table and pull everything that's on it off. Is that wrong behaviour? Of course not. Every toddler will do that if you let them. It is up to the parents to teach him not to do so, and that takes time — probably several months.

Another example: Saturday morning and it's raining. Mom cleans the house and at noon only the kitchen is left to do. After lunch the three- and five-year-olds want to go outside, since it is now dry outside. Mom says, "Go, then I can do the kitchen floor." Mom is just finished with the floor and here they come, covered in mud, right into the kitchen. Mom yells, "What are you doing? Don't you see I just cleaned the floor, look what you did!" She grabs both of them, smacks them on a chair, yanks their shoes off, all the while telling them how much work they give her. Did these two toddlers misbehave? I don't think so. These two children did simply what kids do — play in the sand and get dirty. And who would deny them such fun? They ran into the house, because they did it yesterday and no one complained.

Mother became angry because the children's behaviour was inconvenient to her. It would have been better if this mom had said, "Oh wait a minute," and taking them to the back porch, had removed their shoes and said, "Mommy just cleaned the floor and your shoes are dirty. You must always take your shoes off when you come into the house."

There are many unpleasant and inconvenient incidents in the family, and although they are caused by the children, they are not to be blamed for it, much less punished. So, was it willful misbehaviour or was it misbehaviour because we didn't like it?

What does a parent do when children misbehave? We must realize that in punishing children it is necessary to use discrimination, and we must consider two important aspects of the offense in our discrimination.

In the first place we must ask ourselves, Did the child break one of God's commandments or did the child disobey one of our own rules? A child who lies or swears or deliberately steals, disobeys God's commandments. But a child who comes home fifteen minutes late or who makes too much noise when he plays, or does not hang up his coat, breaks rules we have made. It appears to me that punishment for breaking rules is often more severe and harsh than punishment for actual sin.

In the second place, when exercising discipline, we must consider whether the behaviour was deliberate, blameworthy carelessness or whether the behaviour might be excusable. The incident of the young children running into the kitchen was an understandable situation. There was no carelessness nor sin involved. We should not punish, but teach in such a situation.

Even when there is gross carelessness involved in a situation, we must not punish indiscriminately. There are children (as well as adults) who are poorly coordinated, and/or hyper-active. Punishment will only make them more nervous and even less coordinated and eventually cause emotional harm. They develop a feeling of futility. They feel powerless because they are always punished without being able to do anything about it. With such children much wisdom and patience is needed to help the child develop proper attitudes and to improve his coordination.

It becomes quite different when there is deliberate misbehaviour. When a boy is told not to go to this friend's house after school and he does anyway, the behaviour calls for discipline. He only broke a man-made rule, but it is sin because he willfully disobeyed his parents. But even in deliberate misbehaviour all significant factors must be considered.

Parents must always keep in mind the circumstances leading up to the misbehaviour. Maybe the restriction was arbitrary and only a means to exercise our parental authority. There are parents who permit their children to do something dozens of times without saying anything about it. But suddenly, for one reason or another, they clamp down on the children's behaviour, without explaining why something that was previously permitted is now suddenly forbidden. When disciplining in such cases, parents must be aware of their own inconsistencies.

For example, Billy, a three-year-old, is playing with his toys. Mom says, "Billy, clean up your toys, it is time for bed." Billy keeps on playing. Ten minutes later Mom says, "Billy, are your toys cleaned up?" Another ten minutes go by and mom comes into the room and says, "Come on Billy, let's go to bed." She takes Billy to bed, goes back to the living room, cleans up the toys, and sits down. And this scenario goes on from day to day. Sometime later, because Billy is growing up, he wants to have a pair of scissors to cut out pictures from a magazine. Mom says, "OK, but clean up after you're finished." A little later Mom wants to set the table for supper, so she cleans the table and the floor of all the scraps of paper, while Billy is engaged in some other activity. When this sort of thing goes on until Billy is ten years old, do you think Billy is going to take out the garbage when he is told to? I think not! You see, in such cases parents must realize that they contributed to their child's disobedience.

All these things and many others must be con­sidered and taken into account when the nature and severity of the discipline is established. Each case of discipline must have a teaching goal. We may only discipline when there is an actual trans­gression. And most importantly, discipline must be rooted in the love for God and love for our children. Discipline should always be in the spirit of Psalm 81:13, where the Lord says, Oh, that My people would listen to Me. That Israel would walk in My ways! There we hear the love of God for His rebellious and wayward people, and we should do likewise towards our children when we have to discipline.

What I have said so far also applies to the pre-teenager. Effective discipline is always based on a good parent/child relationship, also with the pre-teen. Of course, the issues we as parents and children have to deal with at that age are quite different from the issues with younger children. When the children are in grades seven and eight we see some sudden changes in their behaviour. The girls begin to gather in little groups giggling about the boys. Play becomes much more orga­nized for both boys and girls. The girls begin to experiment with make-up. They want to wear pantyhose. Boys want to have a cool haircut and maybe wear an earring.

In that early teen stage of life the teenager has to cope with much stress. There is that unknown prospect of high school. At the same time there is that strange and totally new body develop­ment. Suddenly a boy sees a girl, and a girl a boy. They have seen each other hundreds of times, but suddenly they experience that strange feeling. We as parents observe them and we see a happy child and the next minute we see some­one who seems totally depressed and is impossi­ble to live with.

Well, we will all survive; also that stage will pass. The issue we have to deal with as parents at that stage in our children's lives is, I believe, mainly one of freedom. How much freedom do we give them? More than ever before, at this age we as parent must ask ourselves, "Why do I say no," or, and this is just as important, "Why do I say yes?" Do we say no because of what people will say? That does not go over well with a teenager, unless it is well explained. Do we say no because of some pre-conceived notion we have from our own tradition? That does not go over well either. Why should your teenager care that you had to wear black stockings to school? And you probably hated it too!

Parents should also be very much aware of the fact that teenagers like to disagree and argue with their parents. That is simply a part of growing up, and it is a very necessary part. It can be very frustrating for the parent, but it is the parents task to lead and guide such disagreements to a positive outcome from which the child can learn. Do not be overly permissive towards your child, but give them as much freedom as is possible. The freedom should be age-appropriate, of course.

Don't fuss over unimportant matters such as what combination of clothes they choose to wear on a certain day. Let them choose their own hairstyle and colour of clothes. These are unimportant matters and are often a matter of contention because the parent likes one thing and the child another. When we do make a big issue of these minor matters, we nurture resentment in our chil­dren and they will resist much stronger when we have to deal with important matters.

Early teens need their parents' understanding and guidance more than at any other time in their lives. To lead and guide these young teens it is most necessary that we communicate with them. Communicating with them is not just talk­ing to them. Listen to them; let them have input. Try to understand what they mean to say. Teens want to be more independent, and at the same time they are afraid of the unknown. Allow them to make mistakes and allow them to take respon­sibility for their mistakes without putting them down for it. Help them learn from the experience and reward them with a compliment whenever possible.

Allow them to think differently from your thinking. We must always remember that our children must come to their own conclusions. This is not to say that it doesn't make any difference what they think or believe; it does make a difference. But we must lovingly lead and guide them, also in those things. There is nothing wrong with a heated debate from time to time; that can even be very good for the parent as well as for the child. And here again, just as with discipline, we must be consistent. For instance, when we tell them to always wear their seat-belts when they are in the car, we better wear them ourselves. Or, when we teach them to be honest, we better be honest when we file our income tax return. The young teen is very sensitive to inconsistencies between our talk and our walk.

Raising children is like growing a garden. We cannot neglect it, because it will overgrow with weeds. We cannot treat the plants with acid, because everything will die. No, we must till the garden, we must supply nurture and care in just the right amounts. We must sometimes prune a little. We must protect the plants from harm by predators. But we must let them grow to maturity.

So it is with our children. God put His children in our care. We are duty bound to supply the husbandry, to the best of our ability. We are accountable to God for what we did with His chil­dren. It can be a great day, when our children have reached maturity and leave home and we can let them go with the words of Proverbs 1:8-9, Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.