"When your child is old enough to resist your directives, he is old enough to be disciplined."

“In teaching our children to obey, we must keep in mind that we are building for the future. It may be tedious and unpleasant at the moment, but our goal is an obedient, self-disciplined adult.”

 “Your children constantly observe how you handle conflict.  If you are defensive, critical, unreasonable, and impulsive, they are likely to handle their problems the same way.  But if you handle disputes in a godly manner, your children will be encouraged to do the same.  What they learn about peacemaking from you may have a profound impact on how they handle conflict at school, in the workplace, and in their own marriages.”

“Strong-willed children, if brought up right, can have an incredible impact for God’s cause.  The key to strong-willed children is that they want to have some control of what’s going on in their lives.  Without surrendering one bit of authority as a parent, you can still let them pick what they want from a restaurant menu, the outfit they want to wear, which bed they want to take a nap in, and so forth.  Choose your battles carefully or it will become one high controller pitted against another.  In most cases, you’ll lose.”

“Overreacting to your children’s desire to follow a fashion fad—especially if there is nothing morally or biblically wrong with it—could unnecessarily close you off from more meaningful relationships with them.”

“It is not in our children’s best interest to give them everything they want, to make life easy for them, to side with them when they are clearly wrong, or to circumvent consequences for their sins … Love is about meeting their actual needs, not their selfish needs.”

“Distinguishing between willful disobedience and mistakes will enable a mother to know how to handle the situation … When you tell your child to stay in the yard and he goes next door, it’s willful disobedience.  When your toddler spills his milk at the table, it’s a mistake.  The consequences for willful disobedience should be firm and swift, whereas those for mistakes lenient and educational.”

“Our goal in discipline should be twofold: to train in self-discipline and to teach obedience. When our children learn self-discipline at an early age, they will be more likely to withstand the temptations of sin as they grow up … If a child does not learn to obey his parents whom he sees, how can he be expected to obey a God whom he cannot see?”

“Behavior is not the basic issue.  The basic issue is always what is going on in the heart.  Remember, the heart is the control center of life.”

"If your child is living as a fool who says in his heart there is no God, such a person doesn't cease to be a worshipper, he simply worships what is not God.  Part of the parent's task is to shepherd him as a creature who worships, pointing him to the One who alone is worthy of his worship.  The question is not ‘will he worship?’ It is always ‘who will he worship?’”

"As you parent you must never back off from giving affection.  When your sons and daughters are teenagers, it may feel awkward--but don't stop.  They still need your loving touch."

“When your child is old enough to resist your directives, he is old enough to be disciplined.”

“God provides the understanding of what discipline is.  Its function is not primarily punitive.  It is corrective ... The discipline of a child is a parent refusing to be a willing party to his child’s death (Proverbs 19:18).”

“Be patient and remind yourself often that your child is not being disciplined because he somehow made life miserable for you but because he sinned against God … not because you have been personally inconvenienced but because you love him and want to obey God yourself.”

“One of the most ungraceful things you can do is to circumvent the consequences of your children’s sin.  Children learn from discipline and have an internal sense of justice that needs to know they have paid their debt for their infraction and can move on with their lives.”

“One of the justifications for spanking children is that ‘Folly is bound up in the heart of the child, but the rod of correction drives it far from him’ (Proverbs 22:15).  The point of the proverb is that something is wrong in the heart of the child that requires correction.  The remedy is not solely changing the structure of the home, it is addressing the heart.”