When I would yell at my children, I was teaching them that they didn’t have to do what I said whenever I said it, just when it was important enough (or I was mad enough) to raise my voice. What’s worse, I was undermining my wife’s authority in the home because she wasn’t as big and scary and didn’t have as deep a voice as me. Thus my word (thundered through the house) became the standard for eliciting obedience. We do not want our children to do what we say with conditions attached. We want them to obey, period. Learning not to repeat ourselves, not to yell, not to call the offending child by all three of his or her names, but to speak in clear, level tones and follow through with consequences for every act of disobedience has completely transformed our home.
– Voddie Baucham
Christ Alone Wyoming 
I am in total agreement with this and it’s so hard not to do! When you have a child who loves to argue, it becomes important not to argue with them but to set the standard and enforce it! We start off so often with good intentions and then end up forgetting what we were supposed to do…then we revert to what we were doing. I daily pray for God’s help and wisdom in this matter but fall so short!
LikeLike
As a new husband and a new father [often failing at being good at both] I just love counsel like this!
Thanks
LikeLike
Two books Voddie has us men reading that EVERY father should have in his head and on his shelf: Ted Tripp’s “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” and “Father’s Stew” by Stephen Beck. Each of these make Dobson’s “Dare to Disciple” read like a light weight nothing.
LikeLike