Gentle parenting is a topic that inspires not much gentle debate. There’s actually a lot of disagreements out there about this. I have had, in the last week or so, an unusual number of people asking me about this. I don’t intend to do it full justice. I often remind you that we try to keep this around 10 minutes and so I can’t say everything; all I’m going to do here is have the very, very modest goal of pointing in the direction of what gentle parenting is, and given a few biblical thoughts about it, there will be more specific questions and more specific concerns.

Here is what gentle parenting is, in fact, if I just ask you to consider whether or not you were spanked by your parents when you were growing up. It is probably the case that the number of you who would say “yes I was spanked by my parents when I was growing up” is a far larger number than the group of you who would say that you understand what gentle parenting is. So this is somewhat new; not a lot of people understand what it is, and if you don’t know what it is, you should know that gentle parenting focuses on seeking to have children engage with their willing choices when it comes to obedience and not because they believe you are going to enforce your rules and expectations. So, we want to develop the willing choices of our kids about obedience, not have the threat of enforcement of our rules and expectations.

The idea behind gentle parenting is to do a couple of things:

1. It seeks to foster connection (human, emotional, relational connection) with our kids.
2. It seeks to really emphasize communication and understanding.

There’s a very important role of consistency; we do the same thing over and over and over again in the same way so that the child has that sense of consistency. All this is done with a heavy emphasis on patience: patient connection, patient communication, patient consistency. Maybe the most significant reality to help you understand what this is, especially for all those of you who say hey I was spanked as a kid, is gentle parenting specifically opposes corporal punishment, or what we refer to as spanking.

The idea is for the parent to think of himself or herself more as a coach and less of an enforcer. We’re connecting, we’re communicating, we’re being consistent, we’re not correcting in the physical sense. That is gentle parenting in a nutshell.

First of all, this idea of gentle parenting fits with a culture like the one we’re living in, where leadership has fallen on hard times. I want you to think about all the evidence you see out there that we are a society that just distrusts leaders. I’m not talking about leaders who deserve to be distrusted because they’re immoral or unethical or cruel or something like that. I’m talking about we live in a very egalitarian culture that just is suspicious and nervous about any kind of leadership role.

If you are a leader who takes a strong position, if you are a leader who takes strong action, you are going to take heat. This is not the culture that first embraces that kind of bold leadership. This is a kind of culture that is first suspicious of that kind of leadership. Well, here’s the thing: that is the kind of leadership that we’re talking about with parenting. A culture that is nervous about leadership is going to be a culture that is nervous about what is required of parents.

Gentle parenting also fits with a culture that honestly doesn’t understand the nature of children. There’s a lot I could say about this. Let me just point in the direction of one observation by talking about a text of Scripture that makes this really clear. It actually absolutely disagrees with the culture of gentle parenting. In Proverbs chapter 22:15 it says, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”

This talks about our kids as having foolishness in their hearts. Kids think and say and do things that are foolish. We’re patient with that because they are kids, but we’re patient with that because they are kids, and we understand that this folly is in their hearts. But actually, the Bible says it’s the rod of discipline, it’s spanking, it’s corporal punishment that is supposed to drive that folly from their hearts.

So gentle parenting fits with our misunderstandings about kids. It fits with our misunderstandings about leadership. There are some things that it gets right—of course we all want to have a connection with our kids. Of course, we all want to communicate with our kids. Of course, we all want to be consistent with our kids.

My kids are old enough now that we are past that physical corrective phase and have been for quite some time in our house. When our kids were growing up, we always emphasized personal connection; we always emphasized heavy communication. I’m telling you, we’re big talkers in the Lambert house, and we always prized consistency in expectations, but we never, in our house and I don’t think you should, ever place that at odds with the biblical requirement for physical correction.

In fact, the Bible does this. In Proverbs 13:24, the Bible says, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” This is just one of those times where we have to decide whose wisdom we’re going to receive. Whose wisdom are we going to embrace?

There is some secular wisdom out there, some un-Godly worldly wisdom that says if you love your kids, you’re going to connect and communicate and be consistent and be really, really patient, and you’re going to run away from the kind of ungentle correction that is exemplified in spanking— it’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says if you love your kid, if you really love this child, you will be diligent to discipline him because whoever spares the rod hates his son.

That is not a word that is popular in our culture right now, but it is a word that is anchored in the word of God. God, who made the family. God, who sets up the structure for the family. God, who gets to say the way parenting should work and the way correction should work. Our God, who loves our children more than we ever do, says hey, listen, if you love this kid, you’re going to spank them. That might not be gentle in the secular sense, but it is faithful in the biblical sense.

Listen to this episode on Gentle Parenting (and more) at Marked by Grace. Submit any questions you have to MarkedByGrace@fbcjax.com.