Sheparding A Child's Heart

OK I know this has been discussed over and over- but what is wrong with this program? Besides spanking infants and spanking on the bare bottom? Believe me, that is enough for me but my brother is reading it and my church is considering using it. Need some specific stuff- or if there is another thread about this I could look at that- Thanks-

[CelticJourney]

'spank'em till they're sweet' Tripp talks about sheparding their hearts in the first half of the book but then goes on to say that if after spanking your child, they do not respond with a sweet and pleasant attitude, spank them again. How this relates to changing their hearts is beyond me.

[DogwoodMama]

We lost a great discussion on Ted Tripp from the old message board... but here is another that might be helpful... http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv...asp?msg=2706.1

My computer is on the fritz so I can't type more- hope others can fill in!

[DogwoodMama]

Also found another useful article (these are all from our article's and resources page, btw) The discussion on Tripp begins a few paragraphs down with the quote below...

http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/brie..._parenting.htm

Tedd Tripp's Shepherding a Child's Heart starts off in the expected fashion of pop-Christian books: "Jennifer was failing to do her homework..." and continues according to tradition by announcing that our culture has lost its way with respect to parenting and that Scripture will provide us with the cateogories and ideas to reclaim parenting. He then goes on to use suspiciously modern-sounding terms, like "shaping influences" and "rich, full communication". Useful terms, but are they Scriptural?

if after spanking your child, they do not respond with a sweet and pleasant attitude, spank them again.

This kind of thinking drives me crazy. Aren't most parents smart enough to know that there hasn't been a true change in attitude? You simply can't beat that into a child!! If a child's attitude does seem to change, it can't be anything more than acting!!! Anyone who believes otherwise is either stupid or in denial.

[kris10s]

He only talks about the "keep spanking until they are sweet" for about 2 paragraphs in the book, so a lot of people miss it, TBH. In the in-person seminar, he talked about it for well over 5 minutes, though, so it stuck with me... when I brought it up on my blog, a bunch of SACH people said they never realized he even said it, it's that brief in the book.

My husband and I left our church earlier this year because we were unsuccessful in getting a Tripp seminar cancelled. We started trying in June 2004, the seminar was in April 2005. I think people thought if they just ignored us we would quit protesting.

Anyway...here is what we wrote about it:

...It is Tripp's teaching in his book that we feel is very strongly responsible for the current climate at Calvary that results in what we believe is excessive corporal punishment of children. We strongly urge you to read his book and be certain that this is a man that you want in your pulpit. For the first 100 pages of his book we find most of what he writes to be sensible. But then he gets into areas that we find troubling:

Page 106 “’Punish him [a child] with the rod and save his soul from death’ (Proverbs 23:14). Your children’s souls are in danger of death—spiritual death. Your task is to rescue your children from death. Faithful and timely use of the rod is the means of rescue.” Quite simply, we feel that saying that the act of spanking can save a child spiritually detracts from the work that Christ did on the cross. However, understanding that the “rod” was often a sign of authority (the “Blue Letter Bible” www.blueletterbible.com , a very handy tool for researching the meanings of the original Hebrew and Greek words in the scriptures, reports that one of the meanings of the Hebrew “shebet” which is translated into “rod” in this verse is “a mark of authority”), and in this situation it was not used to strike people in Old Testament cultures. Proper use of our parental authority to guide and teach our children can result in them being more likely to accept the message of gospel (as is explained in 2 Timothy 3:15 “From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus”), and in that the rod of authority guides a child to spiritual life.

Page 109 “Failure to obey Mom or Dad is, therefore, failure to obey God.” While we would agree that scripture admonishes children several times to obey their parents, we see nowhere that it admonishes parents to force this obedience—just as husbands are never given freedom to force submission from their wives. We would further point out that although there are commands for submission to governmental authorities and in the marital relationship, the Bible also gives examples where it was not only right for people to fail to submit, but the people were/would be in sin if they had submitted (Daniel, Annanias and Safira). We find it very dangerous to equate obedience to parents with obedience to God because God’s instructions are perfect and would never cause us to sin, but parental instructions can be flawed—sometimes they ask more than the child is capable and in some cases they can lead a child to sin.

Page 151 “Remove his drawers so that the spanking is not lost in the padding of his pants.” We find this troubling when it comes to modesty issues, particularly because Jenn has female friends who were spanked in this fashion by their fathers well into puberty. Even when gender lines are not crossed, we feel that this process would be humiliating to the child.

Page 152 “We have always been guided by Hebrews 12:11 ‘No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.’ If discipline has not yielded a harvest of peace and righteousness, it is not finished. On some occasions we have had to say to our children, ‘Dear, Daddy has spanked you, but you are not sweet enough yet. We are going to have to go back upstairs for another spanking.” -- This assumes that the “pain” of discipline must be physical, not emotional. It also assumes that the harvest must come immediately after the discipline, and that a child’s emotional demeanor is a measure of whether or not the child has taken the discipline to heart—which it often is not. Actually, a good Christian mentor of mine once told me that she thought it was very bad for a child to accept a hug from a parent immediately after a spanking—she thought that it was very important that children retain the inborn sense that it is wrong for a person who loves them to strike them—because removing that sense is part of what causes many adults to stay in physically abusive relationships. But even more concerning, use of Hebrews 12:11 in application to disciplining a child who is in sin is “proof text-ing” of an inappropriate nature since the context of this passage is adults who are being persecuted, not children who are in need of correction.

Page 154 “Rebellion can be something as simple as an infant struggling against a diaper change or stiffening his body when you want him to sit on your lap. The discipline procedure is the same as laid out above. You have no way of knowing how much a child a year old or less can understand of what you say, but we do know that understanding comes long before the ability to articulate does….When our oldest child was approximately 8 months old….Obviously he was old enough to be disciplined.” We fail to see why an infant’s God given wiggly nature should be interpreted as rebellion, and the description of the 8 month old’s behavior we see as the child’s age appropriate exploratory nature coupled with the age appropriate “impulse driven” behavior that does not recall recent instruction not to engage in the activity—not the sign of devious rebellion that Tripp interpreted it as.

Page 155 We will not quote the entire section…in summary he states that you should spank your child for “failure to hear” a parental command if the parent reasonably believes the child should have heard the command. He does not instruct the parent to make sure he has the child’s attention, but rather places the burden on the child to always be on alert for the parent’s voice. We have a problem with this because we feel it fails to respect children. Steve is often slow to respond to things that Jenn says—to the point that she is often annoyed by his lack of response. But the simple reason is that he does not mentally process requests for several minutes if he is involved in something else—even if Jenn is right next to him! We have found that communication works much more smoothly if Jenn approaches Steve, asks for his attention, and having garnered it, then speaks to him. We feel that to treat our children with less respect than we treat each other—that is, to expect them to snap out of whatever they are doing to hear us yelling a command from a room or two away, or even to just walk up to them and start talking and expect them to stop what they are doing with no warning or chance to come to a reasonable stopping point—is not honoring them as persons created by God. We further feel that it would be poor modeling for how we want them to communicate with us.

Page 156 “There may be days in which nothing much gets done because of the demands of consistent discipline.” While we certainly would agree that there are days when the entire time is spent in teaching (“disciplining”) our children, we make the assumption that what Tripp is alluding to here is that there will be days were spankings are so numerous that they can not be counted.

Page 157 “You must use careful judgment. Some parents who spank their children have been reported for child abuse by unsupportive relatives.” While we agree with the concept of disciplining in a private setting to maintain a child’s dignity, we think the idea that the mode of discipline being used needs to be hidden from view for fear of child abuse charges is one that should be carefully examined—the Bible does not speak very highly of those things that are done “in secret.” One Christian we know commented that “If I weren’t a Christian, the way some Christians treat their children would turn me off from ever becoming a Christian.” In the situation described in our letter, the disciplinary situation was a stumbling block to Jenn, a sister in Christ to the family involved.

Page 157 “What if I know my child is lying to me?….What do you do? … If your child will not come clean about what he has done, then he will get away with it this time. That is sad, but your losses and his losses are less if you walk away than if you call him a liar.” We are wondering on what basis Tripp places maintaining the parental relationship ABOVE the 10 Commandments? We certainly agree that caution should be exercised in punishing a child that the parent believes has lied because we do know of cases were the child wasn’t lying and the parent was mistaken about things. But there are times when the parent will witness the infraction and know beyond any doubt that the child is lying. If he is going to say that children need to be spanked to restore their relationship with God when they sin, we see no Biblical justification for only spanking for rebellion to parental authority and not spanking for violation of the 10 Commandments.

Jenn

Wow Jenn-
What a thoughtful and informative letter. Would you mind if I printed it out and took your names out but used it? Thanks for sharing.

[cklewis]

Another way of critiquing the book is that he sets up an antagonistic relationship between parent and child. That's not shepherding. If a shepherd is battling with a sheep, that's a pretty stoopit shepherd.

C

[CelticJourney]

If a shepherd is battling with a sheep, that's a pretty stoopit shepherd

As long as we are speaking literally, it could be pretty entertaining to watch though.

[cklewis]

Originally Posted by elcollins

As long as we are speaking literally, it could be pretty entertaining to watch though.

Like me fighting with a dust bunny? Or me yelling at a stuffed Elmo? Or me getting mad at the juice I just spilled?

Yeah, I can see that. . . .

C

Originally Posted by mommyof2

Wow Jenn-
What a thoughtful and informative letter. Would you mind if I printed it out and took your names out but used it? Thanks for sharing.

Thank you... Yes, you may certainly use it. I can only hope that SOMEONE who has read it (I've posted it several places on-line) has had a light bulb go off.

Jenn