Welcome to the Feminid Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks for joining me today. The topic today is for moms of littles, and it's the gnarly topic of discipline. Proverbs 1224 says he who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him

disciplines him promptly. Of course you love your sons and you love your daughters, but one of the

ways you demonstrate that love is by disciplining in love and wisdom. What does discipline mean?

Discipline is teaching, training, correcting.

When your child becomes mobile, suddenly you realize there are many hazards in your home for a

crawler who can pull himself up and later toddle around getting into many things. So I want to lay out

a few principles to help you navigate this time, as well as lay

down a pattern for how you will guide and discipline as your kids grow up. First, the proverb I quoted

at the beginning says that if you hate your son, you will spare the rod. No swats, no correction.

That's what parental hatred looks like. But love is demonstrated by prompt

discipline. So if you want to be faithful with prompt discipline, you're going to have to lay out a

strategy, and then you're going to have to enforce it on yourself first. So what do I mean by that?

Well, keep your rules simple and easy to understand.

That's a no touch, you tell your crawler.

So he promptly touches it.

So you promptly flick his hand and repeat the law, no touch.

Then if you're wise, you're going to try to remove that object to a better place out of range because you don't want to have

a showdown over every no touch in your house. It's not fun for you or for your kids. Life is too

short and why make it miserable for your kids and for yourself by having a home full of no touch

items? So I recommend you move things around to make your house a pleasant place for all.

This is a temporary measure until your child gets past this phase, but why set him up to touch

things you don't want him touching by leaving them within reach on the coffee table?

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