When many of us hear the word discipline, we immediately assume it to mean “punishment.” This isn’t a surprise—our society teaches us over and over that accountability for wrongdoing must be retributive and punitive; that is, we have to pay for our wrong behavior through an experience of pain.
Take driving, for example. If you drive recklessly, you get a ticket. The hope is that by having to pay the ticket (financial pain), you’ll be motivated not to speed again. It’s easy to apply this idea to parenting. If your children speak disrespectfully, common parenting advice would be to punish them with a time-out. They go to their room by themselves and “think about what they’ve done.” The hope is that by being physically isolated in this way (and experiencing the emotional pain that this separation brings), they will think twice about repeating the wrong action in the future.
Understanding Peacemaker Discipline and Its Core Principles
Let’s be frank: When it comes to modifying, managing, and changing behaviors, punishments do often work in the short term. Time-outs have been found to improve behavior, as have related consequences.1
However, God designed our bodies to respond to fear by going into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response, which minimizes the capacity to learn so we can protect ourselves or survive the perceived threat, we can see potential flaws in this approach. The short-term win often comes with a long-term loss. Only when the brain perceives safety, love, and security can a person be receptive to new information, experiences, and challenges.
Why Fear Undermines the Goals of Peacemaker Discipline
Research consistently shows that corporal punishment, both in the home and in the classroom, is often linked with poor outcomes later in life.2 It is only if the punishment (time-out, loss of privilege) is accompanied by verbal correction and conversation that its long-term impact becomes more neutral.3
Further, children, especially those who are young, often won’t make the negative association we want them to see between their behavior and our response. Rather than remembering the misbehavior that got them in trouble, they will focus on the punishment and whether they felt it was fair or just.
The Flaws of Punitive Parenting
Our boys were still young toddlers when we were convicted to view discipline more as discipleship and less as punishment. In theory, this was great. In practicality, we often felt lost. Cue the late-night internet searches for “how to help a toddler not hit” and “how to respond to toddler tantrums.” Finding resources specifically for Christian parents was a little trickier—especially for early childhood. Rather than piling on shame, punishment, or condemnation and inadvertently teaching our children to focus on their own feelings about their behavior, we wanted to use the example of Jesus to guide our discipline. We wanted to teach accountability through reconciliation and restoration.
Why Natural Consequences Work Best
When we commit to this type of accountability, we are not committing to a life without consequences! The opposite, in fact, is true. Disciplining as a peacemaker embraces natural consequences as beautiful, God-designed learning opportunities, and prepares children with skills and practices to help them show up differently in the future.
And let’s be honest, that can be tough! As parents, we often view consequences in one of two ways: Either we don’t want our children to experience the consequences of their choices (so we try to step in and shield them) or we feel like the natural consequences aren’t enough to teach the lesson (so we impose additional punishment).
Biblical Insights to Shape Peacemaker Discipline
But this is not what we see modeled in Scripture.
Let’s look at the parable of the good, good Father (Luke 15:11-32) and how the father graciously gives the Prodigal Son the demanded inheritance. The son chooses to travel afar, waste all he has been given, and steadily debase himself until he is a starving pig herder. Finally, he comes to his senses. Only now does he recognize the graciousness of his father, a man who cares not just for his family but also for the lowliest of his servants.
Teaching Accountability with Grace through Peacemaker Discipline
The son decides to return home and beg for forgiveness. He hopes he can be a slave. It will be a life of permanent shame, mockery, and service to what had once been his family, but it’s better than starving.
When he arrives home, this plan immediately falls apart. Instead of the father making his son grovel and beg or even ask permission to come inside the house, the father runs to him and begins to hug and kiss him. The father cuts off the son’s well-rehearsed speech asking to be treated like a servant. Instead, the father immediately treats him like a treasured and trusted son. He tells his servants, “Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead and is alive” (Luke 15:22-24).
By this point, most of us are probably thinking that this story offers terrible parenting advice. The father is letting his son get away with absolutely horrible behavior! This seems like the complete and total opposite of every scrap of parenting advice we’ve ever received.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? The father in this story does what no human father would dream of doing; he is endlessly gracious. The father is God Himself. The point of the parable for us as parents is not that we should give our children everything they ever ask for and hope for the best. The point is that the God we are teaching our children about is a God of endless grace.
We won’t introduce them to that God by using fear and punishment to try to form their character, forcing them into compliance through threats and strong voices. In doing so, our actions will only contradict our words. Rather, children learn about a God of grace through our own graciousness.
Society tells us that if we give too much grace, our children will turn into hooligans who don’t know the difference between right and wrong. It tells us that we’d better keep our love tempered if we want to provide good moral training for our children. Yet God’s love is anything but temperate. Some might even call it reckless. But through that love, God forms the moral character of His children.
We can train, discipline, and mold our children while maintaining a posture of peace and grace toward them. Our human grace may be imperfect and far more limited than the grace God offers, but it still molds young hearts far better than fear ever can.
1. Brett Enneking, “Child Development—The Time-Out Controversy: Effective or Harmful?” Indiana University School of Medicine, February 6, 2020, https://medicine.iu.edu/blogs/pediatrics/child-development-the-time-out-controversy-effective-or-harmful.
2. See, for example, Joan Durrant and Ron Ensom, “Physical Punishment of Children: Lessons from 20 Years of Research,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 184, no. 12 (September 4, 2012): 1373–1377, https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.101314.
3. Melanie J. Woodfield, Irene Brodd, and Sarah E. Hetrick, “Time-Out with Young Children: A Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) Practitioner Review,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 1 (2022): 145, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010145.
Adapted from The Flourishing Family: A Jesus-Centered Guide to Parenting with Peace and Purpose by Dr. David and Amanda Erickson, releasing in September 2024.
