How do You Score on the Character Test?

While the world is filled with people who are characters, people with character are rare. Take the test below and see if you are a person of character.

1- Is it hard for other people to find fault with you?

2- Do you consistently control your emotions?

3- Do the people in your life respect you?

4- Are you teachable? Are you willing to teach others when you have something to share?

5- Do you stay sober?

6- Are you gentle and kind in your dealings with others?

7- Do avoid argument when possible?

8- Do you value relationships and people more than things or wealth?

9- Do you faithfully and passionately fulfill your family responsibilities as parent, spouse or child?

The list is not exhaustive, but consistent yes answers suggest a person of quality and integrity. Think you recognize the list? It comes from the Bible, 1 Timothy 3, where the qualifications for church leadership are described! I think these character characteristics are a worthy pursuit for all of us.

5 Key Principles for Effective Childhood Discipline

We know our children need discipline, and we know we need to do it. But what do we do? Do we do time outs? For how long? If I spank my child is that child abuse? It seems that other parents know what to do, but I feel lost. How do I discipline my child?

Hardly a day goes by in which I do not answer one of these questions. Parents get conflicting advice from parents, web sites, friends and family members and as a result can be paralyzed with confusion. Here are 5 key principles for effective discipline. 

1. Discipline needs to be planned in advance. Good decisions are rarely made in the moment. Have discussions with your spouse about what behaviors you will discipline and the methods you will use. By planning in advance you will take emotion out of the equation make a better decision.
2. Discipline needs to be consistently applied. Children need to have clear and consistent boundaries. If it is wrong to do something on Monday it needs to be wrong on Wednesday and Saturday as well. If it is wrong when Mommy is watching it needs to be wrong when Daddy is watching as well.
3. Never Discipline in Anger. This is a big deal. Whatever method you use to discipline your child, if you discipline in anger you are harming you child and will discipline poorly. If you find yourself angry. STOP! Step away and gather yourself.
4. Make sure the child knows why they are being disciplined. Concisely and clearly tell the child what they are doing wrong.
5. Do not over explain or justify your discipline. I often tell parents that moms and dads come in two varieties. One parent will take the child aside and say, “Mommy/Daddy loves you very much and does not want you to hurt yourself. If you play with something made of glass it might break and you could hurt yourself. I do not want you to hurt yourself so I am going to give you a timeout, okay?” The other parent takes away the glass object, puts it out of reach and says, “I said No!, don't touch. Do what mommy/daddy says!” Guess which parent the child is more likely to obey? It is good to train children early that they need to obey, even if they do not fully understand. When they become teenagers, this will be invaluable!

With this in mind, How do you discipline? Let's review the common approaches.

1- “Time-out” This can be very effective for some children. The underlying principle is that removal from personal contact can be a negative reinforcement. If you choose this method, it is important to respond quickly when the bad behavior occurs, as the negative reinforcement is most effective when it rapidly follows the behavior.

2- Corporal Punishment. Using a spank or another form of discomfort to communicate displeasure. I am not someone who believes that a single swat on a diapered bottom is child abuse, but I do believe that parents need to be very cautious when applying physical discipline. Repeated swats are never appropriate. If your goal is pain or suffering, you are abusing your child. If you are angry, you may be abusing your child. If it is used, corporal punishment to not be the first response. If you are unsure, don't.

Question- What form of discipline is best?

Answer- The one that works. At its root, discipline means to teach or instruct. If the behavior is not improving, then you are not disciplining, you are punishing. If your response is not working, reevaluate and ask for help. When my daughter was 5 time-outs did not work at all. We changed and started putting her favorite toys in timeout instead. When her favorite “dress up” toys were in timeout for a week her behavior began to change!

Have any discipline suggestions that you found successful? Share them in the comments. Like this post? Please share it with your friends! Want to receive posts automatically in your email? Click the link! Scroll down on a mobile device or upper right on your desktop.

A Lesson I Learned From Being Abused as a Child

By the Grace of God, I survived child abuse. I was  regularly beaten, mocked and ridiculed as I grew up. While many emotional scars remain, I have been able to learn from some of the terrible experiences I endured. What follows is the story of one of those experiences and the lesson learned.

As a young boy, I liked stewed tomatoes. (I had strange culinary preferences for a 6 year-old).  My fondness wasn’t only based on taste. In my little boy mind there was something special about juicy warm tomatoes that were sort of like soup but not really.  They felt good going down my throat and were soothing to me, a type of yummy comfort.  They were a family favorite, served as a side dish with beef.  The liquid nature of the dish made it impractical to simply add it to the dish; stewed tomatoes required a bowl of their own, a holder worthy of their specialness.  My mom would scoop the tomatoes into little bowls for us and set them beside each of our plates.  I can still picture them in my mind.  

As much as I loved them, the glorious era of stewed tomatoes was short.  Their reign as a dinner time staple came crashing down one evening, on a night when a bowl of stewed tomatoes was at the center of one of my earliest painful memories. It was because of stewed tomatoes that I experienced my first concussion.
 We gathered for dinner that as we always did in the dining area between the kitchen and the living room.  The apartment was not particularly large; the table was situated close to the wall.  I sat on the wall side of the table next to my twin Bret, who sat to my right.  To my left was my step-father, across from my older brother Rick and younger brother Jimmy.  My mother at the end of the table opposite my step-dad.
As was our habit, the kids had all already taken our baths and put on our pajamas.  (Kids went to bed early in those days!) We had taken our places at the table and had all been served our food, which included a bowl of delicious stewed tomatoes.  The bowls were at the top of our place settings, next to our glasses of milk. I wanted my bowl on my plate, so I asked my mom if I could put it there.  My mother, who didn’t care much for my opinions and desires back then, told me to leave the tomatoes where they were.  Disappointed, I went about eating my meal.
I do not remember what made her change her mind about the location of my tomato bowl, but she did.  It might have been because I was making a mess each time I maneuvered my tomato laden spoon from the far side of my plate to my mouth, or it may have been because I gave her a particularly mournful look that caused her to understand the importance of stewed tomato geography in my developing mind.  Regardless of her motivation, she  told me I could put my bowl on my plate after all.  Once my stewed tomatoes arrived in their rightful place, I was happy.
My happiness was brief.  I had barely ingested one spoonful when the blow from my step-father came. He had not been paying attention to the latter part of our tomato dialogue, as he had briefly turned away from the table. When he turned back to his meal, he saw the bowl of stewed tomatoes on my plate.  As he had not heard my mother give me permission to move the bowl he deduced that I had defied his wife’s commands, and being the violent man he was, he reflexively struck.
With his right hand he delivered a back-handed slap to my forehead, fully intending to cause severe pain.  I did not see it coming and did not have a chance to protect myself.  With full force the backs of his knuckles impacted my 6 year-old forehead, driving my head back.  My whole body was carried backwards by the blow, with the back of my head slamming into the wall behind me.  My head exploded in pain, my face exploded in tears.  I have only vague memories of the moments that followed, the concussion clouded my mind for several minutes.
I remember crying, I remember vomiting, and I remember losing my appetite.  I remember the dent in the dining room wall from where my head made contact, and I remember the dull, throbbing ache that followed. I remember a terrible argument which resulted in my step-father leaving the house for several hours.  I remember my mother holding a cold towel to my forehead, as he stormed out through the front door.
When I think back on the events of that night, I remember the one word echoing in my mind as my head throbbed- “Why?”  Why did he hit me?  Why did he hate me?  Why did he hit me so hard? Why?
The answers to those questions are complicated, far beyond the comprehension of a 6 year-old boy.  Even now, as a 52 year-old physician, the answers are not totally clear.  I do know that he hit me not because I had done anything wrong, but because he was a brutal, violent and alcoholic man.  I don’t think he hated me, but I do think he was incapable of love.  He was angry not at what I had done, but at what he thought I did.  Although I had been obedient, he interpreted events in a way that led him to believe I was defying my mother’s instructions.  In his perception, I deserved to be punished.
His erroneous perception of what happened, his incomplete understanding of events, caused him to respond in anger.  
It took me many years to recognize the lesson I could learn from the abusive response of my step-father that night. I am not a violent man and would never strike a child in such a way, but I am a man who at times reacts without completely understanding a situation.  
This tendency to react without complete understanding is not unique to my step-father and me.  It is one that has plagued mankind from the beginning of time.  Foolish actions, unwise promises and broken relationships can often be traced back to this same root cause- jumping to a conclusion. We can get so worked up over so little, and be so quick to judge. I have learned to take the words of the New Testament writer James to heart- “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”
I am a much better husband, father, physician, boss and friend when I suppress my initial negative responses and take the time to stop and gather more information. The more I do this, the less hurt I cause. I wonder if we all can't learn from my step-father in this way. 

Do you feel this Important Symptom of a Diseased Spiritual Heart?

Symptoms are important. They tell the patient that something is wrong and when properly understood can tell the physician what that something is. Every once in a while I get surprised by someone who is much sicker or worse off than I imagined. I find myself asking, “How is it they didn't feel this?”

I think of a 10-year-old girl who came to my office several years ago. She had fallen off of the monkey bars a few days earlier and had occasionally complained of arm pain. Her mother was only a little concerned but brought her in to see me just to be sure she was okay.

I examined the child, poking and prodding and moving her arm and shoulder all around. Not a peep or a grimace of pain. Her exam was perfectly normal. I told the mom I could not make a good argument for getting an x-ray, but gave an order for arm and shoulder films just in case. I told her to get the x-rays done if she was not better in 2-3 days.

Three days later they were back. The girl still was relatively asymptomatic, but this time one thing was different. This time she brought an x-ray of her upper arm that showed the humerus was broken. IN TWO! Snapped. Completely broken with the bones a centimeter apart. To this day I cannot understand how she could have slept comfortably, much less allow a doctor to move the arm over her head. It is hard to recognize a problem when there are no symptoms!

Our society is in a similar circumstance right now. We have serious problems, but many people do not feel or recognize them at all. They are missing something crucial that would allow them to understand how sick they really are.

Ravi Zacharias, a brilliant and articulate Christian leader, described the problem perfectly in two recent Facebook posts-

“To raise a child without shame is to raise one with no immune system against evil.”

“Shame is to the moral health of a society what pain is to the body. The sense of shame provides an indicator to the mind.”

Dysfunction is spreading through our culture, spreading because people lack a key means of recognizing it and dealing with it. They have lost a sense of shame. People are openly proud about behaviors which were once (and still should be) considered shameful.

I can think of many examples, such as the young man who came into my office for a check up, and when I asked about his sexual history, proudly declared that he was sexually involved with several girlfriends at the same time. Taken aback by his unabashed boasting, I clarified his response, asking, “So you are not saying you have had multiple partners in the past, you are saying that you currently have multiple women you are sleeping with?”

He extended his fist to give me a knuckle punch as he laughed and turned the word “Yeah” into one of three syllables. “Yea-a-ah, dude!” He had no shame.

I have seen similar sentiments expressed on Facebook, in blog posts and on television. Casual sexual encounters, vulgar language and other immoral behaviors are displayed as badges of honor instead of markers of shame. It seems that our world has fully embraced the view that no behavior is inherently wrong. If it feels good and brings pleasure in the moment it should be proclaimed and celebrated.

The freedom promised by the shameless pursuit of pleasure is false freedom, as it traps people in lives where it is impossible to experience the joy and peace that come from living life as God intends. Instead of running from and denouncing shame and embarrassment, we should train ourselves to cultivate a healthy sense of shame that will sound the alarm when we foolishly go our own way.

God wants to heal our diseased hearts, and appropriate shame can lead us to seek the cure. Ask yourself- "Do I feel the symptoms of my sinful heart, or am I becoming hardened to shame?" The answer is important.

Answers to Questions about Disciplining a Child

Being a parent is hard. Kids don"t come with instructions, a warranty or a return policy. Almost always they are raised by people who feel completely incapable of successful parenting. They want to raise happy, well adjusted and well behaved children but frequently find themselves with offspring who are anything but. What can they do?

Children need discipline, but in my experience most parents are ill informed about why, when and how to apply it. Since I have had hundreds of conversations on the subject over 20 years of medical practice, it seems appropriate to share some of the answers to discipline questions I have been asked over the years.

Question- When should we start disciplining our child?

Answer- When your child starts to do something, stops and looks to see if you are watching and then does it anyway, they are ready for discipline! Children vary developmentally but this usually happens by age one.

Question- Why should I discipline a child? (okay, so no one ever really asked this question specifically, but I have encountered a LOT of parents who needed to,hear the answer.)

Answer- Children are not naturally good. If left to themselves they will grow up to be selfish, disrespectful people who will struggle with relationships and authority. Don't believe me? Watch a young child for a while and you will see a child who has never been hit and never seen anyone be hit strike another 3 year-old who took his toy. It is in their nature.
Answer part 2- Discipline builds self esteem. How? Self esteem comes from knowing you are a good person. What do good people do? Good things and not bad things! Well established boundaries help a child know what good and bad are. This allows them to know when they are being good and then to feel good about it.

Question- What behaviors do we discipline?

Answer- Those that are rebellious or dangerous. Children need to be free to explore and express themselves without needless fear. A mom was in my office with her 2 year-old recently. The little girl wandered around the exam room playing with toys and opening cabinets. She opened the door on the changing table in the room, found a stack of diapers and took one out. The mom thought this was a learning opportunity and told the girl, "No! Put it back!" the daughter just stood there, and the mom repeated the command two more times before I interrupted.

"I wouldn't fight this battle," I said, "She is two and picked up a diaper. I would just take the diaper and put it back and be done with it." The girl had not done anything wrong and setting up the possibility of conflict made no sense. It is important to pick the appropriate battles.

Question- How do we discipline? Is it okay to spank?
Answer- Coming in a future blog post... :-)

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