Growing up, this is one of the messages that made our parents up their discipline game with us. You can and should never be a disgrace to the family name. You shouldn't even try to drag the family's name in the mud. So, mothers will always give you warning looks in their eyes when you are defiant and fathers will treat your stubbornness with rods, or whips. Either way, you will get what you are looking for... punishments
Punishments are meant to set you up in the right direction. The whole thing was so you never become wayward, and destroy your future. Our parents had good plans for us, a great future, mostly to become someone of good reputation, and status, so you can lift the family off poverty or whatever it was you guys were suffering from.
No one ever saw any child who took the bad route turning out to be any good no matter how hard they tried. The blood of disobedience and bad behaviors never allows them to go scout free. So in family histories and notebooks, you will listen to your parents point out a few persons who towed the wrong path and how they ended up. At the same time, you will be opportune to be given examples of those who valued the lessons their parents nailed into them and how they ended up too.
So, you were given a choice, choose one or the other, but remember you will bear the consequences. Somehow, our parents never wanted us to tow the wrong path. Deep down they want the best for us. This could be because of the mistakes they did in the past which they regretted so much and wouldn't want to see their children do the same. Or it could be lessons they picked up from others as they journeyed through life. So, they use the rod to straighten any child that the devil (that's how parents say it) wants to use as a channel of disgrace to the family.
Source
To make it more effective, they had the scripture to back up their actions, Proverbs, 13:24, and although we children saw the rod as punishment, the real thing was that the rod was supposed to be a guide. The pain you feel when you are hit by one is supposed to be a guiding light to what life will give you if you do not change your ways. The pain life will give is definitely going to be more hurtful, leaving lasting pains, and regrets. So it was better to be guided by a rod, whose pain was temporary but can send the right message across.
The scripture directly explains, any parent who hesitates to use the rod to guide their children truly hates them and there is no iota of love for them. Writing this, I believe the scripture is right because children whose parents pampered and never disciplined them when they were wrong ended up on the wrong side of life. And they suffered consequences and eventualities that led them to hating their parents. This is as a result of the lasting pains that life gave them because their parents refused to give them the temporary pain to warn them.
And I have heard stories of children whose mothers for instance did not allow their children to be disciplined by their fathers because of how painful the childbirth was, got gunned down by the same child. The reality is that these children knowing that they had their mother's backing did whatever they wanted and this led to a life of crime, and one such instance, their friends lured them into robbing their parents and then killing them if they recognize their faces or their voices.
Another story had a boy who led a life of crime and whom life dealt with mercilessly, and on the day he was to be executed for the crimes he had committed, he asked to speak to his mum... when she arrived, the story had it that he bit off the woman's ear.
I have not seen any family whose parents did not do the needful with raising their kids getting a good thing out of it. Even the current movie I am watching, Wura, has a family with a son called Mide, and another family with a son called, Femi. Both families suffer from the consequences of sparing the rod and thus, spoiling their children. It was one disaster after another because ideally, a lazy man is a devil's workshop.
So, with all due respect, every parent should be encouraged to not spare the rod when it comes to their children no matter how difficult the years of waiting for the child was, no matter how painful the childbirth was, no matter the mockery they survived before they finally had the child. This is to protect these children from life's permanent pains.
Posted using Neoxian City
