The five thousand naira had been in the side pocket of Ene’s handbag on Monday morning. By Wednesday evening it was gone.
There were only four people in the flat in Gwarinpa: Ene, her husband, who had been travelling all week, their ten-year-old son, and the young woman from Benue who had been helping in the house since January. Ene did not want to think what she was thinking. But she had questioned the girl twice that afternoon, sharply, standing in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded. The girl had wept and sworn she had not touched the bag. Ene had not believed her.
Then, at about seven, while she was gathering school uniforms for the wash, she found the receipts in her son’s shorts pocket. Three of them, from the shop at the junction. Biscuits, a bottle of malt, two packets of chin-chin, and a top-up for the football game he played on the old tablet. The total came to just under five thousand.
She told me what happened inside her in the next few seconds, and she described it with great honesty. “I was not thinking about my son,” she said. “I was thinking about my mother.”
When Ene was eight, she had lied about breaking a neighbour’s flowerpot. Her mother found out. She made Ene kneel on the gravel outside the front gate in the afternoon sun, with her arms raised above her head, while the neighbours walked past and the other children stared. When she finally let her in, she said, “If you ever do this again, I will send you to your father’s village, and you will not come back.”
“I don’t remember the flowerpot,” Ene said. “I don’t remember what I learned. I remember the gravel. And I remember lying awake for weeks, thinking she meant it.”
Standing in the laundry room with the receipts in her hand, Ene felt every one of her mother’s words rising in her throat. She knew exactly where the gravel was outside her own gate. And she knew that her son was in the next room.
Correction is part of love
Before we say anything about how correction can go wrong, we need to be clear that correction itself is right. The Bible never presents loving parents as people who let their children do as they please. It ties correction directly to love:
My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD ; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
“For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” Notice the final phrase. The father corrects the son in whom he delighteth. Correction does not compete with delight. It flows from it. A parent who delights in a child wants that child to grow into wisdom, and correction is part of how that happens.
The alternative is not kindness. The Bible gives us a sad portrait of a father who never corrected his son:
And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly man; and his mother bare him after Absalom.
“His father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?” Adonijah was David’s son, handsome and privileged, and he had never once been asked to give account for his conduct. The result was a young man who assumed the throne was his by right and tried to seize it. Eli the priest is another warning. God judged his house “because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not” (1 Samuel 3:13).
Parents have real authority, given by God. Children are told, “obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:20). A parent who never says no, never sets a limit and never holds a child accountable is failing that child. There are parents today who are so afraid of hurting their children’s feelings that they never correct them at all. That is not grace. It leaves children unprepared for a world that will not be so indulgent, and it withholds from them one of the ways God forms character.
So the question is never whether to correct. The question is how.
Provoke not, lest they be discouraged
Paul writes two parallel instructions to parents, one in Ephesians and one in Colossians. In Ephesians he says, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). In Colossians the warning is shorter, and its reason is striking:
Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger , lest they be discouraged.
“Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.” The Greek word translated discouraged is athumeō. It describes someone who has lost heart, whose spirit has gone out of him. It is the condition of a person who has stopped trying because he has concluded that nothing he does will be good enough.
This is the danger Paul has in view. Correction that is constant, harsh, unpredictable or humiliating does not produce better children. It produces discouraged ones. Some become angry and rebellious; that is the “wrath” of Ephesians 6:4. Others become fearful and withdrawn, anxious to please, terrified of mistakes, unable to take a risk or attempt anything new. Many of us know adults like that. Some of us are adults like that. We were corrected in ways that taught us we were the problem, and we have carried the discouragement for decades.
Notice that both instructions sit right beside the command for children to obey. Paul holds the two together. Children must obey. Parents must not provoke or discourage. Authority and gentleness are not alternatives. Each needs the other.
Paul addresses fathers specifically because in the Roman world fathers held enormous legal power over their children, and the warning was needed where power was greatest. But the principle applies equally to mothers, grandparents, older siblings, teachers and anyone else who corrects a child.
PunchlineThe aim of correction is a child who has learned something and knows he is still loved. If he has only learned to fear you, the correction has failed.
Correction for our profit
The fullest New Testament passage on discipline is in Hebrews 12. The writer is speaking about how God disciplines His children, and he draws a comparison with earthly fathers:
For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Look at the contrast. Earthly fathers “verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure.” The phrase means as seemed good to them. Human fathers correct as best they can, according to their own judgement, and that judgement is sometimes shaped by their mood, their tiredness or their own upbringing. We have all corrected a child more harshly because we were tired, embarrassed in front of visitors, or frustrated about something else entirely.
But God corrects “for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.” His discipline always has a purpose, and the purpose is our good. That is the standard parents should be aiming for. Before correcting a child, it is worth asking: Is this for his profit, or for my relief?
Then verse 11: “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” The writer is honest. Correction is unpleasant at the time. A child who loses his phone for a week or has to repay money from his pocket money will not enjoy it, and he is not supposed to. Loving correction does involve real consequences.
But notice the goal: “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” The aim is a child who has grown in right living and has peace, not a child who has been made to suffer. And notice the word exercised. It translates the Greek gumnazō, from which we get gymnasium. Discipline is training. It is meant to build something, the way exercise builds muscle. Training that injures the athlete is bad training.
Teaching the wrong and the better way
If correction is training, then every act of correction should teach the child something useful. That means it should help the child understand two things: what was wrong about what he did, and what a better response would have been.
Shouting rarely teaches either. A child who is screamed at learns that his parent is angry, but he may have no idea why the thing he did matters. Was it wrong because it embarrassed Mummy? Because he got caught? Or because it hurt someone, broke trust, or dishonoured God? Without explanation, the child’s conclusion is often simply do not get caught next time.
Good correction names the wrong clearly. “You took money that was not yours. That is stealing.” It explains why it matters. “It means I cannot trust what happens in this house, and someone else was blamed for what you did.” It invites the child to understand. “How do you think she felt when I accused her?” And it points to the better way. “Next time you want something, you ask. If the answer is no, you accept it, or you save for it.”
Then it gives the child a way to put things right. Repair is one of the most valuable parts of correction, because it shows the child that wrongdoing does not have to be the end of the story. Paul describes this spirit in the church:
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
“Restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.” The word translated restore was used for setting a broken bone or mending a torn net. The purpose of correction is restoration: to put back in working order what was damaged. And it is to be done “in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” The one who corrects remembers that he, too, is capable of wrong. That memory keeps correction humble.
The Scriptures give us beautiful examples. When David committed adultery and murder, God sent Nathan, who told him a story about a rich man who stole a poor man’s lamb. David was so outraged by the story that he condemned the rich man, and then Nathan said, “Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:7). Nathan’s approach allowed David to see the wrong for himself. He confessed, “I have sinned against the LORD,” and Nathan replied at once, “The LORD also hath put away thy sin” (2 Samuel 12:13). The wrong was named, the consequences were real, and forgiveness was declared.
Or think of Peter after his denials. On the night of the betrayal, “the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter” (Luke 22:61). Peter went out and wept bitterly. After the resurrection, Jesus did not humiliate him in front of the others or ignore what had happened. He asked him three times, “lovest thou me?” (John 21:15-17), once for each denial, and each time He gave him back his work: “Feed my sheep.” The failure was faced, and Peter was restored to his calling.
Fitting the consequence to the child
The psalmist describes how God corrects His children:
Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
“For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” God’s dealings with us take full account of what we are. He knows our limitations, our weaknesses, our stage of growth. He does not demand of a young believer what He asks of a mature one.
Parents must do the same. Consequences should fit the child’s age, understanding and the nature of the wrong. Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child” (1 Corinthians 13:11). A three-year-old who spills a drink while reaching for a biscuit has not sinned; he has been three. A seven-year-old who does it deliberately to annoy his sister needs correction. A fourteen-year-old who lies about where he was last night needs a different conversation altogether.
Several distinctions help:
- Accident or choice? Childish clumsiness and forgetfulness need patient teaching. Deliberate defiance and dishonesty need firmer correction.
- Can the child understand? Explanations and consequences should match what the child can grasp. Long lectures are lost on a four-year-old; a short, clear word and a brief consequence will teach more.
- Is the consequence related? Repaying stolen money, cleaning up a mess, apologising to the person hurt, losing a privilege that was misused: these teach because they connect to the wrong.
- Is it proportionate and limited? A consequence that drags on for weeks, or that is far larger than the offence, breeds resentment and teaches nothing more.
- Is there a way back? Every consequence should end with restoration. When it is over, it is over, and the relationship is visibly whole again.
As children grow, the form of correction should grow with them. Interestingly, the question David never asked Adonijah is itself a good model: “Why hast thou done so?” (1 Kings 1:6). That question treats the child as a moral person who can give account for his choices. With a small child, the parent does most of the explaining. With a teenager, the parent asks more and tells less. “What were you thinking? What do you think should happen now? How will you rebuild my trust?” A sixteen-year-old who helps to shape the consequence of his own wrongdoing is far more likely to learn from it than one who simply has a punishment announced to him. His dignity is preserved, and he is being trained for the day when no parent will be there to correct him.
Consistency matters too. Children are quick to notice when one parent is strict and the other lenient, or when grandparents quietly undo whatever the parents have decided. Where several adults share the care of a child, it is worth agreeing together on the main lines: what will be corrected, how, and what will never be done. A child who receives the same calm response from his father, his mother and his grandmother learns that the standard is real. A child who receives a different response from each learns only to work out which adult to approach.
It is also wise to ask whether a persistent behaviour has a cause that correction alone cannot reach. A child who cannot sit still, cannot read despite trying, or suddenly becomes aggressive at school may be dealing with a learning difficulty, an attention disorder, bullying, or something worse. Such children need assessment and help. Punishing a child for a struggle he cannot control is unjust, and it will crush him.
What correction must never do
Here we need to speak plainly. There are forms of “discipline” that are not discipline at all. They are harm, and no appeal to tradition or Scripture can make them right.
Correction must never rely on humiliation. Making a child kneel outside the gate for the neighbours to see, shaming him in front of visitors, calling him names like “useless” or “idiot”, filming his punishment and sharing it on WhatsApp: these do not teach a child what was wrong. They teach him that he is worthless. Jesus taught that when a brother trespasses, we should “go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone” (Matthew 18:15). If that is the standard for correcting an adult, how much more should a child’s dignity be guarded? Correct in private wherever possible.
Correction must never rely on threats of abandonment. “I will send you to the village and you will not come back.” “I will leave you at the motor park.” “I wish you had never been born.” “Pack your things, you are no longer my child.” These words strike at the very foundation a child needs in order to grow: the security of belonging. A child who is afraid of losing his home will obey from terror, and terror cannot produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
Correction must never cause injury or terror. Any discipline that leaves a child injured, that is administered in rage, or that makes the child afraid for his safety is wrong. It is abuse. That is true whatever the method, whatever the culture, and whoever does it, whether parent, teacher, relative or guardian. Jesus’ warning is among the most severe He ever spoke: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
This applies to every child in the house, including the young people who live with families as house helps. Many of them are minors, far from their own parents, and they are especially vulnerable. They must never be beaten, starved, humiliated or overworked. The way a household treats the child who is not its own says a great deal about what it believes.
If you know a child is being harmed, by anyone, do not keep quiet in the name of family privacy or respect for elders. Speak to the appropriate authorities: the police, social welfare and child protection services, or a trusted school or church safeguarding officer who can take the matter forward. If you are the one who has been harming a child, stop, and seek help now. A pastor, counsellor or doctor can help you find another way, and the safety of the child must come first.
The question of physical discipline
NuggetSincere, Bible-believing Christian parents differ on whether physical discipline such as smacking has any place in correction. It is right to set out the views fairly.
Some believers read the proverbs about the rod as direct guidance for parents. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Proverbs 13:24). “The rod and reproof give wisdom” (Proverbs 29:15). They hold that a limited, calm, controlled smack for a young child’s deliberate defiance, never in anger and always followed by restoration and affection, can be a legitimate form of correction.
Other believers understand the rod in Proverbs as a vivid figure for firm discipline in general, much as the shepherd’s “rod and thy staff” in Psalm 23 speak of guidance and protection. They point out that Proverbs is wisdom literature that speaks in general principles and strong images, that the New Testament gives parents no instruction to strike their children, and that the clear New Testament emphasis falls on not provoking or discouraging children. Many also note the considerable evidence that physical punishment carries risks of harm and escalation. They choose to correct without any physical punishment at all.
You will need to reach your own convictions before God, and you should also be aware of the laws where you live. But wherever believers stand on this question, they should be able to agree on the following. No discipline should ever injure a child. None should be administered in anger. None should terrify or humiliate. All correction should teach, should fit the child’s age and understanding, and should end in restored relationship. If you cannot correct without losing your temper, then you are not yet ready to correct. Leave the room, calm down, pray, and come back.
When you have corrected badly
Some readers will finish this article with a sinking feeling. You have shouted. You have said things you regret. Perhaps you have hit a child in anger, or used the very threats your own parents used on you. Perhaps you see the discouragement Paul warned about in the eyes of your own son or daughter.
Hear the gospel first. “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). God’s mercy reaches parents who have failed. He does not deal with you according to your worst moments, and He can help you change.
Then do the thing that so few parents in our culture have been taught to do: apologise to your child. Many of us were raised to believe that a parent who apologises loses authority. The opposite is true. When a parent says, “I was wrong to shout at you like that. I was angry, and I said things that were not true. I am sorry,” the child learns that wrongdoing can be faced honestly, that relationships can be repaired, and that his parent is a person of integrity. You are modelling exactly what you hope he will learn to do himself.
And if your own childhood was full of the gravel and the threats, recognise that God can break the pattern in your generation. You are not bound to repeat what was done to you. That may take time, prayer and sometimes the help of a counsellor. But it can be done.
Ene did not go to her son’s room straight away. She went into her own bedroom, closed the door, and sat on the bed with the receipts in her hand. “I prayed the shortest prayer of my life,” she told me. “I said, Lord, don’t let me become my mother tonight.” She sat there until her hands stopped shaking.
Then she went and sat beside her son on his bed and showed him the receipts. He burst into tears at once. She let him cry for a while. Then she asked him to tell her what had happened, and listened without interrupting. He had seen the money, wanted the game credit, and thought she would not notice. When she had questioned the house help that afternoon, he had heard it from the corridor and been too frightened to say anything.
They talked about stealing, and about trust. Then Ene asked him a question that she said changed the whole evening: “How do you think she felt today, when I accused her of something you did?” Her son was quiet for a long time.
The consequences were real. He would repay the money from his pocket money and from extra chores over the next five weeks. The tablet would stay in her room for that time. And he would apologise to the young woman himself.
Ene went with him. But before he spoke, she spoke first. She told the girl in the kitchen that she had been wrong to accuse her, and that she was sorry. Then her son apologised, haltingly, looking at the floor. The girl hugged him.
That night, as Ene was turning off his light, her son said something she has never forgotten. “Mummy, I thought you were going to make me kneel outside.”
Punchline“No,” she said. “You are not going outside. You are going to put this right, and I am going to help you.”
That is what correction looks like when it comes from love. The wrong is named. The consequences are real. The child learns something true and useful. And through it all, he knows that he still belongs, inside the gate, in the family, in his mother’s arms.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- How were you corrected as a child? What did you learn from it, and what has stayed with you?
- When you correct your children, is it usually “for their profit” or for your own relief? How could you tell the difference in the moment?
- Do your consequences teach your children what was wrong and what a better response would be?
- Have you ever relied on humiliation, threats of abandonment or anger in correcting a child? What would it take to stop?
- Is there a child to whom you owe an apology for the way you corrected them?
This Week
Before the next time you need to correct one of your children, decide on a simple pattern and write it down: pause and calm yourself; name the wrong clearly and privately; explain why it matters; ask the child what a better response would be; give a fitting, limited consequence; and finish with clear restoration, such as a hug, a prayer or a word of love. Use it every time this week. If you lose your temper, go back afterwards and apologise.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You correct me in love, for my profit, that I might share in Your holiness. Thank You that You know my frame and remember that I am dust. Give me wisdom and courage to correct my children faithfully, and gentleness so that I never crush their spirit. Forgive me for the times I have corrected in anger, shamed them, or spoken words that threatened their sense of belonging. Break in me every harmful pattern I received, and help me to give my children what I may not have been given. Let my correction teach them, restore them and assure them that they are loved. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.