They Told Me To Be Firmer

Everybody has an opinion about your son and almost all of it is the same opinion.

Be firmer. Do not let him get away with it. He is playing you. If you gave him a bit less room he would learn. My brother's boy was like that and he grew out of it once somebody drew a line.

And every one of those people loves you and means well, and not one of them has spent a whole day with him.

And here is what you know, in a way you cannot argue for, which is why the advice keeps landing on you and staying there.

You have tried firm. You tried it for about five months when he was six, because you were told to and because you were frightened of being the kind of father who cannot manage his own child. And it did not produce a boy who coped. It produced a boy who came apart in the same places and stopped telling you beforehand.

So you went back to doing it your way, and you have felt vaguely ashamed of that ever since, because you have no defense for it except that it works better.

Let me give you the defense. It is in Isaiah, it is about a shepherd, and it is not soft.

He shall gently lead

There is a verse in Isaiah about how God Himself handles the ones who cannot keep up, and the vocabulary in it is the whole answer to the advice that keeps landing on you.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11, King James Version)

You have a pattern in the written word for leading the one who cannot keep the pace, and no version of it has ever once involved being firmer with the slow one. Isaiah 40:11 says he shall gently lead rather than he shall drive, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a father read that as instruction rather than as sentiment.

Now look at where that verse sits, because this is the part that answers the accusation of softness. Two verses earlier the same chapter is announcing the arm of the LORD ruling with strength. This is not a passage about a gentle personality. It is a passage about tremendous power, and then, in the middle of it, this.

The one who rules with a strong arm gathers lambs with that arm and carries them.

You are able to be a strong father and carry the one who cannot keep up, and no part of that has ever once been the two things contradicting each other. It is written that the arm which rules with strength is the same arm that gathers the lambs, which is why gentleness here is a use of strength rather than an absence of it, and the Spirit of God is what settles that in a man who has been made to feel weak.

And notice the phrase gently lead. Lead. He is still going somewhere and they are still going with him. The gentleness is about pace and handling, not about direction or whether the journey happens.

That is exactly the distinction the people advising you cannot make. They hear gentle and think permissive. The verse means neither.

You are able to lead him somewhere at his pace, and going gently has never once meant not going. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man the difference between a soft father and a shepherd, and Isaiah 40 puts gathering, carrying and leading in one sentence.

Firmness answers a problem he does not have

Now the practical part, and it is one distinction that will save you a great deal.

Firmness is the right tool for a specific thing: a child who could do the thing and has chosen not to. Applied there, it works, and every one of those people advising you has watched it work with their own children, which is why they are so confident.

Your son is not doing that. And you know it, because you have watched his face in the moment, and what is on it is not calculation.

You are able to tell the difference between a boy who will not and a boy who cannot, and years of watching him has never once been you being taken in. The Spirit of God is what confirms a father's own eyes to him, and Isaiah 40:11 distinguishes the lambs and the ones with young from the rest of the flock rather than treating everybody the same.

And here is what firmness does when it is applied to a child who cannot rather than one who will not. It does not remove the difficulty. It adds shame to it. So now he has the original problem and a second problem, which is knowing he has failed at something he was told to manage.

Then the concealment starts. And concealment is the thing that actually costs you, because it takes away your only real tool, which is knowing in advance.

You are able to be the man he tells things to, and being that has never once been the same thing as letting him off. It is written that the shepherd gathers and carries rather than reproves the lamb for its size, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a boy's mouth open to his own father.

Name the change, and tell him the day before

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately narrow.

Name the change he finds hardest. Then tell him about it the day before instead of on the day.

The naming first. Not everything he finds hard. One thing, and the most likely candidate is a specific kind of change: leaving somewhere, arriving somewhere, a plan altering, or a thing ending sooner or later than he had understood.

You are able to name one thing precisely instead of managing everything, and narrowing it has never once been you giving up on the rest. Isaiah 40:11 names the lambs and the ones with young specifically rather than speaking about the flock in general, and the Spirit of God is with a father working out which single thing to change.

Then the timing, which is the entire intervention. Tell him the day before.

Not five minutes before, which is the version everybody does. The day before, plainly, once, with no build up. Tomorrow at about two we are leaving the water and going to your grandmother's. That is it.

You are able to give him the one thing that actually helps, and it has never once required you to be firmer or softer with him. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts an ordinary practical idea into a father's head after years of advice that did not fit, and Isaiah 40 has the leading done gently and on purpose.

And do not check whether it worked, out loud. Do not ask him afterward if that was better. Just do it again the next time. Four or five times is enough to find out.