Skip to main content

25 Ways Parents Provoke Their Children To Anger By Pastor Kevin Feder





I will provide Lou Priolo's list of 25 ways parents provoke their children to anger. Beneath that I will comment on the top ten in the list. 

25 WAYS PARENTS PROVOKE CHILDREN TO ANGER
List created by Lou Priolo

Lack of Marital Harmony
Establishing & Maintaining a Child-Centered Home
Modeling Sinful Anger
Habitually Disciplining While Angry
Scolding
Being Inconsistent with Discipline
Having Double Standards
Being Legalistic
Not Admitting You’re Wrong & Not Asking For Forgiveness
Constantly Finding Fault
Reversal of God-given Roles
Not Listening to the Child’s Opinion or Not Taking His or Her “Side of the Story” Seriously
Comparing Them to Others
Not Making Time “Just to Talk”
Not Praising or Encouraging Your Child
Failing to Keep Your Promises
Chastening in Front of Others
Not Allowing Enough Freedom
Allowing Too Much Freedom
Mocking Your Child
Abusing Them Physically
Ridiculing or Name Calling
Unrealistic Expectations
Practicing Favoritism
Child Training with Worldly Methodologies that are Inconsistent with God’s Word

1.     Not having marital harmony. The relationship between husband and wife must be the priority relationship in the home. Typically, wives must remember they are one flesh with their husband, not their children. Typically, husbands must remember that they are one flesh with their wives, not their job or their hobby. When more intimacy between parent and children surpasses that of spouse the foundation of a child centered home results. There is a correlation between lack of harmony and angry children. 

2.  By establishing and maintaining a child-centered home.  Angry children are usually cultivated in child-centered home. What is a child centered home? A child who believes the home exists to please the child, where everyone is committed to pleasing and serving the child. A God-centered home is a home is a home that is committed to pleasing and serving God and everyone is committed to pleasing and serving God. A God-centered home exalts God’s desires above everyone else’s. Everyone is expected to sacrifice personal pleasures if God’s will requires it.  This home teaches children to serve rather than be served, to honor rather be honored, to give and be loving rather than be selfish. 

3. Modeling sinful anger. Whenever there is a problem in our life we can internalize (implosive anger). Implosive anger may include clamming up, pouting, withdrawal, offering the "cold shoulder" (vengeance). The other extreme is explosive anger which included blowing up, yelling, threatening, and slamming doors. Anger teaches our children that the only way deal with conflict is to win instead of teaching them the biblical resources necessary to resolve conflict. Jay Adams said "anger is an emotion that God gives us to attack or destroy something." Angry people need to learn how to communicate and they need to learn to attack the problem instead of the person.  

4.  By constantly disciplining your child in anger: When parents are angry its is easy for them to over-discipline. In their anger may be perceived as a personal attack and it will be received as vindictive rather than corrective. 

5.  Having inconsistent discipline patterns: It is better to have one person tighten and one loosen than to have two different standards. Avoid setting two different standards and avoid the failure to enforce standards consistently.

 6.  By having double standards: "Do as I say not as I do." Have you ever been tempted to rely on this? When children see their spiritual leaders using double standards it angers children just like the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees angered Christ.

 7.  By being legalistic: Legalism is referring to any time one elevates a man made rule to the culpability of God-given command. God has given parents the responsibility to develop from Scripture a set of rules that govern the house. Biblically directed rules refer to rules a child is always obligated to obey because they are God’s rules (e.g. don’t lie). Biblically derived rules relate to rules that a child is only obligated to obey as they relate to their house. These rules must be based on principles of God's truth. Parents can create a culture where man made rules are able to be questioned while biblically directed rule may not. 

8. Not admitting when you are wrong: The more a parent in the wrong can specify what you have done wrong the better. Afterwards, parents should detail what they should have done (biblical responses). Not admitting wrong provokes children to anger and doesn’t give children confidence that you realize you have done something to offend them. Consequently, children are not given the hope that the standard they are expected to keep should really matter. 

9. By having unrealistic expectations: Parents should emphasize character, not achievement. If parents draw too much attention on performance it will encourage perfection rather than confessing and repenting of sin. Parents should carefully consider how children change. Do you have a biblical understanding of this? Never expecting unregenerate teenagers to act like Christians. Know the difference between expecting Christian teenagers to always want to do right rather than expecting them to do right even if they don’t feel like it.

10.Training them with worldly methods and not being consistent with God’s word: Scripture commands parents to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Not in the discipline and instruction of Dr. Phil. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Deacons - How They Serve and Strengthen the Church (Part 1)

  One of the next important priorities for GCF is to establish deacons in the life of the church. On March 14, 2021 we were able to establish an elder team. Currently, we have a team of four elders overseeing the congregation of GCF.  However, there is more work to be done. I have come to see that establishing an elder team was the bare minimum that needed to happen for GCF to survive. I believe GCF now needs to turn our attention to raising up a team of qualified and willing deacons to serve the congregation so that it will not only survive but thrive.   I would like to begin a series of blogs on deacons to help us understand who they are and what they do in the life of the church.  In this blog let me provide three reasons why I think deacons should be near our top priority.  Number 1: It is Biblical. Paul instructs Timothy to install elders who will help him pastor the church. For whatever reason, it seems the churches in our circles treat the installment of elders as non-negotiable

Does the Doctrine Divide? by Patience Griswold

“Oh, I try not to talk about doctrine. It’s so divisive.” This is a sentiment that I’ve heard expressed, as well as implied, on many occasions, and one that raises the question, does doctrine divide? In answering this question, we must keep in mind a very important truth and that is that everyone holds to some sort of doctrine . “Doctrine” is defined as “a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group.” Regardless of whether or not someone publicly holds to a statement of beliefs from a particular church, every Christian, by definition, holds to a particular set of beliefs. As Carl Trueman observes in his book The Creedal Imperative ,       [W]hile Christianity cannot be reduced to doctrine, to mere teaching, it cannot be meaningfully separated from it, either. Even the most basic claims, such as “Jesus is Lord,” carry clear doctrinal content that needs to be explicated in a world where, as we have noted before, every heretic has his text and n

The Secret of all Failure is our Failure in Secret Prayer

“We may be assured of this—the secret of all failure is our failure in secret prayer” (12). So writes the anonymous author of the classic little book on prayer entitled, The Kneeling Christian (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids: 1971). He means that the reason we so often fall into sin or live in discouragement or fail to bear fruit is because we do not cling to God in Christ above all things. We do not diligently seek him or lean on him or plead with him or draw on his strength. We give ourselves to busyness over communion with God and in this way we seek to accomplish in our flesh what can only be accomplished in the power of the Spirit.  Giving first place to what our dear author calls “secret prayer” is indeed a key to the Spirit-filled life but let’s be clear: prayer is not magic, rather, it’s a relationship. It’s not as if we simply have to file requests with God, being careful to use just the right words so that we can get him to respond as we wish. God is not a vending m