Practical Tips for Handling Bickering Kids

Our kids have been in a phase of particularly concentrated bickering for the past few months. My 7 year-old started tending to whine or yell; my 5 year-old is still strong-willed about what he wants or considers right; my 3 year-old is in his full-fledged, irrational, emotional terrible two’s; and my 1.5 year-old is old enough to screech for what she wants. What results is synergistic conflict: not anything egregious enough to be disciplined, and often not a situation with someone in the clear right or wrong—just this incessant bickering.

I’ve really struggled to deal with it, and it’s only in the past week that I feel like there’s been some practical breakthrough. Here is a list that I wrote to myself, of things that I’ve found work or that I want to remind myself to do:

- set a positive baseline tone and attitude myself at home: I can choose the attitude I set. I can choose to make our home the safest place in the world. I enjoy my kids and expect to enjoy them. If there is grumbling in my own heart, it leaks out to the kids. Sing songs.

- have preemptive activities planned: they don’t have to be huge deals (though that is good occasionally)—what matters is my attention and some amount of forethought. Get the play-dough out. Print out coloring pages.

- expect to be present: some multi-tasking is inevitable, but my primary goal is to be with my kids. “The dishes can wait; their childhood cannot”

- never escalate bickering by letting my own frustration and anger rise: I need to set an example. I need to teach an effective lesson. If I sense my frustration rising, pause. Talk slowly and softly instead of loud and fast. God can give me the strength to do this.

- quicker response time: if a bickering-related behavior is grating on me, respond to it early and effectively. Do not let it go on until I react with an angry outburst.

- call out the positive in my children: verbally recognize both positive behavior and the character trait it reflects

- practice positive behavior: give them the words or lines to say that are alternatives to something antagonistic. Consider practicing these lines in mock situations. Verbally model this myself by speaking helpful lines out loud (“it’s not a big deal”)

- separate them: they may need the freedom or guidance to have their own space and time as the natural default is for us all to be together

- spend individual time with each of them: the older ones need their own attention as much as the younger ones, though they demand it less

- avoid the group effect: do not disproportionately blame individual kids for sibling behaviors or group effects that they are not responsible for. They may need to learn to adjust their behaviors to make it easier for others, but it is not their fault their sibling has a trigger issue or the group effect made it worse

Eating The Flesh

In John chapter 6, Jesus says, I am your manna from heaven. I am your bread: and that bread is my flesh. If you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you will have eternal life; you will abide in me and I will abide in you.

The significant of the blood I’ve always found intuitively more understandable: God’s judgment requires substitutionary blood sacrifice, from the beginning when God presumably killed an animal to clothe Adam and Eve in animal skins after they sinned, through the countless animal sacrifices made in the old testament, through the final sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Because of his blood, God’s judgment passes over me.

But eating the flesh I never got quite as well. In John 6, Jesus is speaking at the time of the Passover, so naturally everyone would have been thinking of Exodus 12. On the tenth day of the month, they were to pick a year-old, blemish-free lamb and keep it in their house for four days. Probably long enough for their kids to name it. Then at twilight of the fourteenth day, they were to kill this lamb. Most people remember the part about smearing its blood on the doorposts, but quite a lot of attention is directed to its flesh: it was to be roasted, not kept raw or boiled; the head, legs, and innards were to be roasted. The flesh was to be eaten, but in a hurry: with shoes on and luggage packed and ready to go. Leftovers were to be burned; nothing could remain till morning.

Later in Leviticus 4, God says animals killed as sin offerings were to have their flesh burned: the focus seems mainly on the blood. So why, in Exodus 12, do we eat the flesh? Why not just huddle in wait behind the bloody doorposts, ready for deliverance; surely this would have been more efficient? Why did Jesus, so many years later, say we have to not only drink his blood, but eat his flesh?

Well, I know I’m always trying to get my kids to eat before we have to leave for a trip: it seems God is saying, I don’t just want this lamb that you loved to spill its blood so you can be spared the judgment of death—I want its flesh to give you energy for the journey ahead. I want its flesh to give you physical life, as you leave behind your old life of slavery and step out into the new. And as you travel, I’m going to send down that flesh, that bread, again, so that you know: I am God; I do this; I give you life. I don’t just spare you judgment; I bring you new life. And hundreds of years later, Jesus comes and says: I am that flesh. I am that bread. “My flesh is true food” (John 6:55).

And surely it is no accident that we are creatures who need to eat. All the time. Does that ever strike you as odd? We can eat the most amazing meal of our lives, but the next day, we’ll always be hungry again. Sometimes it hits me that I have to feed six people three meals every day for the next decade: that’s a full-time job. I think some of why we were created this way must be Jesus saying: I want you to understand how it is that you need me. You need me every day. You need me to survive. You need me digestively: you need to chew on me, on the Word. You need to ingest, and the growth is a process; it’s not a shot you take, or a file you download. But in that process, there is enjoyment, just as food gives us delight, and in that process, there is life, and the life that he gives us, is not only life to the full, but it is eternal life. We won’t carry our physical bodies as they are into eternity, but we will carry the life we gain by feeding on Jesus.

And that is why we don’t just drink his blood, but we eat his flesh. “Whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. … Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (John 6:57-58).

Immediate, Simple Obedience

For the sake of justification, we need to separate faith and obedience: we are justified by faith alone, not through anything we do. This aside, however, the two are really inseparable. We tend to put off acting until all our questions are answered, our doubts assuaged—but if you read the gospels, the acting and the believing are one and the same thing. Jesus calls the disciples from their nets: what follows is not a confession of faith, but an act of obedience.

Bonhoeffer writes “only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes. … In the one case faith is the condition of obedience, and in the other obedience is the condition of faith. In exactly the same way in which obedience is called the consequence of faith, it must also be called the presupposition of faith. Only the obedient believe.”

And so Peter leaves his nets, and later steps out of the boat into the water. The young man leaves his riches. The disciples distribute loaves and fishes. The paralytic takes up his mat. The servants at the wedding fill the jars with water. Jesus asks for participation because in the doing is believing.

In one way, this is encouraging: our belief doesn’t have to be perfect before we act, and in fact our actions inform our beliefs. The more we sacrifice our sleep and sanity to feed, change, and clothe our newborns, the more we find the wrinkly, wailing things actually quite lovable. The more we act loving towards others, the more we find in them to love. As my friend said, "Human nature feels its way into acting.  Christian nature acts its way into feeling.”

In another way, this is challenging: if I say I have faith, but I don’t immediately obey, then I don’t really have faith. Or more accurately, my faith isn’t in Jesus, but in myself, my circumstances, or my logic—and what matters is not so much the strength as the object of our faith. Tim Keller describes an imaginary scenario where we are falling off a sheer cliff and must grab hold of a branch: better to have a weak grip upon a firm branch, than a firm grip upon a weak branch. “It is not the strength of your faith,” he says, “but the object of your faith that actually saves you.” Once we see who Jesus really is, we see that even a small step of obedience to him is safer and more worthy of trust than an easier obedience to anything else.

What would immediate, unquestioning obedience today be? What would it be like if I contemplated less and acted more? Good questions to ask as I look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

Stewards, Not Owners

I have to confess something: I have a hard time not feeling like I own and deserve what I earn. Getting into medical school, then a competitive specialty, then completing training took twelve years of hard work—research labs instead of the beach; Friday nights in college libraries; countless exams and sleepless nights on call and scut work on hospital floors. In medicine there is probably the biggest salary hike of any field, when you go from being a resident who earns less than minimum wage if you factor in how many hours are worked, to a doctor in private practice, and it’s hard not to feel like you deserve it.

So why does God own everything? A brief search through the Bible reveals at least four reasons: one, because he created it. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers” (Psalm 24:1-2). This is perhaps the most fundamental of all reasons: we may feel like we have power over something because we acquired it, but that is delusional and meaningless compared with the power that God has because he created it, and he created all things.

Secondly, we see that God owns everything because he can take it away at any time. This is a lesson I hope I’ll never have to learn, but anyone who has lost something probably feels this. There was gold and other treasures in Eden, but Adam and Eve took nothing with them when they left: it had all belonged to God, and he could take it away. Job 1:21 says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.”

Thirdly, God owns everything because we can’t take it with us when we die: “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:7). Most of us don’t think much about death, so this can be hard to see: but imagine if you got to go on a one-hour shopping spree at your favorite store at no cost (I’ve spent considerable time debating which store I’d pick). You go through the aisles grabbing everything and stuffing it all in your car, but on the way home you get hit by a truck and die. That’s what a condensed version of our lives can look like: we’re so obsessed with acquiring material goods, but in the end, and certainly compared to eternity, it’s all so temporary and meaningless, because we can take none of it with us.

Fourthly, God owns everything because he enables us to earn any money we have. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 says, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.” God gave me my mind, my affinity for biology, my ability to do detailed work with my hands. It’s because of God that I was born in the twentieth century instead of the seventeenth, when women could not be doctors, and into a supportive family environment. And I could go on.

There are lots of interesting things that happen when I realize that I do not own what I have, but steward what belongs to God. I can actually be more content with what I have, because I know God picked it out for me, and he is a God who knows me and what I need better than I know it myself. I don’t have to worry that I need more, or compare what I have with others. I can actually enjoy what I have more, because I know it comes from a God who delights in me, and I actually feel his delight when I enjoy what he has given me. It’s a freeing, guiltless, pure kind of delight, that is quite different from the shallower, temporary pleasure I get when I greedily hoard or obtain something for myself. I am free from anxiety, because while I want to manage what he gave me wisely, I recognize that I can’t and don’t need to control my money as a means to security. I can actually be generous from the heart, because I know none of it is mine anyway; I can give willingly because it comes from God and I see that I only have it because of his grace.

The truth that God owns everything, that I am entitled to none of it, has been slowly seeping into my heart the last few years. And it’s not a grudging, bitter truth: it’s a sweet, freeing one. I see that who I am, and all the things I have in this life, are expressions of a loving, completely powerful God, before whom I bow, to whom I am deeply thankful, through whom I delight in myself and give to others. Romans 11:36 sums it up best: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”

Grace: Free, But Not Cheap

We value things more when we pay for them. Grace is something we receive as a gift, not through payment or our own works. Maybe that’s why, in the world of cultural Christianity, cheap grace is so prevalent. Cheap grace is when we use religion to make ourselves feel better, without actually changing anything. When we acknowledge Christ but do not follow him. When we market God for the masses, dilute him so he fits comfortably with our own priorities. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, it is “forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession… Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace!”

That’s why I love how John writes that Jesus came “full of grace and truth.” The truth is, the sin we commit is wrong, a deep, deep wrong against a perfectly just God. Therefore, the truth is, Jesus had to pay dearly for the grace I receive. “What has cost God much,” Bonhoeffer writes, “cannot be cheap for us.” I value scribbles with a crayon because I know my kid spent half the morning creating it. I value a gift from Dave because I know he put considerable thought and maybe money into it. How much more do I value Jesus setting aside heaven, sweating blood, enduring the full weight of eternal judgment condensed into those hours on the cross? If someone I knew were to die for me, would it not be priceless?

“Costly grace,” Bonhoeffer goes on to say, “is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. … It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him… Such grace.. is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” And that’s the key: grace is not cheap for me, because I want to give all I have to follow Jesus, and that costs me a lot of things. At times it costs me comfort, outward acclaim, control, self-centered desires. But in it I gain real life, life to the full.

I think about John the Baptist: when his own followers were pointing out that this guy named Jesus was baptizing more people than they were, John said look, this guy is the bridegroom. I’m just his best man. And when I hear his voice, I rejoice greatly—“therefore this joy of mine is now complete.” Have you ever experienced complete joy? When you just felt like nothing else was missing, when you felt completely replete, deeply happy? Does anything we follow bring us that, for more than a passing moment? But Jesus does. Sure, I gain eternal life, countless returns on whatever I’m giving up—but most of all, I gain him. And the more I follow him, the more I see that whatever it costs me is cheap and passing compared to that.

Created

The weather is getting colder, so I’m dusting off my knitting again. Knitting exists nearly in the realm of something magical for me: how one strand of thread can be wound around itself continuously to create something like itself, yet utterly different. You never really look at a sweater the same again after you learn to knit.

When you first start, you’re clutching the pattern and counting every stitch off carefully in your head. But after a while, you come to understand the pattern, not because you’re reading it off the page, but because you can tell where you are by how the previous stitch is looped. You gain an intuitive, big-picture feel for how the rows work together, why something looks different on the right versus the wrong sides of the work. You learn how to read the signs.

You’re flying along, feeling pretty good about yourself—I’m an awesome knitter! After this, socks!—then you make a mistake. You drop a stitch, or realize you did the whole last two rows wrong. And you realize you never really understood the pattern at all, and only now, as you painstakingly work each stitch backwards, as you hook up the dropped loops, do you really grasp it.

I think of myself as creating when I make scarves out of yarn, but really only God can create, can make something out of nothing. No other living being can do that. God the Father spoke through the word that is Jesus, as the Spirit hovered, to bring everything we know into existence.

We don’t, I think, in our postmodernist mindsets, think of ourselves as created beings. We think of ourselves as dictating our own narratives, writing our own meanings, constructing our own identities. Our culture has plenty to say about self-fashioned identity: blame your parents if you don’t like the mask they gave you. Watch the ads to figure out what you should look like. You’ll seem perfect if you get the spouse or career you want. Figure out who you want to be and self-help your way there.

But as I knit, I think about how the person I give the scarf to will never really understand it the way I do, because while they use it, I’m the one who created it. I’m the one who sees exactly how the threads overlap to create the warmth for which it was made; who sees the beauty of the pattern’s workings because I fixed it when it fell apart. How much more does God, who created us, understand me? I’m realizing more and more that he asks me to know and follow him because he means it so much more fully for my good than even I initially comprehend, and not only that, he wants to reveal himself to me in how he created me and in all of his creation.

Because, of course, there’s a bit of me in the scarf I created: in its gauge and tension, in the aesthetics of the pattern I chose. God too has written himself into the story, so to speak: in infinite and undeniable ways, he calls to us if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. He tells us this life is the prelude to and preparation for the eternal reality of our love relationship with him, and the more fully I live the redeemed life he gives me, the more fully I understand that story. The more fully I understand myself.

Grandma and the Littlest One