Righteous respect: How to get your child to respect you (without punishment or force)

Many parents want their children to respect them. This is a common attitude amongst parents. However, very few parents do anything to earn the respect of children. Most parents feel that they are entitled to respect. The fact of the matter is that respect is earned, even as a parent.

Righteous respect is the child's end of the Christian doctrine of mutual submission. However, a parent can only hope that their child turn out respectful, as parents are deserving of absolutely nothing due to their parental entitlement. It says in Colossians 3:20-21 KJV:

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.

The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and refers to secure, vulnerable rest in the love and submission of parents. Parents are the enemy of children, just as mankind is the enemy of God, and are to submit as such. This surrender to parents came with strings attached on the part of parents, with children issuing righteous demands, usually when parents weren't pulling their weight in the family home.

The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to damages or offenses, namely the slightest of personal offense perceived by a child, including, but not limited to, the slightest of offensive touch or speech perceived by a child, stemming from entitlement. This commandment was intended by the Apostle Paul, and understood in its original context, as a moral statute prohibiting all forms of punitive parenting, including, but not limited to, any punishments, reprimands, or other controlling demeanor towards children. In the Old Testament, punitive parents were put to death by way of bloodletting, after punishing their children one last time. Parents who punished their children were charged with kidnapping, with "kidnapping" being defined as under the: Law as the slightest of damages or offenses stemming from hostage-raking - child punishment was seen in biblical times as holding your child hostage merely for things that they did wrong, thereby treating your child as a quartered slave. Paul here was lifting up the Law in order to convict a group of Greek Christian parents who brought their pagan custom of spanking and punishing children into the church. Paul, contrary to popular legend, was anti-spanking, and opposed any and all punishment of a child in his secular writings. Paul may not have gotten along with the women of the church, but he sure loved children, and even took in a few orphaned children. Indeed, Greco-Roman fathers used the scourge of cords on their children as punishment, but NOT the Christians among them - the Early Christians were hated largely for being "too soft" on their children.

Righteous respect refers to the respect that children show their parents. Children in biblical times had a concept of respect, with that concept involving closeness and intimacy, not fear of punishment. For the first 6 years of a child's life, they were in constant closeness to mothers, meaning that wherever the mother went, so did the child. The Early Christians practiced birth nudity, where mother and child were quartered in the home in the nude next to each other, in skin-on-skin closeness and intimacy. Whenever a child cried, mothers picked up the child, then holding the child next to her bosom in mammary closeness, perhaps breastfeeding the child to sleep. When mothers were out and about, they swaddled their young children - under age 6 - in swaddling blankets. Come nightfall, children co-slept next to mothers, in skin-on-skin format. That co-sleeping was the case until the child reached the onset of puberty, which was when they wanted their own place to sleep in most cases.

Teenage rebellion did exist in biblical times, but it was not about overthrowing adults. Instead, children shook themselves off of their parents. In biblical times, the shaking off occurred first at age 6, when children wanted to play on their own outside, albeit while checking in with mom first. When children reached the onset of puberty. they insisted on sleeping on their own. Righteous respect occurred as the child moved to their own place to live, with the child giving thanks for all of the warmth and love that they were given from parents. This respect continued every time a young adult arrived at home for family dinner - their parents were still there, to be used like a sponge. True respect is earned, not bestowed on a platter for free.

Even parental rights, as a concept, is an earned concept. Earning parental rights happens when you earn your keep in relation to children. Parental rights are not inherent rights. Everything coming from your child, including parental rights such as respect, don't come for free. Parenting isn't a free for all, but instead should be the hard work that it is. In parenting, there is no "I have earned...". You either earned your rights, or you haven't, and the child decides that.

The depraved and entitled parents who provoke their children to anger through punitive parenting will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them forever be cast into the lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the second death prepared for Satan and his accomplices! Let them descend into the abyss which is the ever-burning Hell of fire and torment, suffering God's Wrath day and night forever and ever! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!