Be careful when you drive through Comfort, Texas.
If you are going too fast or miss the school zone sign you’ll be “comforted” with a speeding ticket. All the locals know about the deputy in the white car and his love for meeting new folks who drive too fast through his town.
Because of his reputation even when he’s not there people don’t speed through Comfort. Here are a couple of important lessons we parents can learn from this lawman.
- He is consistent and predictable.
You fly – you cry – every time.
Imagine if you flew past him speeding 20 times and he didn’t stop you. Then on the 21st time you’re just slightly over the limit but he cranks up the siren, pulls you over, cuffs you and hauls you off to jail. Most of us would scream, “That’s not fair!
Yet, some parents deal with their children that way. We ignore their bad behavior – because it’s easier to ignore it than to take action and we justify it by saying we’re giving them a break.
But we’re building up emotional steam and later it’s easy to over react to some minor infraction of the law. We say we’re being nice by ignoring their earlier misbehavior but our inconsistency says to our kids, “That’s not fair!”
We’ve got to be like our friend the cop – set the limits, then enforce them every time.
Pretty soon everyone in town will drive more carefully.
And feel more secure because they know the limits and what to expect.
- He just calmly does his job.
He doesn’t nag or threaten as he calmly writes you a ticket. In fact, he’s rather polite as he hands you the consequences of your misbehavior. He doesn’t have to yell to let you know he’s serious because he is calmly taking the appropriate action to help you learn to obey.
As parents, if we just do our job and hand down the consequences early, before we build up a head of steam, we can actually do so in a controlled manner. We can stop all the nagging, the warning, the counting to three, the “I’m not telling you again”-s. If we’ll just do our job and consistently enforce the rules we’ve established we can save everyone a lot of grief.
I know it’s not easy. But neither is building up pressure like a capped volcano and then spewing hot lava all over everyone when we’ve had all we can stand.
Discipline your children, and they will give you peace; they will bring you the delights you desire. – Proverbs 29:17
For a graphic illustration of how this works, check out this little flier I prepared that explains it using two simple charts
PS – Actually I haven’t seen this guy in about 5 years. He may have died, retired or gotten promoted. But I still drive slowly through Comfort which is a great illustration of how long lasting our impact can be on our children by being consistent with them.
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