PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

DO NOT VENT YOUR FRUSTRATIONS UPON YOUR CHILDREN

You communicate well with all kinds of people. You are reasonable with your friends, relatives, and colleagues. You are especially polite and respectful toward your boss. But, you treat your children as if they were your private possession. You forget that they have God-given souls. You discharge all your ill-temper on them. You treat them as you please. It seems you are courteous to everyone except your children. They are the ones upon whom you vent your wrath. I know some parents who are like that. They feel that they are not fully human if they are always courteous and gentle and never lose their temper. But how can they exhaust their bad temper?

If they turn it on their colleagues, they will be neglected; if on their boss, they will be fired; if on their friends, they will be condemned. The only place they can afford to lose their temper without fear of reprisal is upon their children. Thus many parents have an awful temper toward their children....Those parents regarded their children as those on whom they could quite legitimately vent their wrath! Why did God give them children? That they should lose their temper? May God be merciful to us!

(Do All To The Glory Of God, p. 82, Watchman Nee, published by Christian Fellowship Publishers, Inc., 1974)