Double Standards – What I'm Reading

“Double standards are the enemy of all true religion. Nowhere is this more evident than in the home. One really effective way to scramble the kids is to demand from them what you are not demanding from yourself at the moment of correction. Immediate double standards can readily turn children into cynics. It’s one thing to warn your children away from sins you may have committed twenty-five years ago–they can see that such warnings may come from long and godly experience–but it’s quite another thing to demand patience from them in a loud and impatient voice. If you correct a bad attitude with a bad attitude, the lesson the child learns is not that bad attitudes are wrong. He learns that bad attitudes are wrong unless you have the upper hand. So then the kid clings sinfully to his bad attitude, and commences work on getting the upper hand.” (My Life for Yours, p. 110-111)