FI Time: Soap for the Heart

Our family group in the church recently started a new bible discussion series on parenting Instructing a Child's Heart written by Margy and Tedd Tripp. We discussed the first sub-topic on Saturday entitled "Life is a Classroom" in which the Tripps talked about the importance of giving formative instruction consistently in every single opportunity that we have with our children, not only in formal settings (Sunday School, family worship). The Tripps also highlighted the need to differentiate between "formative instruction" and "corrective discipline", something which I found immensely helpful. Here is the most relevant quote from their book (p. 20)

Don't confuse formation instruction with corrective discipline. Formative instruction should be happening all the time. Discipline should be applied only when behavior needs to be corrected. If the only time we instruct is when our children need discipline, our children will not listen to our instruction for fear of the discipline. They will also interpret discipline through the culture's view of discipline - as abusive, dictatorial, a violation of personal rights, archaic, and fanatic.

In the ensuing discussion among ten sets of parents, we found that indeed the instructions we give to our kids are often given when there is a need to correct a behavior. "Hey, stop doing that. Taking someone's toy is wrong. You'd better return it to him now or else you will be punished later at home." In that statement, the instruction is buried behind the warning, and can be easily ignored because the child's attention is focused on the avoidance or fear of punishment.

Hence, the main lesson we learned from the first session was the importance of finding or, better yet, creating teachable moments through daily life occurrences. That implies two things: (1) parents need to spend quality time with our kids during which those formative instructions can be imparted, and (2) parents need to be rooted in the word of God so they are capable of imparting those shaping instructions.

I went away from that meeting with a keener sense of such teachable moment. The next day (ie., today) I found myself washing our car with my seven-year old daughter at a nearby petrol station. I cleaned the outside and she helped me with the car interior. She proudly showed me that the parts she cleaned were sparkling afterwards. On the way home, I had a hunch that this could be an "FI time" (Formative Instruction) time. What happened next is the following exchange:

Me: You know, Tif, we clean our dirty car with soap and water.

Tif: Yeah, dad, and our car is shiny now, especially the inside.

Me: But if our hearts are dirty, we cannot clean it with soap and water.

Tif: Dirty hearts?

Me: You know when you envy, when you are greedy, when you do things that sadden God's hearts. We can't clean that dirty heart with soap, right?

TIf: (giggling...) Of course not, dad.

Me: We need a special soap to clean our dirty hearts. That special soap is God. When we come to God, he will forgive our sins and give us a new heart. That's why David prayed to God "Create in me a clean heart, O God"

Tif: So we can come to God to get our hearts cleaned?

Me: Yeah, anytime.

... then we arrived home (in my heart, I thanked the Lord for the opportunity He gave me and looked forward to the next FI time)