Have you seen our 9-week-old bundle of joy, Princess Lara? Isn’t she cute? I was thinking out loud, wondering how can I use the rod to discipline her in the future. And a friend answered me that I have to or she’ll become a monster. Quite exaggerated but in principle it is quite true. Have you heard of the phrase to trim the horns of your kids when they are young so they won’t grow crooked when they grow older? The more appropriate and with a Biblical perspective is in Proverbs 22:6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. When you simply cut the horn it will just be a physical thing but what we, as parents have to deal with is what’s inside their hearts. 
Training our kids is like training for your golf game or any sports, it’s a continuous effort. Our kids will learn thru repetition. In training, we also have to be consistent, it can’t be not ok now but ok later. There are times that because of our inconsistencies we confuse of children and thus they find ways to circumvent us or just disobey us completely. And lastly trust is built in training. Manny Pacquiao trusts his trainer Freddie Roach or else he won’t listen to him and vice versa. Same with parenting not only do we expect our kids to trust us but we should also trust them. As parents we do have to let God’s grace to work in our children’s lives, we need to also let them have their own revelations and not just inherit ours.
I remember having a conversation with my wife Yet how we are so thankful to God in guiding our 10 year old son Gelo. When he was growing up, we were not yet aware of how to rear a child in a Christian manner. Yes we did rod him but it was only later on that we learned how to process when you discipline a child. But that is how God’s favor came into the picture and guided Gelo.
In his book, You and Your Child, Charles R. Swindoll writes, “The way you deal with your sons will, in great measure, determine how they will respond to the way God deals with them.†In training our kids let us be patient in repeating; let us be consistent and let us build trust.