Why you must train your kids

Should you spank your kid right now?

Most fathers answer that mid-frustration, with no plan and no standard protocol. No real sense of whether this is even the right thing to do because they don’t have a filter to determine the answer to that question.

If a direct report at work missed an expectation, you wouldn’t fire him on the spot. You’d have a process to determine the right next step with them. To fully evaluate what’s really going on before impulsively acting.

At home, on the highest-stakes relationships that we have, most of us skip all of that.

This week I’m giving you three questions to ask yourself before you discipline your kids. They’ll tell you whether what you’re addressing is a discipline moment or a coaching moment. Most of what looks like rebellion with our kids, isn’t. Learn to see the difference and you’ll need to reach for the heavy tools far less.

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Should you spank your kids? Most dads answer that question in the worst possible moment, mid-frustration, with no plan. Here’s what’s strange. If you were a good leader at work you’d never make a hire-or-fire call this reactively. You’d have a process. But at home, on the highest-stakes decisions you’ll ever make, if you’re like most fathers, you’re running on instinct and often a bad mood. I’m a father of six. I’ve spent the last several years coaching hundreds of dads through exactly this issue, and I want to walk you through something I tell every one of them.

Think about your job for a second. Imagine you’re a leader and you walk up to an employee and say, “I’m really frustrated. You didn’t do this the way you were supposed to. I’m writing you up.” And the employee is sitting there thinking, nobody ever told me that was the expectation. Nobody trained me. Nobody gave me what I needed to actually do it. If you were that employee you’d be furious. And you’d be right to be. But that’s what we do to our kids all the time. We look at them and think, “What are you, dumb? You should know this.” But they don’t know it. We’ve had thirty years to learn what a normal adult does. They’ve had five. It’s the curse of knowledge, and it’s not their fault.

Here’s the fear underneath this for most dads, and I’ve felt it. It’s nine o’clock at night. The house is finally quiet. You’re lying there thinking, “I’ve become a tyrant in my own home. My kids are out of control. I’m losing it. And I think I’m losing their hearts.” That fear is not unfounded. What you do in these years shapes who your kid is at twenty.

So before you ever spank, before you ever raise your voice, a leader should be asking three questions. If you’re a good leader, you’re already asking them at work. You’ve just never thought to ask them at home. These three questions will tell you whether this is a discipline moment or whether there’s something else going on you need to be aware of.

Question one. Most of what we call disobedience is actually a kid operating without a clear standard. You think you told them. You didn’t. “Clean your room” means nothing to a six-year-old. “Get ready,” get ready how?

A couple years ago my wife came to me and said she could not get our kids in the car in under an hour. Every single time. One kid couldn’t find a sweatshirt, another didn’t have shoes on and nobody noticed until we got to the store. By the time we pulled out of the driveway the whole family was already on edge. And the reality is, my kids were not rebelling. Nobody had ever told them the actual sequence. Sweatshirt, then socks, then shoes. If you can’t find one, come ask me. Don’t wander off and start playing. They didn’t have the standard, because I’d never given it to them.

So question one is this: did I make the expectation crystal clear? If the answer is no, you don’t have a discipline problem. You have a communication gap that is caused by you, as a father. And you don’t spank a communication gap. But here’s where it gets dangerous. Because explaining isn’t the same as training. That’s question two, where most fathers drop the ball even if they did a great job explaining. Which is rare.

Let’s assume you did explain something perfectly, and the kid still can’t do it. It’s because knowing isn’t experience. Telling your kid once and expecting it to stick is like a coach drawing a play on a whiteboard and then being shocked when it falls apart in the game. Think about how a coach actually works. He puts the play on the board. Here’s where you stand, here’s where you move. Then they walk it at half speed on the field. Then they run it at game speed. Then they drill it, over and over, in practice. And if it blows up in the game? He doesn’t bench everybody. He brings it back to practice and reps it again.

So with the car, I didn’t just tell them. I carved out forty minutes. I showed them. And I mean I climbed into the booster seat myself and buckled up, the whole thing, looking ridiculous. The kids loved it. Then they ran it. Then we drilled it, ten times, with a little reward for every clean rep. That was two years ago. It still holds. We get out the door in five or ten minutes instead of an hour. So question two: did I actually train this, show it and have them rep it, or did I just say it once?

And even when you’ve explained it and trained it, there’s one more thing that quietly sets a kid up to fail. It’s the question almost nobody asks. Sometimes the kid knows exactly what to do and still can’t do it, because something’s in the way. The obstacle isn’t his heart. It’s his environment. And if you punish a kid for an obstacle you left in place, that’s on you, not him.

Back to the car story. Part of what I told my boys was, “If you can’t find your socks, come tell me. Don’t wander around and go play.” Why? Because a missing sock is a resourcing problem, not a rebellion problem. If the laundry’s a disaster and there’s nothing clean in the drawer, my kid isn’t disobeying. He literally can’t obey, and unless I’ve explicitly told him to come to me for help, he’ll wander off and do something else and get distracted. Or maybe he’s having a discipline problem because he didn’t get a snack or didn’t get a good night’s sleep. These are resourcing challenges that make follow-through harder. If you kept a kid up late for a family event or a party, or they’ve been out all day with you and haven’t had a snack, you have to expect some additional challenges. These are rarely times where discipline is appropriate. So question three: was the path to obedience actually open? Did I remove the obstacles, or am I about to punish my kid unnecessarily?

So, should you spank? Here’s the honest answer. There’s a place for it. There are moments for real intensity, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But here’s what I’ve found, in my own home and in hundreds of others. A father who runs these three questions first needs to spank dramatically less than the average dad. Counting, yelling, spanking. Those are usually the tools we reach for when the training didn’t happen. Most of what looks like a spanking moment is actually a training moment where we, as fathers who are supposed to coach our kids, dropped the ball. Train more, and you’ll find you have to discipline far less.

So that’s the three questions. Before you correct your kid, ask: did I explain it, did I train it, did I resource it. If any answer is no, it’s not a discipline moment. It’s a coaching moment. And by now, hopefully you’re seeing the bigger thing. The skills you already use at work, clarity, training, systems, leadership, most of them map straight over to how you lead at home. With some important caveats and adjustments, because your home isn’t your company and your kids aren’t your employees. But the core competence? It’s already in you.

Here’s what I find with almost every man I talk to. He’s got the skills. What he’s never had is permission to bring them home, and a filter and a structure for how. Nobody ever handed him that. So he leads a team of twenty all day, then walks in his own front door at 6:45 and feels like he can’t lead three kids. And he’s frustrated with himself, so he subconsciously checks out.

That’s what the Playbook is for. Eight plays, a full operating system you install at home, that take the skills you already have and aim them at your house. So you can show up as a world-class father, a spiritual leader, the actual head of your home, without sacrificing the success you’ve built at work. It’s free, and you can find it here.

So, the next time you’re frustrated and considering spanking, slow down, ask yourself those three questions, and determine if this is a discipline opportunity or a training opportunity.

This will change the game for you.

Until next time, rule well.