It Is All Training

When I became a father for the first time I suddenly realized I was completely responsible for another human being.  I wrote my dad a letter and asked him for advise on how to discipline.  I wrote the letter with the intention of learning how to punish my child when they had misbehaved.   What my dad wrote back is perhaps the best parenting advise I ever received.  He said that discipline meant to teach.  At that moment I had to decide, did I want to teach my children or punish them?  Teaching is much harder because it requires training.  It seems to me that most of life is training regiments designed by God to teach us.