Contributed by Darren Lim • Sep 29, 2026

My eldest son came home from school unusually quiet and it was only later that evening, through my wife, that the full story came out. His class had been noisy and inattentive and a frustrated subject teacher punished the whole class with extra homework. The next day, his class teacher raised it with them, asking pointedly how it felt to be saddled with that punishment. My son, who felt he hadn’t been part of the disruption, blurted out that he’d done nothing wrong. It escalated quickly from there. The class teacher called him out in front of everyone, not just for speaking up but for being disrespectful and reminded him, of all people, that he wasn’t quite so innocent either.

He came home indignant and honestly I felt the same once I heard it. I sat him down the next day and did what I imagine a lot of parents would do. I told him how foolish it was to speak to a teacher that way. I reached for the old lines, that “in our day we respected our elders” and that this generation doesn’t understand authority the way we did. At the end of it, I asked him what he should have done instead.

His answer stopped me. “Keep silent next time.”

I sat with that for a moment and something in me knew it wasn’t right. I had walked in wanting to correct disrespect and walked out very nearly teaching my son that silence is the price of peace. That compliance is more important than conviction. That when something is unjust, the safest response is to swallow it. That is not a lesson I want in his heart. And it made me wonder how much of my parenting, in that moment and maybe in many moments before it, has leaned on my own wisdom, my own generation’s rules about respect and authority, rather than anything deeper.

I’ve let my eldest handle his own devotions for a while now. He reads well and he doesn’t need me sitting beside him the way his younger siblings do. But that morning, I felt convicted to sit with him instead of simply issuing criticism from across the room. We opened Psalm 119 and Proverbs together, and came to Proverbs 25:15: “Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.”

We talked and prayed and came to see it together. The question was never whether he should have spoken up. Something in him was right to feel that the accusation was unfair. The question was how. Speaking up publicly, in front of a class, to a teacher already worn thin with frustration, was not wisdom. A quieter word, once things had settled, might have done what the outburst could not.

I don’t know yet whether any of this has taken root in him. Behaviour is easy to manage from the outside. A firmer voice, a stricter rule and a child falls in line, at least for a while. But a change of heart doesn’t work that way. It isn’t mine to produce. What I can do is keep showing up in the Word with him, the way I’ve tried to with his brother and sister and trust that God is doing the slower work I cannot see yet. Sowing now and trusting Him for the harvest.