Joey & Carla Link
July 23, 2025
How your child reacts to something you tell them to do depends on their temperament, as it drives how they think and feel. Each temperament responds in a different way, and when you know about the temperaments, you will have a head start in cutting your kids negative responses off because you know how they will come at you.
You tell your Sanguine daughter to clean her room. When you go to check on her you see she has turned on music and is dancing in the middle of her bedroom, pretending to be her favorite princess, whose outfit she has put on. When you ask why the room isn’t clean, she says “I forgot!” Many parents assume their kids did forget, and the child chalks that up to a win for herself because it worked and even though her mom told her once again to clean her room, she put a couple things away and then started playing again.
Your child with the Choleric temperament is going to tell you he thought his room was clean enough when you ask him why it is still a mess. You point to the clothes on the floor and walk away. Your son kicks the clothes under his bed and calls it a day.
Your Melancholy son tells you that he was working ahead in his math so he would have more time the next week to write the paper he had been assigned to do for school. What can you say about that? You tell him that was a great idea and leave his room. Our question is this? Did his room ever get clean?
And your child with the Phlegmatic temperament is laying on his bed reading a book. When you ask him why his room isn’t clean, he gives you a shrug and you tell him to get it clean again. When you are putting him to bed that night, the room is still a mess and you wonder why you even try to get your kids to do any chores.
Right up there with “I forgot”, the other popular excuse children make is “I don’t remember.” Please don’t think for a second they didn’t remember or they forgot you told them to clean their room. They remember. I (Joey) once told our kids I was going to forget to take them swimming that weekend and they ran to clean their rooms. They remember and they most certainly didn’t forget.
Colossians 3:20 says, “Children, obey your parents in everything.” “Everything” does not leave any room for excuses, loopholes, or not remembering. It means they must follow through with what you told them to do to be obedient.
Why should a child obey their parents? The last part of Colossians 3:20 says, “because this pleases the Lord.” Getting kids to obey parents is the first priority of parenting while your kids are growing up. As they grow and mature, they will transition to start obeying their Heavenly Father as they first learned to obey you.
If you don’t require your kids to obey you, in reality you are training them not to obey God! We want to urge you to require your kids to obey you and other people in positions of authority in their lives with good attitudes. We don’t think if we do something we know God wants us to do with a bad attitude He considers that obedience, do you?
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law
my servant Moses gave you;
do not turn from it to the right or to the left,
that you may be successful wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:7
Why Can’t I Get My Kids to Behave? by Joey and Carla Link
Parents get frustrated when they don’t know what to do when their kids misbehave. This book shares solutions for putting biblical principles into practice with kids. It tells what obedience is and what obedience is not among many other good helps. It also offers suggestions for single parents.
Audiobook, MP3 download (read by Joey & Carla Link)
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Parenting Made Practical Podcasts
#34 Is Your Child a Thinker or Feeler – Two of the temperaments see and respond to things from what they think. The other two temperaments think and respond to things from the perspective of what they feel. All four temperaments need to find a middle ground and you are going to have to help them learn how to do that. This podcast shares lots of ideas to help you with this!