Ephesians 6:4 Meaning You Fathers

Mettā: Loving-kindness Mettā, the wish for another's welfare, has as its stock picture a mother guarding her only child with her life. Nurture is that wish worked out in ordinary hours: meals, correction, answering the same question five times without sharpening the tone. A father steady in that wish has little appetite for scoring points off someone half his size.

Kodha: Anger Kodha is anger, the flare that wants to strike back. Provoking to wrath means the anger is kindled by the father's own hand: the mocking word, the punishment out of proportion, the promise quietly dropped, each one backed by an obedience the children have just been told to give. Anger practiced on a child becomes the child's own habit, since a household teaches its temper long before it teaches its lessons.

Khanti: Patience Khanti is patient endurance, the capacity to be crossed and not pay it back. Children provoke too, all day, and discipline handed out while the blood is still up is retaliation wearing a father's authority. Waiting until the heat drops keeps correction useful, because a child can hear a firm word and cannot hear a shout.

Sikkhā: Training Sikkhā is training taken up in stages, one step at a time. Nurture in discipline is slow work, the way a child learns to walk by short distances and many falls, and the falls are part of the method. Setting the next small thing within reach asks the father to know where his child stands today, which takes more attention than issuing a standard and waiting to be disappointed.

Kalyāṇamitta: Good friend A kalyāṇamitta is the companion who keeps you pointed toward what is worth doing. Instruction of the Lord places the father under the same instruction he hands on, so he walks the road with a head start rather than owning it, and his corrections carry the weight of something he also obeys. Children take the demonstrated life over the stated one every time, so the surest way to teach honesty is to be caught being honest when it costs something.