Phil George explains in this video that fathers should not provoke their children to anger. One way parents can avoid provoking their children to anger is to bring them up according to what Scripture dictates instead of arbitrarily parenting them, perhaps with how they see fit or what traditionally has occurred. Doing so will exasperate them.

Ephesians 6:4 (NKJV) - "And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord."

That would be Ephesians 6 where very similar to when Paul addresses the Colossian church, here he addresses what I think is one of the biggest issues that we face and the biggest areas for making mistakes. And there Paul says, fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And so what that means is, so often today, within even the professing Christian church and even within the conservative, Reformed world, we bring our children up in accordance with more of our traditions, even ones that may be quote-unquote Christian, rather than according to what the Word of God says. And so we have to be a people that's faithful in examining and reforming all of our thoughts patterns, specifically in relation to our children, which is just under assault today, seeking to reform them as we bring our children up. And then in the first part of that verse, we see that we're not to provoke our children to anger.

And it seems to be one of the primary ways that we can do that is when we don't bring them up in accordance with God's instruction and rather do so arbitrarily in ways that will frustrate our children because we have no standard by which to draw from. We're just one day parenting this way, one day parenting that way, doing it different with different children and that will exasperate them.