Tag Archives: Children

Challenge, Children, Encouragement, Identity, Issues of the Day, Parents, Training

Parents Who Protect Too Much

We’ve all read about how my generation (the boomers) left their home to play with friends after breakfast, returned home for a quick lunch (maybe) and then left again until the dinner bell, whistle or car horn was blowing. It was especially true of summer life. However today, and often rightly so, we’re warned about bad persons, dangerous places, deep ponds, getting lost and dirty environments. We want to protect our kids form hurt and harm and help them avoid accidents. But are we helping them or us as parents?

I was reading a report about this very thing in an article from the journal Science. Interestingly it stated kids who grow up with less sanitary conditions and sanitized environments, being exposed to plants, dirt, trees, creeks, animals and microbes grow up with far less allergies. In other words, “eat some dirt, it might be good for you.” Going too far?

Most professionals in your children’s lives will tell you that they love parental involvement but despise “helicopter parents” or parents who are so involved they are actually “protecting” their children from adapting to the world around them. 

The self-esteem movement began in the 1970’s and by the 1980’s we were giving trophies to the losers of the game. Last place in a race was being rewarded for fear of harming our child’s esteem. We said that everyone was a winner. While self-esteem and self-confidence matter, rewarding failure produces entitlement in our kids. There becomes no incentive in a reward for just showing up and children will naturally and quickly lose interest. 

Kids need consequences and kids need to learn to take responsibility for their actions. What happens to our children if they’re constantly rescued? One day in college (where the parents can’t intervene) they’ll find a professor that gives them the grade they deserve, a failing one. Later they’ll face a boss who doesn’t coddle them and tell them they are special, and they can do anything they want and succeed. Eventually they will start hearing the truth, so why not speak it now while your kids are in their formative years?

Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Both options are a chance to speak truth and love to our children so they can handle both situations appropriately. Stop overprotecting your kids; they need risk, failure, pain, work, and dirt to grow up into well-balanced, non-whining adults. 

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. (Ephesians 4:14,15)

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Challenge, Children, Encouragement, Issues of the Day, Just for fun, Marriage, Men, Parents, Training, Women

Developing Family Rhythms

Professionals are telling us that family rhythms are missing in today’s households. What are family rhythms? Those things that your family does to build relationship, maintain consistent values and grow in family sharing and caring. 

Family rhythms cause us to connect with each member of the family. Everyone is important and everyone gets to be heard. Rhythms create space for valuing, teaching and training. Rhythms help create family culture, the ‘who’ we are as a family. 

What are family rhythms? Let me list a few:

  • Having a meal or two together every day
  • Taking a weekly family sabbath
  • Establishing a game night
  • Enjoying a BIG breakfast Saturday mornings
  • Dating your children and your spouse
  • Family worship
  • Reading a book together that all can enjoy
  • Quarterly get-aways for a day or overnight
  • Weekly small group connections or youth group
  • Family work time, e.g., cleaning the house or mowing the yard together
  • Annual family vacations
  • A monthly movie night with popcorn
  • Celebrating birthdays wholeheartedly

Before we’re called to save the world we need to save our families, the God-created foundation of our world. What do you desire your children to say about their upbringing one day? Plant those seeds now in their lives. Give them every reason in the world to love their family and to make their friends jealous. 

Speaking of their friends. Our children often invited their friends on our family vacations. We loved that! It told us our kids thought enough of our family time together to invite their friends so they too could enjoy that time together. And enjoy those times we did.

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Challenge, Children, Encouragement, Identity, Marriage, Parents

The Primary Role of Parents

Parents do a lot of things day in and day out and are some of the busiest persons on the face of the earth. Few envy the parent of a toddler or the parent of a wayward teen. Parents give more than most humans in any relationship; it’s how we’re built. 

Could we establish one thing from the onset and a truth that bears repeating to others? God gave children to parents. He did not ask school teachers, counselors, the local church or government to parent those we give birth to. That role was given to two select persons, a mother and a father.

As mothers and fathers, we’re teachers, therapists, nurses, singers, coaches, and disciplinarians. It is a never-ending and grueling job that calls for faith, patience, energy and lots and lots of unconditional love. 

But what is the primary role of a parent? Of the necessary and endless things we teach our children and the thousands of dollars we spend to feed, cloth, educate and care for our kids, what is priority number one? 

My wife and I spent 25 years raising children and we loved it. We embraced each and every year. We determined that there were no “terrible twos” or necessary rebellious teenage years. It was our goal to raise happy, healthy, obedient kids who knew Whose they were and who they were. Everything we did with and for our children we did intentionally with God’s direction and help.

Discovering the number one area came to me after a major mistake I made in my parenting. My son wanted to watch a certain TV show that we felt was dishonoring of family, especially fathers. We told him that we would not participate in that program and why. He then told us when he would leave our home he would watch it and furthermore, he couldn’t wait to leave!

Now I knew why I wanted to leave my parents, but why on earth would he want to leave his? He had his own room. We loved him. We loved God. We loved each other. For heaven’s sake, we bought him Nike sneakers and Levi jeans!

God whispered in my ear, “I gave him to you to leave you one day. It’s not a matter of will he leave, but HOW he will leave. And, by the way, I didn’t give him to you so that you could build you in him. I gave him to you so that you could build Me in him.”

I thought I was a pretty good guy. Why wouldn’t my son want to be like me? 

Herein is the primary role when parenting your children, “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone (our children) fully mature in Christ.” (Colossians 1:28) 

Stop building yourself in your child and start building Christ. It is our primary role as a parent. Your child can do all things through Christ, but our parenting has its limits.

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Challenge, Children, Issues of the Day, Marriage, Men, Parents, Women

Leave and Cleave; Have You Left Your Parents?

I distinctly remember when each of our children left their family home for good. It is never a matter of will they leave, but rather a matter of when and how they will leave. Be assured, they will one day leave and the test of all that you taught them will begin. 

God instructed the newlywed to “leave and cleave.” It was a pretty clear command to leave father and mother. But it was not a command to lose relationship in the process. More so, it was a command to switch one’s loyalty from their parents to their spouse. 

Have you “left” your parents? And, what boundaries have you set in place? Here are some boundaries that my wife and I agreed to early in our marriage. 

  • We would never mention the “D” word–divorce.
  • We would not return to our parent’s home and leave or separate from our spouse.
  • We would not maintain a dependency upon our parents in anyway, i.e., financially or emotionally.
  • We would never speak disrespectfully about our spouse to our parents.
  • We would not allow our parents or extended family to speak negatively about our spouse. 
  • We would not share our spouses weaknesses with anyone unless we empower that person to help us with that weakness.
  • We would establish our own traditions and traditional visits to family.
  • We would not expect any kind of inheritance from our families.
  • We would not borrow money from our parents unless our parents approached us, we agreed with them and agreed to the terms and conditions.
  • We would not allow the influence of a parent to outweigh the influence of our spouse.
  • We would always honor our parents, but our first loyalty would be to one another.
  • We would always maintain a spirit of respect toward our parents even if we disagreed with them.
  • We would listen to their counsel and apply it as we agreed together to do.
  • We would care for them together as they aged.

There could certainly be a lot more areas to agree upon, but I think you get the idea. Obviously clear, open and honest communication is necessary to maintain an attitude of honor and affirmation toward your parents while at the same time finding your way as a “leaving and cleaving” couple.

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