As promised last week, this week's blog will explore healthy boundaries for your children. This aspect of parenting was a huge learning curve for me, but my husband’s wisdom led our children with strong love and clear boundaries taught with calm discipline. Honestly, I followed his lead (except for the calm part at times...just ask my kids), so I hope some of my thoughts will help you if you struggle in this area. Some of you that don't know me well may be wondering why I would have any credibility to address this subject. Of course, my children are not perfect! Of course, my parenting is not perfect! However, through the years of raising our children, many friends and acquaintances have asked us parenting advice and desired that we would put some of our principles to pen and paper. Well, this is a start. Please know we are humble in what the Lord has done through us in our children's lives. We give Him all the glory and thank Him for training us through His Word to train them in the best, yet imperfect, way we knew how! Recently I got to go to Newport, Rhode Island and have some real time 'grand-parenting' with Clark. Little Clarky wanted to go alone down these huge rocks toward the water. The rocks were wet and mossy along with being 'hard as rocks', but I guarded him with my wisdom that he MUST take my hands. I said firmly, 'No, Clarky! It's too dangerous! Hold Nani's hands". He immediately reached both hands above his head and said, "Mess mam" (That's southern 2 year old for 'Yes, mam"). I realized at that moment how blessed I was that the parents of my grandsons were giving them good guidance and requiring them listen to authority. Do to their hard work, we can enjoy them when we have time together. If Clark had disobeyed and run off, I would have had no guilt to bless him with a punishment until he learned to accept the boundaries of safety that his grandmother, another authority in his life, had clearly set. I was thinking about another previous blog I shared about games to teach your children their letters and letter sounds. It is basically impossible to enjoy those types of activities if your children are out of control and will not listen to your instructions. It is sad when you are trying to bring them a precious aspect of life, like learning to read, but they are deprived of that gift because they have not yet learned boundaries in their behavior. It is our responsibility as parents to bring our children to a place where they will listen, respond and eventually learn. If these goals were easy, you would never see a kid in the grocery store kicking his mom. No one plans for that type of behavior, but there has been a disconnect in our culture about how to train a child ever since the 1940's when Dr. Spock wrote a parenting book called BABY AND CHILD CARE, which was not based on Biblical principles. His theories influenced multiple generations even to this day. Many people do not know that Dr. Spock had broken relationships among his own children. This sad fact may be because he enacted his flawed parenting philosophy in his own home. Here are the five principles he promoted: 1.) Trust your instincts 2.) Routines are nice, but babies don’t need strict a regimen 3) Do not worry when your child acts wrongly (he sited Sigmund Freud's theory of Psychoanalysis, also not based on scientific research) 4.) Good parenting ideas are fluid and can change with time 5.) Babies need love sOf course we don't want to throw the 'baby out with the bathwater', so yes, of course, we should love our children (Dr. Spock's 5th point). However, affection must not be mistaken for love, because love also places restrictions on children that protect them along with the necessary parental love and affection. Children can make us laugh when behaving badly, like the child in the video above, but we cannot ignore crafty, self-centered, inappropriate and rebellious behavior. Guiding our children by creating boundaries that cannot be crossed without consequences is true love!! Dr. Spock wanted parents to be flexible, treat their children as individuals, and give their children 'instant gratification' and freedom of behavior. Because none of these principles are Biblically based, they are a recipe for disaster!! We MUST understand that how our children respond to our authority will follow them all the days of their lives. I have repeatedly watched undisciplined children struggle with every authority in their lives from their heavenly Father, to babysitters, teachers and bosses. You could be setting your child up for endless troubles if you parent them according to the advice of Dr. Spock. Watch the video below to see an example of how the opposite approach works....the beauty of training those in your care to listen and obey the voice that truly loves with the motive to protect. So if Dr. Spock was wrong (now we have all the evidence we need...a society with an abundance of out of control children), then how do we provide our children with the voice of the shepherd that our children need to heed. I recently read a lovely book by Dr. Ravi Zacharias called THE GRAND WEAVER. He explores the presence and plan of God woven throughout our lives. We can choose to acknowledge that heavenly Father through faith and follow his ways or not. I love how Dr. Zacharias describes it, ‘True fulfillment and the possibility of boundless enjoyment come when we do life God’s way. When we do it our way, we only enslave ourselves.’ (p. 90). If you are your children’s guardian, you are meant to ‘guard’ their well being not enslave them by allowing their disobedience. The bodyguard of a President of the United States does not enslave him, but allows him the freedom to move about without fear because he has a guardian. Sometimes we feel guilty for guiding our children. Please realize they will rejoice in those boundaries when your voice keeps them from being hit by a car if they run out in the street. Every time they are not required to hear and obey that voice, they are one step closer to being unguarded and being hit by that car. Children either learn to tune out that voice or hear and obey that voice. We will be at fault as parents if what they have learned from us is IGNORING US. Many times we do not address the ‘small things' allowing our children to ignore us, but then they are vulnerable when we call their names for the 'big things'. Seriously, I see it all the time. Dad or Mom say, "Come here so I can tie your shoe". The child keeps playing and the parent says to themselves, "It's not that big of a deal. Let them play". The problem is that when they also say, "Stop! There is a car", the same child keeps running and is struck. The sinful nature of all of us will ignore that call to tie the shoe. The sin is the disobedience of the child. The child will need to come to God for forgiveness of that sin, however they can learn how to curb their behavior, increase in wisdom and save their physical bodies from harm and heartache IF they have wise parents. When I see a child continually ignoring their parents call to action, I blame the parents!!! They have left their children vulnerable. They didn't use the tools of the shepherd, the rod and the staff. Some people automatically are against 'spanking', if so please enact other types of punishment. The rod and staff were firm and useful. The sheep could not afford to be lost due to the crouching wolves. If you are against spanking (this type of punishment may even be illegal where you live), make sure your alternative punishments are firm enough to enact a change in behavior. Here are some things we did that produced results: 1. Removal from activity (Some people call this 'time out', but it is not strong enough to replace spanking unless it pains their hearts. They should miss doing something they love, so they understand that if I listen I CAN participate but if I don't then I CANNOT participate. If it does not bring a change in behavior, it didn't 'hurt' enough and your need to rethink the severity of the 'time out'.) 2. Cleaning (One of our daughters, I won't mention Abby's name, kept the messiest closet. We spoke to her about it and warned of a coming consequence. We went into her room to see that mess once again. We put all of her clothes on the floor of her room. She was shocked and cried when she saw the mess. Cleaning it took quite some time, she was late for an event she wanted to attend, but the messy closet issues were remedied because the punishment was severe enough.) 3. Monetary payment (If a child carelessly or intentionally destroys something (not accidentally), they should pay for it. They will learn when it hurts their pocketbook. You can use their allowance or even gift money they have received. If they do not have money, you can sell one of their valuables to exact the payment. This will be really tough, but it will bring a change in behavior...trust me!) 4. Reward (You can do preemptive training to prevent disobedient behavior. We had a chart at our home to reward positive behavior. The children earned stickers for things they were expected to do. If they preformed disobedient acts, then those earned stickers were removed. If they collected enough stickers in a week, they were treated to something they enjoyed like ice-cream or a trip to choose a toy or treat from a 'treasure box'.) 5. Spanking (Yes, we did spank. Like the article I cited earlier, this was a last resort, never done in anger, was done privately, and was only done when they were an appropriate age...we rarely had to spank our children after age 2 because they knew we meant business. We chose this form of discipline at times because it was effective and our consistent loving relationship with our children allowed this method to be effective and not divisive. We did not spank with our hand, due to the personal nature of that instrument. The shepherd disciplines and guides with an instrument, which allows him to cuddle the sheep without confusion. We do not need to defend the few and far between times that we spanked our children because we used many other methods until we saw there was a need for something more firm. The loving, respectful and successful nature of our children in their adult lives testify to the wise and successful use of this method in our household.) I am leaving you with this lovely video by the late Dr. Nabeel Qureshi's in his last public speech. He gifts us with an excellent understanding of the loving heavenly Father, who is our example of how to guide our children as HE guides HIS children.
LORD, FILL US WITH YOUR WISDOM AS WE RAISE OUR PRECIOUS BABIES. HELP US NOT TO FEAR THE TRUTH AND INSTRUCTION OF YOUR WORD, WHICH WILL HELP US ON THIS JOURNEY TOWARDS ABUNDANT LIFE FOR OUR CHILDREN! p.s. Next blog post in 2 weeks will discuss the differences between learning to read phonetically verses methods using memorization of whole words. See you then!!
5 Comments
Laurie Kirk
10/16/2019 02:36:01 pm
love this! Thank you 💗
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Hadar
10/20/2019 12:15:12 pm
Great article! Thank you.
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10/21/2019 07:50:40 am
Great question, Hadar! This is a common problem and can extend to other relatives or friends. I believe that your child's development is your responsibility and sometimes you may hurt people's feelings because you are unwilling to compromise. You have to put boundaries around your children and require those who attend to them to keep to those same boundaries. If they do not honor your wishes, I would only interact with them when you are all together. This way, you can set the stage for the welfare of your children and the others can just enjoy them within those boundaries. We have seen that eventually people see the product of the boundaries you set (well behaved and enjoyable children) and eventually they comply :)
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Randy Williams
10/22/2019 01:08:45 pm
My tongue-in-check: I hear the most difficult part of spanking a very rebellious and difficult tantrum-throwing child in an aisle in Walmart is trying to find out who the parent is.
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