Rookie Parents

You didn't, did you? Please tell me you didn't. That saying isn't from the Bible. Greg, my 14th best friend made that one up. It is filled with a lot of truth though, isn't it?

Every parent needs a truckload of encouragement! What a huge responsibility! What a challenge it is to your emotional equilibrium, huh? And all the questions that keep coming up? I'm not talking about the ones from the kiddos, I'm talking about the ones from within! Yikes! May I throw a few specifics in your direction?

We learn by doing. So give yourself some wobble room in the process. Woe be to the person who doesn't want to have children until they have it all figured out. Not gonna happen. It's interesting how mentally taxing it is to become a new parent. But what God ordains, He sustains. He will give you the grace to do the job.

Make laughter a part of the steady diet of the whole family. You may be surprised how much security you are building into the minds of your children as they see their parents laugh together. Make it a habit to work smiles into the house. It's a given that with children there will be plenty of crying. That's part of the professionalism of being a child. We must expect a child to be ... a child. So as parents it helps to counterbalance with smiles and joy.

Another specific is to build discipline into the family and to not wait until they are teenagers to attempt to do so. Nada. It's in all of us to want to have our way. Nobody had to teach me how to throw a temper tantrum. Nobody had to teach me how to hit my brother. It came naturally. Any good parent knows that early on every child needs a pat on the back, often enough, low enough, and hard enough. I wrote down every time I spanked my two sons; how many little swats with my hand and what for. One got five spankings in his life and the other got three. Spanked 'em just hard enough to bring tears and make the point that there are principles to live by in our home. And yes, it did hurt me more than it hurt them, but it was the right, biblical thing to do. I don't believe the 'spanking' stage should last too long in parenting and before long it would change to other things like privileges, etc. But please don't enable your children because you just don't want to deal with something. Be a parent. I very quickly taught my two sons to respect their mother and for that matter to respect others, but especially women. And I'm very proud of how they do so even to this day. But trust me, if you don't win those little battles when they are small, they will be much larger battles when they are older and that's not the time to begin to lay down the law, so to speak.

You raise them to release them. You give them roots, and then you give them wings. Before you know it you won't be the most important influence in their lives. It'll be a coach or a best friend or a teacher or co-worker. Mom... Dad... you will begin to fade a bit to the background in the 'influence' department. This is why we need to build strong roots early on while we can. Because the building influence will fade. Teach them the gospel. Show them the gospel. Let them see the gospel in the lives of their parents all through their upbringing.

Because someday someone else will have their ear just a bit more than you do. You have to learn to give them their space. That's a specific. So much more could be said.