Raising God’s Children
Gtcotr/020405
We are not raising children, we are raising adults.
We only have the chance to raise them right while they’re children.
Key Scriptures: Proverbs 22 NKJV
6 ¶ Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.
15 ¶ Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him.
The concept of a rod here is not only a guiding prod but also a rod was the primary tool of measurement. It is important to note that this rod refers to the proper measure of correction necessary to affect the desired result of guiding a child away from childish foolishness.
Training …
It takes time to raise children. In fact:
Raising children is a full time job.
This is one of the main reasons why homes are in such disharmony and so many of them dysfunctional today … the home has not been given the priority and attention it deserves.
Not only that but parents today actually need parenting themselves. The former generations were so busy with their expanding lifestyles in their generation that they either did not know how or did not take the time required to raise a healthy family.
Rather than focus on what is wrong and what has caused families to be dysfunctional in today’s world, let me take this brief time we have together and speak about fixing some of the most prevalent problems we are faced with in raising families today.
You see:
All children are impressionable, in fact to some extent all people are impressionable, but especially young children.
In order to help parents understand why their children act as they do, it may be best to begin with how children develop both in the womb and in early childhood.
There is a reason why young children are able to learn and adapt as much as they do … and why also that it can be much tougher to teach old dogs to do new tricks --- not impossible --- just tougher.
According to information you can find in several places, including one book by Buckingham entitled, “Now Discover Your Strengths”:
* Forty-two days after a child is conceived, their brain experiences a four-month growth spurt.
* On your forty-second day they create their first neuron, (or brain cell), and 120 days later they have a hundred billion of them.
> That’s a staggering 9500 new neurons every second.
* A person has one hundred billion neurons when they are born, and have about that many up until late middle age, when they begin to loose them.
* Sixty days before birth neurons start trying to communicate with one another.
> Each neuron reaches out, literally reaches out a strand called an axon - and attempts to make a connection with another neuron.
> Whenever a successful connection is mad, a synapse is formed. This is a communication link between brain cells through which information, likes, dislikes, attitudes, emotions, skills, preferences, logic and learning are transmitted.
> By the age of three each of the one hundred billion neurons have formed fifteen thousand synaptic connections with other neurons. That’s 15 Trillion lines of instant paths of communication, each carrying information and impulses at the speed of lightening.
* If you have every heard of the terrible two’s --- this is what is going on right in the middle of the most active time of a child’s brain.
> They are capable of learning more information at that time than perhaps any other time in their lives and are shaping behavioral patterns that will serve them or haunt them for the rest of their lives.
> These young children are on a quest, racing against the clock, before time runs out and they are found in their mould of life.
* Between the ages of three and fifteen a person looses billions and billions of these carefully forged synaptic connections.
> By the time you wake up on your sixteenth birthday, half your network is gone.
* What happens between 16 and middle age is that some connections are strengthened and more used while others weaken and eventually become unused.
> The way we think, feel and act is a direct result of what we believe and how we process life and the information received.
* Old dogs can learn new tricks but it can be much more difficult and is usually always dependent on that older person wanting and working to change. One must have their agreement.
Having said this, one can easily see why beginning to structure the home environment to be conducive to child raising, as early as possible, is so practically important.
One famous quote by a world leader, it may have been Adolph Hitler or some philosopher, was this: “Give me your child until he is five years old. Then, I will give him back to you but he will always be mine.”
Children are impressionable and you can mould your child.
There is a pattern for the family and home.
Without regard as to whether the children and parents are biologically related, adopted or step child or a child in foster care, God’s Word is plain about the influence a home will have on a child.
In fact the bible says in Proverbs that a servant who grows up being cared for in a functional home, nurtured, loved and raised right, will come to behave like a son in the end.
It is my belief that the first thing a child needs to learn, given that they are being loved and nurtured properly, is the meaning of a loving ‘no’.
It is a must that children learn first to obey because of who is requiring it instead of why it is being required.
“The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.” King Edward VIII (1894 to 1972)
Parents at times use the reasoning that young children, under three or four or five, are just too young to learn what no means.
If a child can learn how to eat, walk, talk, be potty trained, learn to recognize the golden arches and where the candy is hidden at that age, I don’t think learning the meaning of a loving ‘no’ is any big step.
My goodness, even my 3 month old dogs understand the meaning of no.
This cornerstone is an essential for the foundation of life and begins to set up the structure by which many other lessons will be taught.
Without developing a healthy respect for authority and a belief that one must obey the voices of legitimate leadership in our children‘s life, we will be falsely teaching them that life and actions have no boundaries and no consequences.
Early childhood is much about developing respect for and trust in authority, from the platform of a loving and nurturing environment.
Pre-teen and early teen years is the perfect time to answer questions of why and to begin developing reasoning skills in your child.
Mid-teen is the time when a parent can begin involving their child in decision making while reinforcing those lessons learned earlier in life.
During the later teen years and early adulthood, the leash must be let out more and more. A parent is on the way to becoming a trusted friend and counselor. This sets the child up for transitioning to a peer relationship in adulthood.
Bringing A Home Into Harmony
* Children of all ages want to know what is expected of them.
* Children respond best to structure, authority and consistency.
* Children learn through so many receptors
> Ears are not number one on the list
Early on in my child raising years I observed a phenomenon in my own family. One in which I was not well pleased with.
Here is what I saw.
My 2 year old son and 4 year old daughter were typical wonderful children. I was a disciplinarian in my approach to child raising while Brenda, my wife, was a more laid back, let them evolve, kind of parent.
We were both loving parents but were having problems achieving the consistent behavioral changes we both desired from our children.
If we told them once not to slam the screen door, throw their toys, bite one another or not get up after going to bed … we told them a thousand times - seemingly every day.
I would get frustrated, Brenda would get frustrated and eventually lose control, usually after being sufficiently aggravated we would discipline the children … scolding them, sending them to their room or spanking them, often followed by arguments between me and Brenda.
Although this was a form of correction, it was not correcting the problem. Nothing was changing.
Early in 1982 I sought out and made a relationship with a much older minister from California. He became my mentor for a few years and helped me set the course for the family and ministry I hoped for.
It was he who introduced Brenda and me to the idea of a:
Code Of Conduct
Up until then it was a typical scenario that when Brenda would be cooking, for instance, one of our children would come into the kitchen and ask her for a cookie. She would respond with a no honey, not right now.
This would then be followed by another request for a cookie. A similar response would ensue. And mom might say something like: “Now don’t ask me again, mommy’s busy.”
Then a third request, usually accompanied by a whine and some other show of disagreement with their mother’s decision.
A stronger “No! Not right now” would come from mom, many times along with a 30 second discourse on the virtues of waiting until after dinner finishing with the empty promise,
“If you ask me again, I’m going to send you to your room.”
Even if the child left for a moment, it would not be long until a stronger, crying, louder and more aggressive demand came in some form, and would continue coming up until the time when Brenda or I had had enough and more than enough.
Then the precious little child who was only learning the art of communicating and negotiating would be jerked up, screamed at and often spatted and sent to their room crying. Slamming the door in defiance they would believe that the parents were mean, cruel, unpredictable, inconsistent, liars who were only too busy or too mad to get them what they wanted.
Or worse yet --- mom or dad would give the kid that cookie just to shut them up.
What did we think our children were learning? What were we teaching them?
In that scenario we were teaching our children that it is not wrong to disobey or to do wrong, it’s just wrong to go to far and make the parents mad.
Given enough of that education, seeing the parents mad and out of control too much, children can grow to not care what the parents think.
If something doesn’t change, a 3 year old who slaps his mom in anger can become a 16 year old who slaps his mom in anger and a 25 year old who tries it on their spouse or your grandchildren.
The typical learned behavior is to keep from going too far or making parents too mad. There is little connection with deserved correction.
This sets up the parents and children to endure an adversarial relationship and can bring families into dysfunctional territory.
This needs to change.
What a child does not receive, he can seldom give later. (PD James)
This is where the Code of Conduct brought harmony to my home.
I believe it is essential that everyone be on the same page.
That children of all ages know what is expected of them.
That parents be fair and careful in what they require of their children and be careful to be consistent.
Here is how the Code of Conduct works.
Make a list of behaviors or attitudes which you want to see changed in your children.
Keep the list short at first. Five to seven things at most.
Make broad categories where possible.
* Disobedience
* Fighting
* Disrespect
* Lying
You can get more specific as time goes on, after you have established some structure and gained or regained some control and respect.
Beside each of the items of unacceptable behavior put a fitting consequence. A reasonable but light measure of correction. Vary the correction and the measure to fit the misbehavior.
This list needs to be made up during a family time if possible allowing the children to participate. Remember, children will often assess too heavy a penalty for misbehavior, keep the correction to the minimum necessary to remind the child that misbehavior has consequences.
Once the list is made, read it to your child, no matter their age, and post it where they can readily see it. Perhaps on their bedroom door.
This is where the parent must discipline themselves to discipline their child each and every time there is an infraction. If the parent fails to stop what they are doing and tend to their child raising, then the problem is not the child, but the parent.
If the parent fails, they must apologize to the child, pray with the child and begin again.
When the child breaks the code of conduct rules, administer the correction in the following manner.
* Separate the child alone with the parent.
* Bring attention to the misbehavior as being wrong.
* Administer the correction without any show of anger.
* Pray a short prayer with the child and ask God to help them correct that behavior.
* Tell the child that you love them, that you know they are a good child.
* Then give them a hug or kiss and let them return to their activities.
Note: This correction is a reminder. It may at first consume a major portion of your time. It may also seem to not be working for the first few times. Stick to it and within six weeks, if worked, the home will come into peace and harmony and the children will know what is expected of them, respect the parent for their loving consistency and behave much, much better.
As time goes by you may want to add new and more specific items to the list. Always sit back down with them and go over any changes so they will know what is expected of them.
When the home is set in order, the next place a child will try you will be outside the home or in the home when friends or family visit.
We will have to save that topic for another time but suffice it to say that you can set your children up to learn those lessons on purpose in a controlled environment.
