Raising Kids Ain't Easy But Neither Is Life

Common Sense Commentary: Bettie and I have six children and "approximately" sixty five or seventy grand and great grand children. I don't know which is most difficult, a child trying to grow up, young adults trying to learn to be parents .... and still stay married, middle aged parents trying to pay all the bills and save for retirement too, or old age when your mistakes and failures come back to haunt you just when your old body and senses are dragging you toward the grave. Through it all, I have learned one remedy and cure-all ... "God's grace is sufficient." II Cor.12:9. "And He said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

Vain pride, boasting and self-centeredness is not a desirable characteristic in an adult and no better in a child. Self-centered adults have been self-centered children. Our Lord said in Prov.22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." The opposite is most often true as well, "Train up a child in a way he should not go, by your words and actions, and he will not depart from that either." Letting a child, or negligently training him/her to be vainly proud and self-centered in his pliable young years, will produce a vainly proud, self-centered adult. Character flaws do not tend to diminish but enlarge with age. There is no bitterness more deeply rooted than an old bitter person who has carried bitterness throughout life into old age. Its marks are deeply impressed upon the very face of an old bitter person.

Neither is it a good thing to constantly tell a child how cute, beautiful or handsome they are. Vanity takes root like Bind Weed in a garden. You can't dig it out, starve it out, burn it, or poison it. It can ruin the garden. A better way is to tell a child how much you and God love them and how precious they are to you and God too. Tell them they have a good face or they are intelligent or clean, or pleasant to be around. Each child in a family should feel equally loved. Praise them for a job well done, a good report card, legible writing, or showing respect and consideration toward others. Beauty can be more of a curse than a blessing.

Threatening a child or screaming is not  as effective  as cautioning , even warning him of the consequences of his words and actions. You don't want your boss screaming at you so don't mislead your child into thinking that a screaming "no" means "no" but a calm "no" means nothing. Set the rules and enforce them until your calm "no" sounds to him like, "NO". I am not saying I always lived up to my preaching, especially when I was young, but balance improves with maturity and "God's grace is sufficient".

Most important is to always keep your word. Don't promise things you may not be able to do. Better to surprise a child with something special than breaking your word to them. Promise little and deliver much more .... not the opposite. Highly compliment a responsibility or job well done but never reward negligence or disobedience or pouting. If you promise punishment for a forbidden action or disobedience, you, as a parent must deliver .... or your word means nothing. "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ ...." Gal.3:24.

I feel certain our Lord would not have us using His name to threaten or intimidate a child by saying things like "God will get you for that" or "punish you". Better to say, "We are going to pray and ask God to forgive you." Of course sometimes corporal punishment is in order but God doesn't have to hit us when we do wrong, He has long since set in motion laws like "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" that automatically react upon us. "For the wages of sin is death ..." Rom.6:23. Sin kills people who practice it. There is within every sin the seed of its own destruction. Living recklessly results in death more often than caution. Drunkenness will kill your liver, your stomach and your body much sooner than temperance. Robbing liquor stores tends to eventually cause an unnatural death. Just going into a neighborhood to buy drugs kills an inordinate number of people. Promiscuous sex is more dangerous than a loaded shotgun. The same is true when someone jumps from a ten story building and splashes on the sidewalk. God didn't kill them ... gravity did. Its a law God made.

 Never, as a parent, criticize a child's mother or father to them. They will catch that virus from you and feel free to do the same. Divorce is no excuse either. If you point out all the flaws and "evil" their other parent has done, the child will conclude that since he/she are of the same flesh that they too are terrible people. It never pays to make a child think less of a parent. That is his only Mom or Dad no matter how hurt or angry you are at your spouse or former spouse.

It is so common for parents or friends of the child to give fatal advice to him/her. It is totally out of focus to tell a teenager to, "Follow your heart" concerning a boyfriend, girlfriend, or marriage. God tells the truth ...... "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jer.17:9. Your teenagers are beginning to feel the same lusts and temptations as you but they don't usually know lust from love or a boyfriend's sweet words and promises from the TRUTH. Teens do not and are not supposed to have the wisdom of maturity and reality. They are most often easily led astray by friends. They should be "trained up" by parents to follow, not feelings or their "heart" but RIGHT, JUSTICE, PURITY in one word, JESUS. In fact that is exactly what He said. In the book of Mark alone, Jesus said "Follow me" six times. Young people or adults who simply follow their feelings or their heart, (which may be lust, pride, anger, etc.) will spend their lives being run over out there in the traffic of that "broad way that leads to destruction" Matt.7:13.

It is just as erroneous and destructive to tell a young person to, "Go out there in that big world and discover who you are." They already think "who they are" is what their fleshly lusts are secretly whispering to their "hearts" and flesh .... and be sure when they walk out of your home .... "sin lieth at the door". Gen.4:7. The world is as full of "opportunities to do wrong" as the Okefenokee is of water moccasins. Young people often don't know whether they are impotent, homo, male or female and given the wrong circumstances, have been convinced or converted, by perverts or friends, into something they were never intended to be by their Holy Creator God. What and who they discover in the streets is seldom wholesome and good. Our first poodle, in Florida, insisted he could take care of himself with the big boys. He was a canine teenager, in dog years, when he went out into that big world to "discover who he was" and met a big friendly pit bull who left him ripped and torn and nearly dead lying out there in the "broad way". So after he finally healed up, he stayed at home in the back yard which backed up to a swamp. Like the prodigal son, he adventured down to the edge of the swamp where an alligator took him in and gave him a new home. Dear young person, you too have some poisonous snakes, pit bulls and alligators in your immediate future ... just waiting for you to come out and play.

Think about this, young person. If you feel so much more mature and experienced than your younger siblings, and I'm sure you are, don't you think the same is true with your parents ? You can't know they are so much more wise and experienced than you because you have never been in their shoes but they have been in yours as you have been in your little brother or sister's shoes. Listen to Mom and Dad. They love you more than anyone but God Himself. Follow Jesus in "the narrow way he walked".

Pass it on. RB