Parenting Series
Our Family, Our Philosophy
We are a family of 6. As of this year (2018) my husband and I have been married for 23 years and our children are 20,19, 16,14.
Looking back I realize I thought I knew what I was doing. I was around children all the time growing up, I got my degree in education and even taught preschool before I had kids. I felt prepared. Our first two children were boys and they are 16m apart. Crazy? I didn't think so at the time, but well, maybe we were. Let's just say that the boys left me wondering just how prepared I was. Turns out following them around demanding obedience at all times wasn't as effective as I thought it would be. Shocker, I know! Well, let me re-phrase. It actually was pretty effective, in fact, many people would comment on how well behaved they were.
Our parenting early on in a nutshell was this: I say it, you do it. Period. I call, you come. Period. This is obedience, right?
See, I had read MANY books on parenting and some of them were helpful. But something was missing. I knew it, my husband knew it, but what was it?
We decided early on (probably had 3 kids by this time, 2 boys and 1 girl) to take a parenting class and the book they used was Shepherding a Child's Heart. We felt like this was the missing piece to our parenting. Looking at the child's heart and working towards restoration was a game changer for us. We now felt like we were on the right track. We were still no nonsense, but we had a better idea of what we thought the point/goal of discipline was.
When a child goes against what you have said in whatever way, they have broken the relationship. They have broken trust. Our goal as parents is to bring them back into a right relationship. To look at the heart issue, correct, and forgive.
(There are probably other things in the book, but that is the main thing we learned)
Keep in mind that life is a journey and God doesn't always show you everything you need to know up front. We learned a great deal from that class and I don't regret it one bit, but we still had a lot to learn.
--I need to take a little break here and tell you that we love our kids deeply. Our family loves to have fun. We love the beach, and traveling, and movies, and good food. We love camping and friends and visiting family in CA and CO. We are a loud, crazy family. I say this because in trying to share our parenting philosophy and style, some of the fun and good parts of our family might get overlooked. --
Fast forward thru many years (now 4 kids - 3 boys and 1 girl). We began to experience a parenting crisis. The no nonsense style of parenting that seemed to be working for so many years is no longer working (and an argument could be made that it didn't really work even then). What do we do?
Without getting into the nitty gritty of what was going wrong, (more of an effort to protect our kids then not being willing to share them with you, but all kids have their struggles with each other, with peers, with life, with school,etc. You name it, there are kids who struggle with it) I will share what we came to realize was another big piece that was missing in our parenting.
Compassion
In our world of no nonsense, we were missing the element of compassion, empathy, and understanding that parents need when training and correcting children. I don't mean to say we had none, but they were in shorter supply than I believe God wanted from us.
God has been working on us in this area the last several years. To recognize how God is compassionate and understanding with us and how seeking to hear/see/understand our children better allows them to trust us more and actually listen to what we have to say. We will never be perfect parents. There is no such thing. But we do want to continue to learn and seek to hear from God thru his Spirit.
My hope is that if you do choose to read any of the other posts in the parenting series that you would ask God to show you what He wants you to learn in your parenting.
Ps. 15:22 "Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed."
Ps. 86:15 "But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness."
Current books I recommend are:
Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel
The Whole -Brain Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Bryson
Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control by Heather T. Forbes and B. Bryan Post
For those who foster or who have adopted children I recommend:
The Connected Child by Wendy Lyons Sunshine and David R. Cross
