Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
Dear Ones,
I am finally back to the Child Training series. Part 5 is almost ready but first we need to be reminded of the foundation...obedience training with the right parental heart attitude.
In the last 6 years, we have done a lot of travelling from church to church in the U.S., as Missionaries on deputation. We have been asked a lot of questions, but I think the question most frequently asked is, "how do you teach your children to obey so well"?
First of all, let me tell you in advance, that our children are a great blessing to us, but they are human, they are a work in process, and they still have a long way to go. But, God's ways always work, and if we follow His plan, by God's grace, our children will be the blessings to us and others that they were meant to be!
Proverbs 22:6 says,
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
I call this
The "Train Up" Principle. Train our children NOW in the way that will cause them to be what they should be when they are old. Don't wait till your son is 18, to train him to be what he should be at 18, start as soon as possible, training him to be what he should be, so that when he is 18, his training is second nature to him... it is a part of who he is!
Training is really "the forming of a habit". Habits are incredibly powerful things. It has been said that if you do something consistently for 2 weeks, you will have formed a habit. And habits, good or bad, are hard to break! Unfortunately, the bad habits are always harder to break than the good ones! Habits done consistently over many, many years, actually become a part of who we are.
With all this in mind, our job in training our children, is to teach them and require of them to form the right habits in any given situation, and not to allow them to form bad habits in any given situation. Who decides what is good or bad? God himself, and He has described what is good or bad in detail in His word, which is another very important reason we mothers must be studying God's word ourselves to see what He has to say!
There are many different things that children need to be trained to do, but it's best to start with obedience training, because without it, it's difficult to train a child to do anything else! For example, it is very difficult for a teacher in school to teach her students much of anything if they will not obey her. If they will not sit quietly and listen and do what she says, the way she says to do it, they can not learn what she is trying to teach them. Thus, OBEDIENCE is the foundation to learning everything else.
Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Colossians 3:20
We have found that for most parents, the missing ingredient in their "Child Training", is the actual step of
"Training".
A lot of frustration occurs in the parent child relationship because the parent expects the child to do something that the child has never been trained to do. The parent just assumes that somehow the child should already know what they mean and how to do it. Never assume your child already knows how to do something that you have not thoroughly trained them to do yourself.
Remember, the verse says to
" TRAIN" up a child.
To Train means: 1: to direct the growth of (a plant) usually by bending, pruning, and tying
3 : to form by instruction, discipline, or drill, so as to make fit, qualified, or proficient
4: to make prepared (as by exercise) for a test of skill
In a nutshell, in the context of child training, "to train" means:
To condition for a certain response in a certain situation BEFORE the situation occurs. So that when the situation does occur, they will already be conditioned through constant practice or repetition to respond correctly.
As parents, we must remember that our
ATTITUDE when we are Training our children is very important!
If we yell or have an angry tone, they will be trained to obey only when we yell or have an angry tone! Do you want to have to yell and get angry to get them to obey? If you don't, then don't train them that way! Train them with a sweet soft voice and a kind smile and they will learn to obey a sweet soft voice and a kind smile!
REMEMBER...Anger is a SINFUL ATTITUDE we do not want to pass on to our children!
Our attitude is so important in all our interaction with our children! We want to convey a heart that is grateful to God for them! The goal is to
build up our relationship with them, not tear it down.
A good principle to remember is:
Rules without relationship bring REBELLION! Lots of rules must be balanced with a strong, loving, close relationship!
If you could hold a mirror in front of your face while your talking to your children all day long,(or your husband for that matter) what would you see?
Would the face in the mirror look like this? Is this what your family looks at all day long?
Remember...children will pick up our bad attitudes and mirror them back to us!
I know, your thinking,"I don't mean to look like that, I just never thought about it, and I get soooo busy!" Let me tell you, I understand busy!!! But for the sake of our child training efforts and our family, we must STOP responding in anger and allow God to cleanse our hearts of anger in all it's forms...frustration, impatience, harsh tones and angry faces etc.!
If you have a consistent problem with anger, remember that BITTERNESS is the root of ANGER.
Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Hebrews 12:15
In this verse to "fail of the grace of God", means to not accept God's grace in any given situation. God's grace gives us the power to accept a difficult situation and any suffering involved with the correct attitude and the power to FORGIVE anyone who has caused the situation.
When we do not accept God's grace...we do not have the power from God to FORGIVE! When we do not FORGIVE...A ROOT OF BITTERNESS SPRINGS UP IN OUR HEART and....MANY ARE DEFILED BY IT... including OUR CHILDREN!
Remember...Everything reproduces after its self! Your children are little sponges soaking it all in, all day, everyday! If you have anger problems...so will they!
Because your unforgiveness is the root of your anger problems, you must allow God to cleanse your heart of anger by helping you learn to forgive all those in your past, present and future. This is the only way to keep from passing this SINFUL ATTITUDE on to our children.
As Christian women one of our main goals should be to develop a "meek and quiet spirit".
... even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands. 1 Peter 3:4-5
Anger and all its forms are the OPPOSITE of a "meek and quiet spirit".
After we have allowed God to cleanse our hearts of anger, we must start our own positive habits to help us have a consistent "meek and quiet spirit" in our relationships with our children.
Here are some positive habits we can form:
The first and most important habit is your
personal devotions every morning, I have already said alot on this in the post
here. Like everything else in our busy lives, if we don't plan what to do, and a time to do it, it won't get done! During our daily time with the Lord, we need to ask Him to search our hearts and show us any unforgiveness that may have occurred that day towards someone and with the power of God's grace forgive that person. Also, begin to pray for that person and God will fill your heart with love for them.
Second, our sweet little
children need to know we love them, they need to see it in our faces, in our smile. You can get in the habit of smiling by purposing everyday to smile at your child FIRST before you speak to them. Then with a kind voice, you can proceed to instruct, or praise, or correct, and
your instruction, praise, and correction will go alot further because of your GOOD ATTITUDE!
Third,
your child needs loving physical touch, so to make sure you get it in everyday, you can plan to at least give them a warm hug first thing in the morning, another at lunch and another before they go to bed. I know your thinking," that seems too planned and mechanical", but at least it will get you in the habit and hopefully grow into more often. I think you would be surprised at how much time most Christian parents don't spend hugging and holding their children, and children need this affection much more than we realise!
Fourth, make sure to find ways to
spend one on one time with each child. This can be very tricky with 11 children, especially when the 4 youngest are 6 and under. But, with a little creativity and planning, it can get done, and it means so much to our children!
Fifth,
Praise, Praise, Praise! Praise them at every opportunity! Find something daily to praise them for! Think of how you respond to someone who gives you praise... it motivates you to want to do even better, to hear more praise! We all need praise and gratefulness for what we do.
Does your child have a void in his heart because of lack of praise and gratefulness by you for his efforts?
Be careful, our enemy will quickly send someone else to praise him and STEAL HIS HEART FROM YOU!
Overall, we want to communicate to our children that we love them, and
we LOVE spending our time with them!!!
An important side note: Don't underestimate the
power of a smile! A warm, loving smile directed at a person says: "You are important to me," and I appreciate you and what you mean to me."
The lack of a smile forces people to focus on you and wonder what is wrong with you or what they have done to offend you. Thus, the lack of a smile communicates
self-centeredness, which is the opposite of a
grateful heart!
The bible states that
" a merry heart doeth good like a medicine..." (Proverbs 17:22). This fact has been medically verified by researchers at the University of California.
They measured the chemical responses in people who simply mimicked a smile. To their amazement, they found that healthy hormones were secreted that strengthened the immune system.
When people in the test frowned, unhealthy hormones were produced, which weakened their immune systems.
Further studies have demonstrated that the thalamus gland of a person is strengthened when
he sees someone who is smiling.
Another benefit is that
smiles are contagious! What usually happens when you smile at someone...they smile back!
You never know, your smile may be the only one that person has seen all day!
By God's grace, this is the expression we want our sweet little children (and our husbands) to look at everyday, one that says, you are important to me, you bring me joy,
I LOVE YOU!!!
The power of a smile!
I have divided this post into two parts, if you need to return later to finish reading, this is a good place to stop. :)
________________________________________________________________________________
(Child Training continued)
Now, with a smile on our lips and a grateful heart to the Lord for our children, lets begin child training!
Lets go through the steps of training:
1) First, we
INSTRUCT the child. We explain exactly what we want them to do and how we want them to do it.
2) Then, we
SHOW them by our example, exactly what we mean, by doing it ourselves.
3) Then, we have
THEM DO IT for us, to make sure they understand what we want them to do.
4) Now that they know what we want and can do it, we have them
REPEAT IT over and over everyday(remember, this is the forming of a habit) until they have been TRAINED to do it exactly the way we want it done.
The amount of time needed to train depends on the child and their age. Usually the younger child takes a little longer, but the time is very well spent because
the more time you spend now training, the less you have to spend later correcting! And the goal is to train as early as possible in a child's life. Remember, those habits we talked about...
the longer a young child is allowed to indulge in a bad habit, the harder it will be later to break him of it!
I like to use the example of gardening. At the beginning of the season our goal is to grow a beautiful, healthy garden that is not only a blessing to us but to all who see it's beauty and are blessed by it's produce! But, the enemy of our goal are the WEEDS, who's seeds are already present in the soil. If we don't intervene and get rid of the weeds, our garden will be taken over and the good plants will be chocked out and destroyed!
Now,
if we start at the beginning of the season, and pull the tiny weeds when they FIRST POP UP, they are SO MUCH EASIER TO PULL! Have you ever done this in a garden? It's just a simple, pluck pluck, it's almost fun! But
...if we get too busy to pull these tiny weeds and we allow them to TAKE ROOT, then they are MUCH HARDER to pull! In fact, it can be VERY DIFFICULT to remove all the roots that are deep in the ground! You may even have to dig very deep to remove those roots, and now the whole process has become
painful for you and the plants!
This is exactly like child training...
if we start as soon as possible pulling those "weeds" of bad habits, as soon as they pop up, they will be much easier to remove. But... if we wait till the "weeds" of bad habits take root, then they are much harder and painful to remove!
5) When the child is TRAINED in something, from this point forward you should be able to ask him at any time to do it and
he should do it exactly as he was trained to, with a good attitude.The way he was trained to do something is now the
STANDARD.
Don't get discouraged, even the most diligently trained child will seem to regress and "act up", from time to time. He is simply testing to see if you are serious about your commitment to train him. If you remain consistent in your loving attitude and your training, he will soon be back to his sweet self!
I have heard it said,"
there are no strong willed children, just weak willed parents". I believe there is a lot of truth in this and yet from experience, I know that some children are wired stronger and are more labor intensive to train. It is then crucial that we determine
to have a stronger will than they do!
Now lets apply the steps of training to a real situation.
Lets say little Tommy needs to learn to come when he is called. So, first we take him in a room and explain that when Mommy calls him he needs to stop what he's doing right away and come straight to Mommy and say,"yes Ma'am".
Then you give him an example by doing it yourself. You pretend you are him sitting on the floor playing and you hear Mommy call so you put your toys down immediately and go to where the pretend Mommy is and you say,"yes Ma'am".
Now you have him do it. And once he understands what to do, you send him back in the other room to play and you call him again. He stops playing and immediately comes to you and says "yes Ma'am". You have him repeat this over and over, always praising him with a big smile when he does it correctly.
This is TRAINING. Remember, Training is to condition a certain response to a certain situation before the situation occurs.
Now, at different times of the day when he is doing different activities you call him to come to you and you repeat it over and over until he does it perfectly every time you call him. Practice everyday for a week or two (depending upon his age) and he will be trained to come to you immediately when you call with a smile and a yes Ma'am.
Remember, all Training should be done with a
joyful attitude on your part and a big smile. This can really be a lot of fun. We call it the "obedience game" and the children always look forward to it!
We would plan an hour a day in our scheduling for the "obedience game". (I will explain in detail how to start a daily schedule in future posts). You can take this principle of training and apply it to every area that your child needs to learn obedience.
Eventually, your child should be trained to obey immediately...delayed obedience is DISOBEDIENCE.
If trained correctly with the right attitude the child will obey immediately and do exactly what he was trained to do the way he was trained to do it.
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Psalm 127:3-5
Clearly God's design was for children to be a blessing. And if they are not, it is because the parents have not trained them or did not train them correctly. While the process is not difficult if we start early, it still takes time and energy and we must be consistent over many years to see the desired result. Sometimes, we can get tired and weary and be tempted to ease up or quit, but if we keep our eyes on the goal, with God's grace we can finish the task!
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Galatians 6:9
We don't want to get to the end of our child rearing years and have no good fruit, like the garden that was not tended to properly, who's plants are choked out and all grown over with weeds and whose produce is small and week. We want to have strong healthy fruit that God can use!
Remember the "Train Up" principle:
Don't wait! Train them when they are little to be what they should be when they are old!
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
Much Love in Him,
