3 Best Parenting Tips EVER!

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

Parenting is Rough! 

There are moms that swear the terrible twos are the most hairy years of their parenting lives. There are some that swear pre-pubescence is the nightmare that they struggled to get through. For me, it is the teen years. 

As a mom of two teenage girls, I find everyday seems to be as challenging as the day before, sometimes in similar ways and sometimes in totally unexpected ways. I have two very head strong and heart soft girls and sometimes walking that fine line between training and breaking is difficult. 

Training versus Breaking

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 

When you train something or someone, you teach by repetition, you lead by example and you reward with positive feedback. 

When you break something or someone (of a bad habit, like a horse is broken, as in curb the will) then you run the risk of breaking their spirit too. 

The rod and correction lead to wisdom, but children out of control shame their mothers. Proverbs 29:15

As a kid I bucked that kind of parenting for a long time, yet as an adult I was that kind of parent. To be perfectly honest at times when things get particularly rough, I still tend to fall back into this kind of parenting. (Though my children are too old for a spanking, they are never too old to lose an iPod, or a phone, or some other privilege). 

[Caveat: Tempered spanking (controlled patterned structured discipline) is not bad. Not all spanking is beating, but all beating IS wrong! You have to be careful here, but this is not a post on physical discipline.]

Our jobs as parents are multifaceted, but for the purposes of this post I want to focus on these two things: relationship and character. 

Relationship

There are four types of relationships parents must teach their children about. 

1. Relationship with God – this is the most valuable thing we can help our children establish. We will never be the perfect parents, but God is the perfect Father. Knowing who we were meant to be before we do, meeting our needs before we know we need them, and providing a way to be forever in in His presence, God is the ultimate Dad.

2. Relationships with authority- As parents we are the first teachers, police, judge, and boss that our children will ever have. We must teach them to respect authority not because it is the “way things are” but because serving and honoring those who serve is one of the highest forms of respect we can give.

3. Relationship with peers – As parents we teach our children to share, to be kind, to love, to serve, to treat others as we want to be treated. These social skills will serve our children the rest of their lives and create stronger character in them.

4. Relationship with spouse – As parents we will model to our children what healthy (hopefully) relationships with a spouse look like. That each person serves the other out of love and respect, not out of duty or fear. This relationship will teach your young men how to treat women and your young women how to love well.

Character

Someone once told me “You are either raising a child with character or you are raising a character.” 

I don’t know about you, but I want the first one. Though only time will tell, right? The proof is, after all, in the proverbial pudding. 

Character is essential to keeping your child on track to having a fulfilled life as an adult. Let’s look at three traits of a person of good character that can set your child on the right path. 

1. Honesty- with themselves, with God and with man. If a person is honest, there is little room for miscommunication, ego, or arrogance. Honest people see themselves for who they are, flawed, (in need of a God) and deal with people in a straight forward manner that builds trust with those in authority and their peers.

2. Humility- Raising a child who is humble is an amazing gift to that child. When we are truly humble, God promotes us. When we are prideful and arrogant then we face obstacles that by their very nature will hamper and dampen that pride. Pride makes life hard. People appreciate humility and set themselves against prideful people.

3. Love- Now abides faith, hope and love, the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13) Love will enable your child to show kindness when most people would show disdain. Love will be patient when others are tapping their foot and watching the clock. Love will serve others before themselves. Love will curb greed, overcome hate, and strengthen relationships. Love is not just for our spouses and children. Love is a character trait we should show the man who is holding the sign “will work for food” or the slightly smelly woman sitting next to you in church. Love is for the stranger at work sitting across the negotiating table and for the starving child Africa. If you cannot teach your child honesty or humility at least teach them love.

I by no means have it right all the time. I have been both the really bad parent, who used fear and yelling as a whip to bring my children “into line” and the good mom that realized that she better live by example and show some humility and walk in love with her kids. 

Right now I have a child who at every turn pushes boundaries, verbalizes her discontent, and thinks she knows better than mom and dad. I have another who is well on her way to following her sister's attitudinal footsteps. 

So I put on a happy face and parent them even when I don't like them. (I am being honest here) 

This is my joy as a mother of teenagers, though at times the tears make the smiling look a little creepy. Just sayin'. 

(Insert "uncomfortable" laugh here)

Of course, as I post this, my girls are off to camp, and par the course for this mommy, I cried seeing them off. No matter what I am my kids' mom and I love them beyond measure. 

The bottom line is this: no matter how hard you think the moment is, how upset you are that your child just doesn't “get it”, (and there will be plenty of these moments) keep your eye on the goal. 

I just have to remind myself of the three best parenting tips of all:  

1. Pray

2. Breathe

3.Repeat

Train your kids to love God, and to walk in love toward others and you will teach them the greatest two laws ever given by God. 

“The most important one says: ‘People of Israel, you have only one Lord and God. You must love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.’ The second most important commandment says: ‘Love others as much as you love yourself.’ No other commandment is more important than these.”

Do you have any parenting tips you want to share?