Pitfalls Of Parenting 2 Series

We need to be a pattern that our children can follow. Every year I see more and more of Captain Burton Guptill creeping into me. And some of those things I like and others I don’t like and some I’m not sure of. And if I’m not real careful my kids will be a lot like Rev. Denn Guptill, the good, the bad and the indifferent. I may not be responsible for everything that Stephen and Deborah do and are, but I will always be responsible for the areas where they followed my example.

I love the story of the newly wed who was making a roast dinner for her husband and before she put the meat in she cut off both ends and laid it in with the roast. When he questioned her about it she said “I don’t know why, but that’s what mom always did.” That got her thinking so she called her mother and asked why she always cut the ends off her roast before she cooked it and her mothers reply was of course, “That’s the way your Grand mother always did it” And so the call was made to grandma and she was asked the timeless question, ‘“why do you always cut the ends off your roasts.” And she said “I don’t now but when the family was growing up the roast were always too long for my roaster”

Probably one of the most serious repercussions of the do as I say not as I do mentality will be in the stability of the family unit as we see more and more children following the pattern that their parents set for them. It most be traumatic enough for a child when they are told by their parents “We don’t love each other anymore but we will always love you.” That’s reassuring, but then you have children whose main model of marriage ended in divorce and then people get upset when their kid’s marriages follow the same path as theirs.

Acts 13:36 For after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed. 7) Remember That Your Child Is Not Living When You Lived. Very simply David did what he had to do when he had to do it then he died. This is 2008 it’s not 1968 or 1978 or even 1998 it’s 2008. And our children are living their lives in their days not yours and not mine. Like David they will have to serve God in their own generation.

Now I know that things are different now then when you were a kid. And that things weren’t as easy then as they were now. Am I right? The only thing I don’t know is the story that you string to your kids about what it was like when you were growing up. But I can guess. I’m sure that you tell them how you loved school, and always got straight A’s and never talked back to your parents or teachers and how you delivered all of the newspapers in your town no matter what the weather and never complained about anything.

Have you told them yet how you had to get up at four in the morning and break the ice out of the basin to wash and then before dawn you had to milk the 200 cows and split 10 cord of wood before walking 17 miles to school mostly in snow storms, and back then we really had snow. And then when you got home you had to do your chores all over again and study by candlelight and be in bed by six. Am I close?