Pitfalls of Parenting from the bottom of the Pit 2
I think it was John Wilmot 2 Earle of Rochester who said, “Before I was married I had six theories on raising children, now I have six children and no theories.” Last week we looked at Proverbs 22:6 Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it. And I said then that we had to notice that Solomon only mentioned two age groups there, a child and when he was old, not even Solomon who was considered by many to be the wisest man to live was going to hazard a guess about those turbulent teenage years. It was Mark Twain who said that “when a child turns thirteen he should be put into a barrel and fed through the bung hole, when he turns sixteen you should close up the bung hole.” Twain must have had similar experiences to Will Rogers who said, “Bury them at thirteen dig them up at twenty-one”
But we don’t want to put them in a barrel or bury them, at least not very often, instead isn’t our hope as a parent that we can show our kids a path, a good path that they will able to follow throughout their life? As far as I can figure out the best way to paraphrase Proverbs 22:6 would be “Do your best when they are young and hope for the best when they grow up.”
Two things that we looked at last week to start us off this week, 1) If you have children who are grown up and you have never had any real problems with them and they are serving God then I would suggest that instead of patting yourself on the back that you would be far better to get down on your knees and thank God, because as my daddy used to say “I would expect it is more good luck then good management” And 2) is just as important. If your kids haven’t turned out the way you think they should have and if you feel a little disappointed and even a mite embarrassed sometimes then I have a deep and profound thought for you, write it down and carry it in your wallet, engrave it on your mind cause here it is, “Always remember that God has trouble with his kids too.”
A group of pastors and their spouses were talking one day about our kids and how they had turned out and one of the women made a comment that has stuck with me and she said, “I will take some of the blame but I won’t take all of the blame.” And then she said “And if I’m going to take some of the blame I’m going to take some of the credit too.”
Last week we looked at five points for raising good kids they were: 1) pray hard 2) Remember that conflict is normal 3) Don’t don’t don’t compare your children to one another 4) encourage your children 5) Expect the best
Titus 2:7And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching. 6) This is probably the most difficult one of all, Model What You Expect. One day a little boy’s mom caught his tell a fib. “Do you know” she warned “what happens to little boys who tell lies?” “No what, Mommy?” he asked. “Well,” she said, “there is a man up in the moon, a little green man with just one eye, who sweeps down in the middle of the night and flies away to the moon with little boys who tell lies and makes them pick up sticks all the rest of their lives. Now you won’t tell lies any more will you for it’s awfully, awfully naughty.”
American author James Baldwin nailed it when he said “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
Nowhere is it truer then at home that more is caught then taught. Now you may be able to rationalise to your satisfaction why you can do something and they can’t by using the standard, “because I’m an adult” but that doesn’t always cut it with a child or a teen. “Do as I say not as I do” is no longer a valid child raising technique. Maybe we ought to change Proverbs 22:6 to read Direct your children onto the right path and then walk in it yourself
There is no place that the consistency of your Christian walk will be examined more closely or more minutely then at home by your children. For better or for worse your kids will probably grow up just like you, and ain’t that a thrilling thought.
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?
Hey I understand I’m forty seven and every year the winters get colder, the snow gets deeper, the walk to school gets longer, my grades get better, the herd of cows gets larger, and that pile of fire wood gets higher and higher. Son when I was your age.
And the worse part is that I was never an A student, I caught a bus or drove 11 out of 12 of my years in school. We had electric heat so we didn’t burn wood, and never owned a cow. In fact I’m working on a new story to tell the kids. “Son when I was your age we didn’t have WeII or X-box all we had was electronic pong, remember that? We didn’t have computers we only had calculators and they only added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. And when I was your age we only got two channels on our black and white TV and you had to get up to change those channels.” Doesn’t sound as good does it? Maybe I’ll go back to the cows.
Today is 2008, it’s been 30 years since I was a teenager and it’s a whole new world out there, and things are a lot different. Our kids have been through a couple of recessions,; they will inherit a monstrous national debt that will be our legacy to them. They have to cope with wonderful travesties of nature like aids and HIV. Beer is no longer the biggest thrill in town and neither is grass. Coke and crack are freely available and more is on its way. These aren’t the simpler times that we grew up in, so let’s not try to convince our kids that they are.
And I know in your mind the kids aren’t the way they were back then either, as one writer stated, “Our youth love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and would rather talk then exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, talk in front of company, gobble their food and terrorize their teachers.” Of course that was written twenty three hundred years ago by Socrates.
8) Let Them Learn By the Consequence of Their Actions That’s a toughie isn’t’ it? Most of us have spent the majority of our adult lives protecting our kids, maybe protecting them too much. We had a family in one of our churches that when we went there they had an 18 year old son who was in trouble, and when we left he was a 23 year old son who was always in trouble. And Mommy and Daddy were always there to get him out of trouble and amazingly it was never his fault. And they picked up after him when he wrote off his car driving under the influence and they picked up after him when he ended up in court after fights, and they picked up after him when he assaulted his girlfriend, and it was never his fault, someone else was always to blame. And because Mommy and Daddy were always there to pick up after him and pay the bills he never learnt a thing.
Deborah was forever putting her hand up on the stove in when we lived in Truro. And we warned her and we slapped her hand and told her no and explained about pain. And it wasn’t until she was about two and a half and she reached up and laid her hand on a burner that had just been turned off that she learned her lesson. And do you know she never put her hand on that stove again. I mentioned before that when I was growing up Dad always told me “If you are going to dance you got to pay the fiddler.” Maybe it’s time that we introduced our kids to the fiddler.
9) Keep Building Bridges Find time that you can talk to your kids. Opportunities will open themselves up for spiritual conversation as well as practical conversation but we have to be where we can talk to our children when the opportunity arises. Someone called the ideal time to talk to our kids about certain things like sex, and spiritual things “Windows of Opportunities”. But you have to be around if you are going to see those windows when they appear. It’s a lot easier to make friends with your kids when they are little then when they are teenagers. Today is the time to build the bridges and to allow them to build their trust in you.
It’s tough sometimes to find the time but if you haven’t got the time to listen to them when they are little it’s going to hurt all the more when they don’t have time to listen to you when they get bigger. (Clip from Cat’s in the Cradle)
Let’s take the time to build the bridges now, before it’s too late. I doubt if there has been anyone who has ever said on his death bed, “Darn I wish I had of worked more and spent less time with my kids”
A lot of those conversations will be side ways conversations. You know what I mean? They won’t happen when you are sitting facing each other, they will take place in the car or sitting watching TV and there will be spots and spaces that you will be able to fill in with your values and philosophies without sound preachy. And watch for those spots, you can’t force them, when you child has a question especially about what you believe and why you believe it, be ready with an answer don’t put it off until tomorrow, they may have found a different answer by then.
10) Be Open and Honest Let your kids know that you aren’t perfect. I mean face it they’ve already got that one figured out, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. But you need to know it as well. Now you may think that you know it all and never make mistakes but just check the eraser on the end of your pencil. You don’t have all the answers and neither do I. The mere act of becoming a parent doesn’t make us infallible just because it starts with the same letter as pope.
Sometimes as a parent we need to say, “I was wrong and I’m sorry” There will be times that we need to ask our child for forgiveness and you’ll be amazed at how quick you get it. If you model that type of spirit in front of your kids then it will be much easier for them to ask for forgiveness, perhaps at the time they need it most, when they have to ask God for it.
Did I say ten hints? I lied I have two more.
Genesis 2:24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 11) Release your kids We need to realize that our kids aren’t going to be here forever, and if we release them a little bit at a time, it won’t hurt nearly as much when they leave completely.
We all know women that when the last one leaves home they fall apart because they’ve never had a life other then the being a mother. And unfortunately we all know couples who’s marriages fall apart when the last one leaves home because they’ve never known one another as anything other then Mommy and Daddy.
Oh, by the way that is one very good reason why couples need to get a baby sitter every once in awhile and go out on a date, without the children, gasp!
I’ve heard my mother say on more then one occasion that when I left home that she waved goodbye with a tear in her eye and a song in her heart and I really never understood that until Deborah drove away on the day of her high school graduation in 2005 heading for her summer job in New Brunswick and then college.
They won’t be ours very long, and for our sake as well as for theirs we need to be preparing them for the day that we will turn them loose on an unsuspecting world.
12) This is probably the most important thing I’ve said over the past two Sundays; Tell them you love them a hundred times a day.
You are probably thinking, “Denn my kids know that I love them.” Yeah but do you tell them, every day? Never say good bye without saying “I love you” It’s so easy to fall into the same trap as the old couple, she said “You never say you love me anymore.” To which he replied, “I told you I loved you when we got married and if I change my mind I’ll let you know.”
Hope you enjoyed the message, there may be free PowerPoint available contact me at denn@powerpoint4preaching.com
