One of the things Ellen and I spoke about at
times when our kids were growing up was this.
“Let’s enjoy our kids and not be in a hurry for them to grow up or get
older.” In other words, we wanted to
soak in and enjoy the moment. There were
great times of joy, exhaustion, and sorrow.
Regardless, we made it our goal to live in the moment and are glad we
did.
I believe this is part of what grace means
when we are able to rest in the Lord as Hebrews 4 talks about.
It helps to understand what stage of
parenting you are experiencing with each of your children. The stages can be understood simply as
Control, Convictions and Counselor. In
every one of these stages, parents need to depend on Christ in them to parent
and need to have older grace filled parents who can mentor them.
Control – When our kids are infants until
they are around age 11, parents have to make a lot of their children’s
decisions for them. Our children don’t
have the emotional or intellectual ability to do this without us. Of course, even as they are moving towards
age 11, we can be teaching them about making wise, good decisions. There is also a place for giving them
opportunities to do so.
Conviction – From about age 12 through high
school, we are in a time of helping our kids develop convictions about God,
themselves and life. We can’t force any
of this on them but we want to be sharing the important things on how real
Jesus is to us, dating, working hard, integrity, money and more.
This is definitely a time that can be very
challenging. Some teens are very
compliant and go through this time with no problems. Others seem to become an alien from another
planet and parents wonder who took over their child’s body! Our kids may have questions or doubts about their
faith but talking it through with them will help. Just don’t freak out if that happens.
Counselor – This is when our kids have
graduated from high school and are headed towards living on their own whether
through a job or at college. Parents primarily
become counselors during this time. We
have to be very careful that we don’t regress to the Control stage during this
time. In fact, some parents sadly keep
trying to be in the control stage even after their adult child is married.
This is a time when we are continuing to
guide our children into making more and more of their own decisions. We have input of course, especially if they
want to do something like go to a college that costs more then we or they can
afford. But in general, we want to help
them learn more and more how to pray, seek God and make their own decisions.
Please don’t take these stages and turn them
into hard and fast periods. We all need to be led by the Holy Spirit and there
will be some crossover in these stages.
Just to remind you, trust Christ in you, to parent through you. He’s the best parent ever!
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