I remember the day I was laying in the hospital bed holding my newborn and then my two (almost three) year old walked in the hospital room. It hit me like a brick how big she was. I hadn’t even realized how grown up she was getting until I saw her that day in the context of my newborn. She wasn’t a baby anymore.

That is hard for a momma to swallow. However, whether I can swallow it or not the inevitable is going to happen… my babies were going to grow up. Physically their legs were going to grow longer, their hands and feet bigger, and their arms stronger. So now it was up to me and my husband to make sure that they also grew mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The days of making excuses for bad behavior were well over. No longer could disobedience and disrespect be waved off with a well she’ just tired, she’s just hungry, she just doesn’t feel well, she doesn’t know better, etc. The time to teach that circumstances and the actions of others do not justify wrong doing and bad attitudes was here.

One of the biggest issues I see amongst kids today is the fact that many parents have never made much needed parenting shifts. Their children enter preschool, kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade and so on and their parents are still talking to them and making excuses for them like they were two years old. Do you have a clue how many sixteen year olds in our current culture have never even washed a load of clothes or attempted to cook anything more than a bag of microwave popcorn?

I have lost count of the times that I have been at the ball fields and have heard kids treating their parents like their own personal servants and the parents just jump at the kids beckon call. Then when the parent is slow moving in the kids command these kids have the audacity to talk demeaningly to their parents and their parents take it. I actually have begun to realize that they are so caught in the cycle of it, that they don’t even see it.

These parents have never made the parenting shift away from the newborn days when the kid cried and the parents feet hit the floor in urgency and went from diaper, to bottle, to nap, to thermometer trying to meet the needs of an infant.

Sadly we have preteens and teens and even college age kids who will become grown men and women who still have an infant mentality… if I cry and pout when you give me what I want then I’ll stop.

Appease me.

Make me happy.

Meet my needs.

Me. Me. Me.

The National Center for Biblical Parenting has tons of materials to help parents stop this cycle or if you are just now becoming parents, to never start it. They are running a special on one of their series now and it will run through the month of May.

Set of 5 Parenting Shifts Books by Dr Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller,  RN BSN

The Parenting Shifts Series gives specific parenting advice for each developmental stage. A team of experts, working together with Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN, have collaborated to bring you the best in a heart-based approach to parenting at any age. Wherever you are in your parenting journey these books will help you move forward with confidence and effectiveness. Get the set of five books to add to your parenting library so you’re ready for each new stage. These books make a great addition to your church library as well.

Set Includes:

• The Baby Adventure (Birth to 12 Months)
• Toddlers on the Move (Ages 12-36 Months)
• Preschool Explorers (Ages 3-5 Years) 
• Elementary Foundations (Ages 5-8 Years)
• Cultivating Responsibility (Ages 9-12 Years) 

I am currently reading Cultivating Responsibility because my girls are 10 and 12. This book is really great. I have not read the other four but I have read enough of the NCBP material to know that whatever book you need to start with is going to be beneficial.

Here are the chapter titles of Cultivating Responsibility to give you an idea of what all is in this book.

 

As you can see from the titles of these chapters this is some good stuff! The chapters are short and manageable and each contains real life examples from real families.

As I have been reading through this book I have had to fight the urge to not repost the whole book on my FB page Proven Path Ministries. I will continue to post nuggets like:

“Remember that the success of a new venture is not the absence of mistakes. It’s how well you recover from them. Don’t hover. In fact, it might be best for you to walk away instead of nagging. You have to be willing to allow your child to learn from experience, and that usually means that you’ll end up helping by cleaning up the mess. If you are opposed to messes, then you may end up with weak kids who are afraid to take a risk.”

Excerpt From: Raudenbush, Julia. “Cultivating Responsibility.”

and like:

“Allowing kids to struggle can be helpful, but you’ll want to monitor the frustration level. The struggle is what teaches the character! When well-meaning parents constantly jump in to help, children cannot become independent problem solvers. Skills are developed by watching and doing, not just watching.

As you can see, problem solving involves several related skills and demonstrations of character. Children learn to think outside the box, look at the problem from various perspectives, and sometimes just dig in and do the work necessary to solve it. Learning takes place when kids are exposed to a process. Teachers often teach by setting goals, introducing skills, demonstrating, modeling, and practicing those skills, and then helping the child master them. 

Children demonstrate mastery of skills when they feel confident in what they are doing. This confidence comes from a sense of competency that’s best achieved through practice, and that usually requires work. So you, being the problem-solving coach for your child, can look for the roadblocks in your child’s thinking and provide new ways to attack the problems.

When children become problem solvers, they become the managers of their own lives. They command the respect of their peers and the recognition of their teachers. Parents move from disciplinarians and behavior managers to guides and mentors. This shift is important in establishing yourself as the go-to person for your child, especially as the teenage years approach. You want to act as a counselor or coach whenever possible.”

Excerpt From: Raudenbush, Julia. “Cultivating Responsibility.”

See.

Good stuff.

Parenting isn’t for sissies. This is a serious job with serious responsibility and can have serious consequences for us, our children, and yes our children’s children. It shouldn’t be taken lightly and it doesn’t have to be done by flying by the seat of our pants. It also doesn’t have to be trial an error.

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 

Parents have been struggling at this raising kids thing since the beginning. Adam and Eve had issues with Cain and Able that ended in tragedy and Noah and his three sons dealt with stuff too. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Eli, David, and even Mary and Joseph… we have at our fingertips knowledge dealing with every parenting struggle under the sun. We just have to take the time to look past the circumstance into the heart issue behind it.

Moms and Dads we have a cloud of witnesses and a multitude of examples written and recorded for us.

My most favorite thing about the material at NCBP and I have shared it before, is that they teach us how to flesh out God’s Word in our parenting.  The Bible is not just for Sunday’s. It was never meant to be. It is a precious gift filled with examples and instructions for life here in this fallen world of ours.

Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.

1 Corinthians 10:11-12

If we think we don’t need THE Book to help us in this raising good godly kids thing… then I weep for us and I weep for our kids. If we are struggling with our kids and all we do is sit around in our mommy groups and compare whose kids is doing the best job of driving whoever crazy and yet we don’t take advantage of the plethora of information offered to us in this age of media overload… then shame on us.

Our kids tantrums might be funny at two and maybe even three, but when those tantrums become holes punched and kicked in our walls and doors or even physical and emotional and verbal abuse towards us and others… its not so funny anymore.

The fact that our twelve year old still expects us to fix their plate, fold their laundry, and clean their rooms isn’t quite so cute when they are now a thirty year old piled up in our living room playing an xbox expecting the same things.

We can’t wait until our kids are teenagers before we start expecting responsibility and maturity out of them. Teaching responsibility should begin the moment they have mobility. It should begin the moment they have strength to pick up and carry their own toys and sippy cup.

They are learning from the moment they enter this world… so parents let’s teach them.

**** On May 30th the Preschool Explorers book in the parenting shifts series will be available for free on Kindle at Amazon