Repeating Yourself?

One of the things I battled a lot in the beginning of my parenting years was frustration. It was always poking out its ugly head and it always looked a lot like me, but uglier. Of course I cried out to the Lord about it, and of course, the Lord would always provide a way of escape. Here is one of the things He showed me that transformed me into a much more lovely person.

He showed me that if I use more than "just words" to address my children then they'll be more responsive and I'll fore go the frustration that repeating oneself again and again and again always brings.

What do I mean you ask?

Well, the Lord showed me that I liked to parent with mere words (probably b/c I am prone to be lazy). He reminded of the Bible verse, "They honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me." Well, come to find out God isn't the only one who knows when we're just giving lip service - our kids know it too. Children have an incredible sense to discern when mom and/or dad really mean what they say. Do you know what I think the most effective signal we can give to show that our expectations are sincere? It isn't yelling. It's stopping whatever we are doing and going to them directly. This shows that we're really invested (with our whole bodies) in seeing the issue out.

When children see that we are distracted when we address them I have found, at least with my children, that makes them feel they have a safety parameter for disobedience. When I am ready to give them my full attention I see that I have more of theirs.

Since I know that my children are more responsive when I am more attentive I have developed the discipline to be more hands on in parenting. I try to communicate to my children with more than just words. Our bodies are talking to our children as much as our mouths are. We want our body language to match our parenting language. When we say "I mean it" with our mouth, we don't want our body language to say, "I'm really distracted on the computer right now but when I finish this, then I'll mean it".

And we don't ever want to give our childen the impression that we really only mean what we say when we raise our voice. If that was the case our children would tune us out until we become physically upset, turning various shades of red and yelling things that would land us on the Oprah show featuring scary moms. There has to be a better way, right?

Well, children have a radar that picks up sincerity better than a hound can sniff out a critter. If children truly believe that we are serious then they will be more likely to respond with obedience. The more children learn to be responsive when we speak to them, the easier our job gets. The key thing is we, as parents, have to be consistent if we want to equip our children to be respond appropriately to a calm voice.

Another plus to hands on parenting is that you are not waiting for frustration to prompt you to move. You move based upon need, not emotion. When we aren't frustrated when we address our children then we're more effective. When we use self-control we know that we are training our children to take action as opposed to scaring them to.

Moms, if there are any topics of parenting you would like me to address in this blog please submit questions. And on each topic that is discussed please contribute what you have learned on the subject because there are moms who need to hear what you have to say.