We’re told in Proverbs to train up a child in the way he should go. Very often, they’re trained up instead in the way we go, which, unfortunately, isn’t always the same thing. If you could watch yourself like they–or anyone else–does, would you see anything you’d be proud to have them emulate? I don’t know about you, but that question makes me cringe. And I don’t even have kids.
Obviously, I can’t share any child-rearing wisdom I’ve accumulated from being a parent. I could share some I gleaned teaching kindergarten, and perhaps some of that will make its way onto this page. But most of these thoughts come more from watching than doing.
I hope that won’t diminish them. I don’t think it should. You don’t have to be a parent to know what kind you want to be, or to learn a few things about how to be that when you are one.
Experience has still been my teacher. It’s just been a different kind.
So, this isn’t a single lady telling you how to raise your children. It’s a single lady telling you how she hopes to raise hers. And inviting you to wear any shoe you find in this post that fits, no matter what stage of life you’re in.
Is My Behavior Worth Passing On?
I had an experience several years ago too personal to share here in any detail, but it left me with the impression that the children who are mine to bring into this world are valiant souls.
With it came an admonition, maybe a borderline chastisement, to be a person those valiant souls could honor. Someone that a person who sides with Jesus could side with.
So now there’s a question that accompanies what I think, say, and do. If my children were watching me right now, would I _______?
Watch this movie?
Waste this much time scrolling YouTube Shorts and Facebook?
Eat this much junk?
Be this moody?
Would I want them to do or be any of that?
Then should I?
Whatever you fill that blank with, they’re powerful questions when you consider who does, or who will, take their cues from you. Or who has to live with you even if they don’t act like you. Insert anyone you love in that question–children, spouse, siblings, friends–and you think twice about your behavior.
If you love who watches you, you’ll watch yourself. And pass on something they can be proud to pass on.
Watch Yourself When You’re Comfortable
Perhaps the biggest challenge here is that we’re least careful with people we’re most comfortable with. We behave ourselves in company. But family and close friends aren’t “company”. So with them, we think, speak, and act unfiltered. We’re like this scene from my workplace, which I know you’ll recognize because you’re undoubtedly guilty.
“Sam, Ashley Brown on line one.”
“Oh, shoot! I never answered her email! Aaggh!”
Sam’s discombobulation is heard throughout the office.
A moment later, so is his very serene, “Hello, this is Sam.”
The transformational powers of answering a phone call are truly miraculous. If they’d had phones in Jesus’s day, he might have healed many a lunatic just by dialing. At least, temporarily.
I’m learning that one of life’s greatest gifts is a circle of people you can be real with. Everyone needs a safe place to be honest. Unfiltered. A place to lay it all on the table where they know they’ll be heard. Understood. And supported.
A proverbial office of coworkers who know the feeling when a phone call elicits, “Oh, shoot!”
Sometimes, for the sake of the situation and your sanity, you need the freedom to say it how it is.
But you also have to know when to dial it back. Because you’re not the only one who needs to feel safe when you let it all out. It falls on someone when you do.
Perhaps too often it’s children who aren’t strong enough to carry it.
Choose A Soft Answer
Having reached the end of her rope one day, my mom set out to give her misbehaving child what for. But as she closed the distance, a quiet voice said, “Take it out on me, not them.”
Whether it was God or her guardian angel, she doesn’t know, but whoever it was, they could take being lambasted. Her child couldn’t.
That voice was her stranger on the phone. Except instead of flipping the switch to be calm for them, it flipped it to be calm for her child.
Not to say that child didn’t need to be held accountable, and they probably were. But not so they’d need therapy.
Sometimes you lose it. Sometimes it’s not even over what someone did. It’s just that what they did broke your strained back, so they get all your ire for what they did plus a host of things they didn’t.
Kids are easy targets for this. They’re patience testers. Even if they don’t push you to the edge, they’re experts at pushing you off. There was one year as a teacher where this happened almost daily. I had a lot going on. Those little five-year-olds didn’t always help. And I took things out on them they didn’t deserve.
But think about this. If you can shut off a rant like a kitchen faucet to be polite to a stranger on the phone, you can do it for the people you love more than life itself.
What would happen if we imagined ring, ring every time our patience teetered on a cliff? Stopped the tirade before it started? And showed that person we’re maybe sometimes a little too comfortable with some respect?
Perhaps we’d earn theirs.
That doesn’t mean foregoing discipline where it’s needed. But take a leaf out of Fraulein Maria’s book when she sang, “I will be firm, but kind!” If you can’t without blowing off steam first, blow it off on God. Be real with him so that when you’re real with your children–or anyone–they don’t fear or spurn you but trust you.
“A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.”
Don’t Add Sugar. Or Vinegar.
Sometimes it’s not what we say to a person that does the damage, but what we say in front of them. Children are not only trained by what they see when they watch but what they hear when they listen.
Is it a constant barrage of disparaging remarks? Complaints about circumstances? Disdain for a neighbor? Ridicule of a family member? Frustration with a spouse? Gossip with a friend?
Profanity on TV?
Are certain subjects talked about too lightly? Certain words and phrases thrown around too loosely?
Do you say things you’d never say if you had any idea how much of it your innocent six-year-old was absorbing? And repeating?
I think I’m old-fashioned. My dream is a home where you only watch TV when you’re sick. Where kids don’t have phones and parents use theirs sparingly. A simple life where language is respectful and habits are refined and sacred things are sacred and at least some innocence remains intact.
That doesn’t mean I want everything sugarcoated. My nightmare is a home where everyone is so proper that no one is genuine and nothing true is ever said.
Some things can’t be sugarcoated and shouldn’t be. I want my children to want truth. Sometimes finding that means wading through deep contradictions. And lots of garbage. To discern right, you have to recognize wrong.
But while you’re not dusting the facts with sugar, you also don’t have to drench them in vinegar. They’re usually quite bitter enough. You can talk about hard things and face hard things without being hard.
I hope that’s what my children learn when they listen to me.
Children Know Your Heart…
I wish I could say these questions and thoughts hold all my unhealthy behaviors in check, but I’m in a catch-22 that makes Paul feel rather kindred when he says, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil I would not, that I do.“
All the evil I would not do for the sake of my children, I do because they’re not here. Not in the sense that while the cat’s away, the mice will play. I’m not raking in a few last hurrahs before they come.
I’m surviving.
I scroll incessantly and eat excessively because I’m trying to fill a hole. I go about like I’ve borrowed Eeyore’s rain cloud because it’s not working.
What I want to be for them is very hard to be without them. Most days I feel like I’m no one to look up to.
I felt that way regularly as a kindergarten teacher.
Yet my students always greeted me warmly if they saw me on the street or at church. Returned my “Good morning” cheerfully every day despite all the reasons I’d given them the day before to carry a chip on their shoulder.
Children watch your actions and listen to your words. Sometimes those words and actions hurt them. They’re exactly the way you don’t want them trained to go.
But children are also better than anyone else at looking on the heart.
I think my students knew my heart was God’s. And that it loved them. And it really did. Not a single one in eight years didn’t find a soft spot there.
I think my children know the same thing.
…That’s Why They Chose You
Teachers get a few glimpses into people’s home life. The state of a student’s homework when it’s turned in, whether it’s turned in at all. The way their hair is combed, if it’s combed. Odors that seem woven into their clothes. Clothes they’re missing. Socks, coats. Underwear (don’t ask how I know that). There’s always a student or two who comes to school looking and smelling like a little orphan.
I struggled with that. Because I knew how I’d send my children to school.
If God could pour children into these untidy places, couldn’t he give me one to completely dote on? Were those homes the lesser of two evils? Not the Ritz, but better than me?
I came to understand that those kids chose their place. They were content there. And loved.
But my children chose their place. With the mother they knew my experiences would help me be.
No one had it figured out better than anyone else. No one was more favored. We just each had what we could offer, and my children wanted what they saw in me. A person whose experiences might make her a witch while the dross burned, but in the long run, someone worth the wait.
Someone valiant enough to raise a valiant soul.
Remember Who The Way Is
It takes a trained adult to train up a child. But trained does not mean perfect. No matter how vigilantly you watch yourself, you’ll still mess up. And your children–or spouse, or siblings, or friends–will watch it. But if you try again, they’ll watch that, too. And hopefully learn to do the same thing when they fall.
If you watch yourself the way they do–that means watch it all; actions, words, and heart–there’s probably room for correction. But there’s probably also room for grace.
The way I hope my children never depart from is the way to God. The way to God is Jesus. If my behavior doesn’t always train them to be Christlike, I hope it trains them to be repentant. To know that not departing from the way doesn’t mean never stumbling off the path. It means never losing sight of the Shepherd.
And remembering he never loses sight of you.
I hope that’s the Way my children learn to go when they watch me.
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
John 14:6
Whether you’re a parent or not, I hope something here can be a positive influence in the way you conduct yourself. Please leave a comment if something touched you or if there’s anything you would add, and share this post with someone else.
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