Wednesday; December 6

One of the greatest gifts parents can give their children is love.  (If fact, it could be argued that love is THE greatest gift we can give our children.)  While most of us would agree with this assessment, the concept of loving our children can we challenging.  Loving our children does not mean allowing them to run the family or ruin their lives.  In an effort to love their children some parents are too willing to accept their children’s bad behavior.  They have a hard time differentiating between love and leniency, so in an effort not to ruin their relationship with their children they accept whatever the child does without question or consequence.  Another misunderstanding of love has to do with excusing a child’s bad behavior.  When our children act-up we have a tendency to explain away why they did what they did.  We blame their environment, their peers, the system, their “condition” or a myriad of other factors.  Again, accountability is lacking, so the child never really learns to adapt to the social norms (a lesson that will be much harder to learn during the adult years). 
One of the important aspects of loving our children is proper discipline.  There are a variety of forms of discipline – some work better with each child’s personality than others – but, if we love our children and work hard enough we will find something that can be used to positively shape their behavior.
When the New Testament writer was discussing God’s discipline for mankind he wrote, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”.  (Hebrews 12:11)  Do we love our children enough to discipline them?  They will benefit from it when they face the world … and when they face the Righteous Judge.
Think About It!

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