TRAINING YOUR CHILDREN

Proverbs 29:15-17
These three verses are about the responsibilities of raising children in the home. Their basic injunction is to train children well so that they will be a blessing to their parents and to those around them, while the opposite, that is, not training them well, will be a disaster for everyone to see. Of course, as with many of the Proverbs, most of us fall somewhere between these two extremes in our parenting: We cannot claim that we have been perfect at it, but we also can't say that we haven't given it a good, honest try, either, with God's help.

With this truth about each one of us, it seems to me that the key to good training and parenting isn't in getting it perfect at all, which no one can do anyways. It is in getting it done consistently, always learning and working on something, with much love and grace for our children and for each other in the parenting process. It is such a huge, difficult, and impossible job at times! We really do need the encouragement and support of our spouse to do what is good and right. What's more, it is not a simple task, but one that has many stages of development: We can't train a teenager the same way we train a toddler!

All to say, for Amy and I, our parental training involved lots of input from other parents and from many books, lots of mistakes and false starts, too many to count, as well as lots of good times, love, and growth along the way. We probably grew more as people during our children's growing up years than they did! And, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe the adult parents should set the example for their children for how to love and grow, even in their parenting...