We all want our children to have self-control and to learn how to manage their lives. How do we train our diamonds in the rough? We do a lot of polishing!
Self-control is a strength, and it is an essential part of healthy emotional development. It is the ability to stop yourself from doing things that would be damaging or have negative results. It is choosing to control your own desires, feelings, and actions; it is strength under control. I love picturing a 1200-pound thoroughbred horse on the racetrack with reigns to guide it. It is a strong, magnificent animal that has been trained to race for a purpose.
Training A Child Of Character In A Crazy World
How To Be A Mom in 2017: Make sure your children’s academic, emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual, physical, nutritional, and social needs are met while being careful not to overstimulate, understimulate, improperly medicate, helicopter, or neglect them in a screen-free, processed foods-free, GMO-free, negative energy-free, plastic-free, body positive, socially conscious, egalitarian but also authoritative, nurturing but fostering of independence, gentle but not overly permissive, pesticide-free two-story, multilingual home preferably in a cul-de-sac with a backyard and 1.5 siblings spaced at least two year apart for proper development also don’t forget the coconut oil.
How To Be A Mom In Literally Every Generation Before Ours: Feed them sometimes.
(This is why we’re crazy.)
Bunmi Laditan
Author of Confessions of a Domestic Failure: A Humorous Book About a not so Perfect Mom
Bunmi Laditan captures the craziness of our culture when it comes to parenting! Everyone around us is telling us what to do, what not to do, how to, when to . . . otherwise your child will fail. And isn’t THAT the fear? We, parents, over-control and thus sabotage the opportunity for our children to learn self-control.
So, let’s dial it back and see the big picture. We break down parenting into the 5-C’s:
- Control
- Command
- Counsel
- Communication
- Care
During the infant stage, parents use self control to meet the immediate needs of the infant with feeding, changing, sleeping. Through the toddler-teen years, commands and consequences help build disciplines, habits, and skills. During the teen-young adult years, more counsel is given while letting life teach natural consequences. As time progresses, communication between parent & child is two-way. Conversation may flow easily or one door may be closed. To keep the communication open, we keep knocking. Lastly, there is parental care. Control, commands, counsel, and communication may cease, but nothing can take away the love and care a parent has for her child.
When the 5-C’s evolve from parent-initiated to child-initiated, we know that the child has developed self-control, self-commands, self-counsel, self-initiated-communication and no longer needs the prodding and poking of Mom and Dad. He has become a capable adult able to make thoughtful and creative decisions.
Passionate and Self-Controlled
Self-control is strength of spirit. Our homes are rehearsal halls to build or tear down good character. What are you rehearsing? Evaluate: Would this behavior work anywhere else?
Personal Self-Control. I cannot control anyone else, but I can control myself, my thoughts, my words, my choices, my actions, my reactions, my future. The beginning of training in self-control begins with modeling self-discipline. Even articulating your own struggle with self-discipline shows children that we are continual works in progress and are striving for improvement. (“Mommy is really struggling with not getting angry when . . . Can you help me by . . . ?). The Enemy would like to keep us defeated and run down, so counter the negativity by plugging into God for refueling.
Partner Self-Control. As we have always emphasized, marriage management meetings are important. These discussions keep you communicating and ahead of the chaos that can happen. When it comes to the marriage relationship, it is also important to model self-discipline when it comes to blame (“If you . . . then I would have . . . “). Take ownership of what you do.
Parenting Self-Control. As a parent, you are in charge, and you are a student of your child. For the Littles, this means meeting needs, responding, child-proofing, helping, teaching boundaries. For the Middles, using commands and consequences is a good way to teach about self-control. Make it your goal to shape behavior and attitudes, not to crush the spirit. For the Olders, look for times when they make good choices and praise them. Give them privileges and freedoms as they show responsibility, but make sure they “pay the price” for lack of self-control.
Our kids need to see, feel, and hear unconditional love from us as parents constantly and consistently. It is the foundation that gives them the necessary strength to face pressures for the rest of their lives.
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Romans 12:1-2 [The Message]