What Every Child Needs, Part 1

Jul 21, 2014 by Jim and Jerolyn Bogear

 

We love our kids and raised them to release them. Although we never stop being a parent there are some basic things every child should receive from their parents.

For the next 4 posts let’s look at some practical principles of loving our children:

We appreciate our kids for the way God designed them.

In the Bible it states, “For you created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 
your works are wonderful,  I know that full well.
 My frame was not hidden from you
 when I was made in the secret place,
 when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.”

I love that. Each of us is unique. We have 3 children, and they are all different…every one of our kids is uniquely designed, because every one of us is uniquely hard-wired. We love and enjoy the uniqueness of each of our kids. How boring if they were all the same. Yes, it is challenging in how to raise them, talk with them, discipline them, and even demonstrate love to them, but it is part of what makes them unique and what makes parenting fun along the way.

For some of us we have kids who are either very similar to us or very foreign to our nature… either way it seems to bother us, and we struggle with appreciating them for who they are and how they are put together.

Learning to appreciate our children is about them and not trying to make them who we think they should become. Our words are so very important but so are our actions in their lives.

Chuck Swindoll states, “Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.” How we appreciate and value them, or choose not to, causes them to feel good about themselves and creates a culture of healthy development, or begins to work on their psyche of whom they think they can never become. What power we have as parents, and influencers, in shaping, molding, and developing them into healthy citizens or people with the potential of carrying baggage much of their lives due to the way we deposit words and actions into the lives of our children.

Now, there is responsibility for each of us in our own lives, but in the early stages of life, our words and actions of accepting and appreciating children is critical. What a great quote by Chuck Swindoll above, for a vivid image of what deposits we are making. Those memory banks will be filled with positive deposits or with what will feel like draining withdrawals.

What deposits will you make?

~ Jim and Jerolyn