What can we do to continually impress upon our children/students that doing what is right by God is not just what is right but it is what is necessary? I mean I understand growing pains, believe me I do. But at what point and time do we stop contributing their behavior to our children/students trying to figure out who they are and what boundaries that they can cross.
See for me with what I have learned through my experience in the military is that people, whether kids or adults, will always test you. It is up to the person being tested to put a stop to it and until they do they will never stop being tested. This right now is becoming a reality in my own household with my youngest son, and let me tell you it is driving me insane.
I am not sure where he has learned it but my youngest son has come to the decision that being disrespectful is the cool thing to do. When he first started this months ago we approached the situation as it being just a phase. I mean everyone does it right. We are a good Christian family who have all accepted Christ and been baptized. So each time he would act out I would make sure to point it out to him that he doing things that displease God. I would get angry (because the one thing I cannot stand is disrespect) and treat my children in a way that wasn’t glorifying God; this in turn would upset my wife and make her resent me.
Well one thing that I have learned throughout this process is that my son has no fear of punishment. What I mean by this is that he is not afraid of getting punished for anything because as of late he has not been disciplined when he has done something wrong. This was due to a conscious decision by his mother and me to try and let him work through whatever it was in his little world that was wrong on his own. Let me tell you this much, that was not the right direction to go.
All this came to a head yesterday. He came home and was so happy that he had gotten all A’s from last week’s grades that he was bouncing off the walls with excitement. Now keep in mind he got grounded last week for having bad grades and was grounded until this Friday. Well while I was outside doing his chores, he approached his mother and asked if he could go out and play, and upon being told no he decided that would be the opportune time to show his mother his conduct slip that he received from school. He has been misbehaving and disrespecting his teacher for the last week. Almost to the point to where he gets sent to the principal to get paddled. Well safe to say, last night momma and I took back the power. There is hopefully a little fear back in his heart of consequences for his actions.
I think that we are so busy nowadays trying to make sure that our children/students like us that we forget that we are the adults and that we are not here to be their friends. Instead of getting into that mode where we all of a sudden believe our children/student might think that they know what is good for them, maybe we should just continue to be the adult and make the tough decisions that we sometimes don’t want to make for their well being.
“For God loved the world in this way; He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Greg
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