Are You Over Involved With Your Kids?

I'm reading a great parenting book that has really put some things in perspective for me. It's name is, Parenting By The Book Biblical Wisdom for Raising Your Child by John Rosemond.

John makes some good, common sense points in this book. I'll be sharing some of his points in other articles as well.

One of his most interesting (and unexpected) propositions is that most parents in modern America are over involved with their children. When I first read that idea it really cut against the grain of my thinking. As I read more about his point I began to agree.

John is a psychologist with many years of experience helping families. John would say his ideas aren't primarily based on what he learned in school. He would say his insights come from the bible and his experiences working with families. Much of what he says disagrees with what we, as parents, have been led to believe.

The question at hand is, "Are you as a parent over involved with your children?"

Here are some of John's points that relate to this question.

• Ideas about how to parent children have changed over the last fifty years and the new ideas have made raising children harder.

In the old days, when your Grandma was a kid, her parents did not look at parenting as the all-consuming and complicated matter that is our modern view-point. In the 1960's we started listening to psychologists and other voices in academia who were writing very impressive sounding books about parenting.

The problem with their ideas is that they traded common sense simplicity for sophisticated psychobabble. Following the thinking of these so called experts parents began to worry about all the ways they might be messing up their children. Parents began taking their kids down the road toward  diagnosis, therapy sessions and medication. (Yes, I realize these things are sometimes needed.)

No wonder we're so  paranoid! No wonder parenting seems like a ball-and-chain! No wonder we feel like we have to micro-manage our kids!

You can see how this kind of over-thinking the whole parenting thing can lead to over-involvement.

• The popular belief that behavior modification techniques can be used to train children in the same way they can be used to train animals  has many parents trying to discipline their children by a complicated process of rewards and consequences. 

 Behavior modification is the idea that if you reward your children for positive actions and punish them for negative actions they will learn the appropriate behaviors you are trying to reinforce and cease from unwanted behaviors.

Hey, if it works for rats it should work for kids...right? Not necessarily. In his book John points out:

"Unlike animals, human beings possess free will: We are capable of resisting the power of consequences...Unlike animals humans are rebellious by nature, something animals are not. Humans are the only species that regularly engages in acts of self-destruction."

The biggest problem with behavior modification is that it puts almost all the responsibility for the child's behavior on the parents shoulders. Moms and Dads feel that if they can apply the right combination of rewards and punishment everything will be fine. It ends up being the parents who are trying to jump through the right hoops.

Once again...No wonder we have become so over-involved with our kids.

• Developing your child's self-esteem has become a major focus for parenting. This keeps parents scrambling to ensure their child's success.

When grandma was a kid her parents did not agonize over her self-esteem or her success. Her parents just wanted to raise a child with enough good character to become a good citizen.

In our modern culture parents spend untold hours trying to boost their children's self-esteem. Think about it. We are determined to keep our children from failing because we think it will upset their sensitive feelings.

We try to guarantee their success by micromanaging many aspects of their lives such as sports, homework, social interactions, etc. I know many parents who are worn out from all the activity of promoting their kids self-esteem.

Can you see the over-involvement in all this?

Want to hear something about people with high self-esteem that will blow your mind? From John's book, here are some results from a long term study on people with high self-esteem.

"...wife abusers have generally high self-esteem, as do child abusers, people known for frequent episodes of road rage, and inner-city gang members."

"...hard-core criminals--People locked up in maximum-security prisons--score higher on self-esteem assessments than any other group."

Not what we want for our children!!!

In summary: We as parents are not the "Be all" or "Do all" for our children. Let's stick with the simplicity of parenting, to the best of our abilities, without smothering them with too much control.

 If you would like to improve your parenting Spout Springs Church offers a program designed to teach Moms and Dads how to apply biblical principles to your family.

Family Life Coaching

For more information contact Tim Gibson: tim@spoutsprings.org or 910-986-4736

I Can't Stand My Marriage! What Should I Do?

Yep, it happens to almost all of us. We come to a place where our marriage feels completely unbearable.

How hard can it get?

A missionary friend of mine, Joshua Paul, wrote about his experience in his book, Comfort or Cross.

 "The toughest years of my life were the first five years of my marriage... I tried to please my wife the best I could so that I could have peace in the house..." 

"...not a day passed without a fight. Let me be honest how bad it got--I wanted to be dead, rather than continue in marriage. My wife felt the same way. Life was intolerable!"

"I feared that my failure at marriage would forever scar my children and make them mistrust marriage."

How hard can marriage can get? "I wanted to be dead." That's how hard it can get! 

My friend is happily married now (to the same woman) and a dynamic follower of Christ. What was it that saved his marriage and ministry from complete disaster?

Was it professional counseling? Nope. Was it a time of separation? Nope. Listen to what he says in his book about what healed his troubled marriage.

"But one night, in the sixth year of our marriage, a miracle happened. Our son Jack Davis was almost two years old, and my wife and I were having our regular evening exchange of angry words. Suddenly, little Jack said, "Daddy, let's pray together." He pushed my neck and my wife's neck down in an attitude of prayer, and with his little, cute words he asked all of us to pray. Our whole family knelt down and prayed together for a few minutes then we all went to bed in peace."

 "...we had never sat together and prayed as a family. Friends, we started family prayer that night and continue that practice to this day. The nightly fights between my wife and me are over. Now our fight is only against the enemy of our souls, and we are joined together in that fight. This is a great and lasting victory in our household."

"...we were practically ready to commit murder or suicide or be divorced. Everything changed because we started to pray together as a family."

As someone who counsels couples with marital struggles I often look for more sophisticated answers before considering the obvious. I have to wonder how many marriages could be saved if couples would humbly kneel down together and unite their hearts in prayer?

Of all the activities that we as Christians can participate in, it seems to me that prayer should be at the top of our list. Personal and family prayer time help connect us to God. Jesus certainly emphasized prayer in his teachings and by his example. 

It follows that if we want healthy marriages we should seek God and His blessings through family prayer. How simple! How powerful!