Last night I was trying to get Ryleigh to bed for about the fourth time. She always wants to watch Barney, which is only thirty minutes long. If you ask me that is thirty minutes is thirty too long, nevertheless, still not long enough for her to fall asleep watching it. So after several attempts to get her down, I found the longest movie she had. Wizard of Oz, One hour and forty-six minutes. My precious four-year-old has learned well from her brother of how to come up with some impressive excuses to get out of about anything, and the Wizard of Oz is no exception. First, she says the witch is scary- now I know she isn’t afraid of it because she once acted like her and laughed at how funny she thought her own impression was. So I told her, “It ain't gonna work babe, lay down!” She looks at me and says something, that at the time didn’t click but would later bother me greatly. She said, “But Daddy, the Wizard of Oz doesn’t teach me any lessons!”
After a little help from an amazing mother and threats of spanking, she finally agreed to watch it and fell asleep. I laid in bed unable to sleep and that kept running through my mind. “It doesn’t teach me any lessons.” All I could keep thinking is, what am I teaching her? When she watches her daddy, what does she learn? When Trevor and Ryleigh see the day in and day out Tracy, what is it that they are picking up?
A recent 20-year study shows that 85% of a child’s characteristics that are discernable in there early teen years, can be related in almost 99 points back to their parent's natural characteristics. In children who are raised without even knowing their maternal parents, the percent is still incredibly high at 48% of the child’s characteristics being drawn for blood parents. If it is true that kids who don’t even have the influence of their biological parent’s characteristics, determine almost half of their own characteristics that will define who they are as adults, then what am I passing on to the children who live under my roof?
Now, if you are a parent and you are reading this and it doesn’t put a flutter in your heart thinking about that fact, then either you don’t care or you have it figured out and I am pleading with you to write a book so the rest of us can figure it out!
Do you know how many times a week, I am told: “That boy is just like you!” My brother Terry, is convinced that Trevor Trivette is the funniest human being alive. He is always talking Trevor into doing things to entertain him and make him laugh. Terry said to me the other day, “That boy reminds me of you in every possible way.” Now regardless of how much I shake my head and act cover my face when Trevor dances down the aisle at church while helping take up the offering, there is a huge part of me that is proud that he is my son and has a great personality. He has my humor, my mannerisms, even my walk and build (God love him). But if a great social personality is all I pass on to my children, then I have failed them as a father. I have set them up for some of the greatest disappointments life can afford.
Josh Billings said, “To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.” That quote is nothing new. When the Bible “train up a child” it was not referring to some random instruction you tell your child, it is speaking of SHOWING them how to do something, leading by example. I am realizing how true and how vital this truth is every time I see my kids do something that I do or repeat something I say.
If my kids can tell a joke, but can't share their faith, whose fault is that? If my kids can sing a song, but can’t worship, whose fault is that? If my kids are not afraid of life’s troubles but don’t know how to trust the Lord, whose fault is that? If my kids can earn a living but don’t know how to give to those in need, whose fault is it? If my kids can make a relationship work but don’t know how to live in love, whose fault is it?
As parents, we have a responsibility to our kids. We cannot claim to love them if we don’t strive to show them how we are to live. We cannot say we have their best interests at heart if we don’t share with them the heart of God our Creator. We have no right to punish them for mistakes that they have watched us make day after day. We can’t tell them not to fight with their siblings if all they see are parents fighting. Today, you are writing the book that your children will read to determine how they will live their lives. The pages are you pen are the lessons that will stay with them their whole life.
Now if your kids are like mine, you are pretty sure they're not listening to the unsaid lessons, cause you can’t get them to respond to the spoken lessons. Maybe that is because the unspoken lessons speak volumes over the spoken ones.
“My kid’s think I am an idiot!” Didn’t you think that about your parents a time or two? Mark Twain said: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
I’m afraid we make up our minds on how our kids will react, or say “It doesn’t matter, they aren’t listening!” so we never teach the most important lessons. When I was a kid, I was sure that my parents either hated my guts or were just kid Nazis. It doesn’t matter what I did, I was caught. Sometimes before I even did it! I thought for years that Tim and Terry were figments of my imagination! They never got caught it seemed. My parents seemed to be these figures of only justice and wrath. But I am who I am today because they were figures of Righteousness and Grace! They were not perfect and never claimed to be and would not have tried to convince me they were. But they did their dead-level best to just be good parents who could be trusted. They didn’t demand respect and honor that they didn’t deserve and THAT IS WHY I respect and honor them today more than any other beings on this planet.
I want my kids, to say this of me… At the end of the day that is all I want.
What lesson are you teaching today Mom?
What lesson are you teaching today Dad?
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