Dear Elim Grace,
Alissa and I have been parents for 24 yrs. We have children ranging from 23 to 2 1/2 years old. Our oldest is married with our first grandchild. As part of those 24 years, we have been foster parents for 10 plus years. We have adopted one and will soon adopt our second. Additionally, Alissa has been baby sitting since an early age, which brings her experience with children close to 40 years. All that being said, parenting is hard! There are significant challenges to be navigated.
Here is the second of six of those challenges.
CHALLENGE #2 – Remembering discipline is a marathon
20% of parenting is what you need to know, 80% is the day in and day out application of what you know. This is what makes parenting hard.
Proverbs 22:6 says “Train up a child in the way he should go”. To “train up” can mean to “initiate” or to “dedicate”. The word was first used to describe the rubbing of a newborn’s gums with the juice of dates or oil. It’s a word that evokes warmth, embrace, affection, intimacy, closeness of relationship with your children. “Train up in the way they should go” could mean “Give them a taste for the way they should go”. So a close and loving relationship sets the stage for the discipline or training ahead. Which is important, because…
“folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.” (Proverbs 22:15)
Dave Ramsey says, “Budgeting is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” Disciplining, we could say, is training your children where to go instead of wondering where they went. Discipline is a non-negotiable for parents, starting at an early age. Wise discipline is an act of love rooted in the heart of God (Hebrews 12).
NAVIGATING PRINCIPLE: You get what you train for, not what you practice.
In weightlifting, we practice the fundamentals, but we train for speed (muscle memory, body awareness and control). Speed is less about how fast you move and more about how smooth. Is each part of the lift moving in sync with the next. To practice is to learn, to train is to drill down. Training is hard work. About 75% of the time spent on mastering a lift or skill goes to training. Only 15% is for practice.
In parenting, we practice the fundamentals but we train for muscle memory/heart formation. This is where you will spend the largest percentage of the time you have with your children. The “training” will look different at different seasons, but the goal is the same: parenting or training the heart. We want our children moving smoothly through life, competent for life.
I have often shown patience or mercy towards my children’s actions. But one of the key things I’ve learned to always pay attention to is attitude. An attitude is the formation of something taking root in their heart, in their character, while an action might be a mistake or an oversight or lapse in judgment. We train an attitude, we practice actions.
A few years back, my daughter met a young man online. Over time the friendship took root and began to grow. And then it happened. Jonah decided to fly up from Florida to meet Hannah’s family. So I drove alone to pick him up from the airport on Christmas Day. It was evening by then and the airport was under renovation. I waited outside under low light – to underscore the seriousness of the moment, of course! I found out later that Jonah told Hannah when he first saw me I looked “like Batman”. It was under that same “Batman effect” that I had a conversation with Jonah on my front porch.
“So you want to date my daughter?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Three things, then. One, don’t have sex with my daughter. Two, do everything in the light. You’re not going to hang out alone in her room. In this house, you spend time together with the family. Three, if at any point in this relationship I notice her personality or character or attitude begins to change – if Hannah stops being Hannah – this relationship is over.”
A few years later I’m happy to report Jonah and Hannah are now newly and happily married! And I couldn’t be more proud of them. My goal in that conversation as a father was to test and measure attitude both in the short term and over the long term.
Dear parent, the discipline of training your children is hard work. But all good training is. I’ve still got years of training ahead of me as a parent. But I also have in my older children the blessing and the reward that it’s well worth it. Don’t give up!
Pastor Jonathan