Recently I’ve stumbled across a number of useful sources when it comes to parenting. The first one is a publishing company called Rod and Staff Publishers. This list is taken from their Light of Life periodical from the article by Jacob Shank called The Home teaching Good Work Habits.
- ‘From day one, a child’s habits begin to be formed-at feeding time, sleeping time, and later at playtime.‘ Now this makes perfect sense to me. Since day 1, I’ve tried to teach Lily good habits. You get dressed every morning, you don’t drop your food on the floor, when you are tired you nap, you are gentle with books, you brush your teeth every night, and so on. If she learned these habits early on, she will continue to do them through out her life. And she has! She doesn’t drop her food on the floor, instead she demands that I take it if she doesn’t want to eat it. She is gentler with book, and occasionally, I see her smoothing down pages just as she has seen me do. She loves to brush her teeth, even though she doesn’t do it very well.
- ‘Children’s good work habits are best learned in the Christian Home.‘ Why? Because they observe their parents and older siblings working. Lily watches my husband work on the computer, I make our meals and clean our home. Seeing this is so natural to her that I can tell her when her daddy is in a meeting, she’ll actually leave him alone and bring her book to me to read instead. Lily got so used to seeing me empty the dishwasher, that she just jumped in and started handing me things. She can empty out the silverware (as long as I take out all the knives first) and any item that isn’t too heavy for her to lift. There is a lot of glass plates so I make sure she is very careful. She has also learned without any prompting how to bring me clothes to hang on our drying rack and how to take the dry clothes off and hand them to me. Not big things perhaps, but I love seeing her so involved and happy. Every time she has done something well, I tell her so and show her extra affection.
- ‘Children must learn obedience in the home.’ One of the first words I was told Lily should know by the end of her first year was ‘no‘. I can’t tell you how many times within just that one year that I had to tell her no for her own safety. No, that’s hot, don’t touch that! No, don’t take mommy’s dirty silverware. No, don’t pull that! Another phrase that Lily had to learn was ‘come here‘. And one phrase that I ended up teaching Lily was, ‘stay in this room‘. I didn’t want to chase my mobile child all around my in-laws house, and Lily learned that I wanted her to stay in the same room that I was in, and she did. There are other phrases she’s learned, such as ‘let me check you‘, which basically means, let me check your diaper. She knows the word for cheese simply because she loves cheese so much. Any time I hear a sharp ‘ees’ sound, I start looking for the pointing finger of my toddler.
- ‘Children must deliberately taught work habits.’ Otherwise how will they end up using their time? Just fritted away in meaningless things. Children need to be given directions and taught priorities. School is work, chores are work, many things worth doing are work that children can be taught. When Lily was old enough to figure out how to dump all her toys on the floor, I figured she could be taught how to pick them up. First this was more me picking her up, giving her a toy and instructing her to drop it into her toy box. And she would do that. Today I turned around and found her putting away her bath toys without me saying a single word. When Lily is older (and taller), she can learn how to set the table, sweep the floor (something she is sort of already trying to do judging by how often she carries my broom and dustpan away.), things like that. As children grow older they must have responsibilities. Due to circumstances, when I was seventeen, my siblings and I had very little parental supervision. However, my mother had drilled certain chores and responsibilities into our heads, so even though no one enforced them, most of these chores still got done. Somehow the house never became a wreck, dishes were always done, and dinner was always made. Everyone’s school work, as far as I know of, always got done. My mother had trained us well. We still all suffered from that lack of parental presences, but we all understood what was going on.
- “Children must be taught to follow a schedule.” Now this is a hard one for me. I do follow a schedule, it’s just rather lax. By that I mean meal times, nap time, are all consistent, but I have a hard time getting Lily to go to bed before we do and I’m still trying to figure out a proper school routine for her. I had bought some preschool books for her, but she’s still not at the writing or reading on her own stage yet. She loves being read to and we have a lot of learning books, so we do a lot of that. But there’s not a set schedule to it.
- “Most importantly, children must be taught about God. Christian homes shouldn’t neglect family devotions. Children learn early to make spiritual lessons out of the natural.” Then he included several examples of children singing hymns as they sowed the garden or saw fireworks. I don’t know much about children older than Lily, but it is my goal to make sure she knows as much about God and the Bible as I can teach her. I read some of her children’s Bible to her every day before nap and sometimes bedtime and I elaborate on the stories with my memories from my Bible. These aren’t the only Bible stories we have for her either, sometimes she find the book of Jesus’ Parables by Mick Inkpen (something I highly recommend) or one of her other Bible stories, there are a lot of them. Ones people have given as gifts or that we bought or inherited. Lily watches as my husband prays over our meals, and listens to Bible memorizations songs (which I have found surprisingly helpful for my own memorizing.)
I suppose my point in mentioning all of this, is that we have to be intentional about how we raise our children. We need something of a plan going into it. Before Lily was born, Michael and I talked about our thoughts of child raising and how our parents had raised us, what had worked and what hadn’t. Then we studied everything we could find in the Bible about child raising. Children are a blessing, and that includes having and raising them. It’s an adventure not to be missed. I feel sorry for the couples that have dogs instead of children. They may miss out on the late night crying and the debates over things like bedtime, but they also miss out the wonder of a growing baby and the joy of teaching a child. But more than that, they miss out on the responsibility and the joy that God wants to give them.
The Christian Thinker 