8 Things You Need to Know to Parent Well

• 1 Timothy 4:12 says, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” 
• Titus 2:7-8 says, “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us."

Whether you are a young mom or an older mom, new to your journey or season in its course, it is critical to be an example with following. Children will emulate what they see. You can put every behavior & consequence in place that you want. You can place chore charts and rules. You can scream. You can spank. But it is what they see that will matter the most. Questions to consider in your home as it pertains to your own behavior may include: 

• Do you scream at your children? Do not be surprised when they scream at you. 
• Do you respond in patience and gentleness and the fruits of the Spirit that are supposed to be living inside you? 
• Are you respectful to your children, taking the time to listen to them, as they share how they are feeling? Do you even ask? 
• Do you monitor your own time on social media?  
• Do you monitor your own intake of music and movies and books and entertainment? 
• Do you set an atmosphere of praise in your home? 
• Do your children see you reading the Word? 
• Do they see you speaking in a way that honors the Lord behind the scenes, or do you use profanity and speak word curses regularly?  
• Do they see you living a sexually moral life? 

Even teenagers and young adults who are sometimes in their most rebellious season notice how you respond and what your life looks like.  

Joshua 24:15 says, “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  Decide that your home will be a place of refuge, peace, and strong boundaries. Lose the emotion. Don’t be quick to anger. Don’t scream. Don’t use profanity. Don’t play music that doesn’t honor the Lord. Laugh, have fun. Be a woman that your children can talk to. Your children need to feel safe in the home. They need to feel like they aren’t in a constant panic, because they cannot please you. Do you highlight the good things they are doing? Do you take the time to praise? Do you smile and laugh more than you cry and growl?  Has there been an atmosphere of worship set in your home, such that the Holy Spirit is welcome there? Galatians 5:23 tells us that a fruit of our walk with the Lord is peace. Is that the fruit that is being produced in your home? And if not, what do you do about it now? Are there items, practices, and habits in your home that have stolen the peace? If so, remove them. Have honest conversations with your children (when age appropriate) to let them know you are taking back peace.

Matthew 7:21-23 says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’  

There will be times when you feel like you are dealing only with your kid’s actions and behaviors: disobedience, disrespect, lying, stealing… But when you are experiencing negative behavior, there’s a lot more under the surface, and the question you need to be asking yourself is “what is happening in my child’s heart?” The easy temptation of parenthood is to work on behavior modification: we punish bad behavior and reward good behavior. But raising kids to love God, read the Bible, and be more like Jesus is about developing their character. Actions and behaviors aren’t the same as truly knowing Christ. Encourage your children to know Christ deeply, not just “behave well”.  Most of us are concerned far more about how it appears on the outside to others than what is actually going on, on the inside. 

It does not help them to enable them and excuse-make for them. Lose the mom guilt. We spend so much time feeling guilty that we are a single mom or that dad isn’t around, that we enable them and potentially create a whole world of future trouble for them. Nothing fruitful is yielded through guilt and enablement. Your guilt will not produce good fruit. In fact, the Words says “There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Once we have repented, our sins are spread as far as east is to west and we should be moving on.  Sometimes, due to guilt, exhaustion, lack of understanding, or any number of reasons, we enable and we indulge. We get tired of the whining or the temper tantrums or the anger, and we simply give in. The problem is, the whining and the temper tantrums don’t stop as they age, they just look different, and we keep enabling. We become weak and tired, and we relinquish boundaries that we should have held their foot to the fire on.  

Do not overindulge! You do not do your children any favors by continuing to give in, when they throw a fit, regardless of their age, or they attempt to bully you. Now, to be clear, it is one thing if you have a small child who is hungry, sleepy, or scared, and they are throwing a fit, unable to communicate. It is quite another when you have a teen daughter screaming to the top of her lungs at you, because you won’t let her go to a party. However, know that both of those scenarios mean a need has not been met.  

Ask God for the strength necessary to hold strong boundaries, and to discover what the child is actually saying. Don’t buy the shoes if you can’t afford them. Don’t buy the toy. Don’t bend the rule that you deemed important in your home. If you have a gut check about that party, don’t let them go. Don’t allow the guilt of long hours at work or a past mistake or an ugly divorce or even your own insecurities cause you to overindulge your children. It only cripples them. Do not do the school project. Do not give them the second snack. Whatever those things are that are important in your home, hold the line. 

Some of you are making mountains out of molehills. Not everything is a huge thing. So many times, I would explode over the least of things, such that my children were often scared of me. My pride told me that if my children were scared of me then I was doing something right. That is a misnomer. First, they will eventually grow out of being scared of you. Second, the goal isn’t to evoke fear in your children. It is to raise them up in the way they should go. So that when they are old, they will not depart. Many of our children depart as they get older, because we focused on making them afraid of us and not developing the character of who they are at their core. Evaluate what matters. Before you react, take some to think about it first. Does this matter? And if so, why? Is grace appropriate? God is a god of grace. Not everything deserves a consequence. Is their repentance and sorrow enough? 

1. Ephesians 2:8  - "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, "
2. 1 Corinthians 15:10 - "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain."

Curses are all throughout Scripture, both in the Old and New Testament, highlighting God’s ways and Kingdom principles. There are more than 200 references to curses throughout the Bible, including many ways to be cursed. Jesus absolutely broke the curse of death – eternal separation from the Father – and became sin, who knew no sin, for our iniquities. We see that His obedience paid for our righteousness, according to Romans 5:18-19. He broke the power of the curse, but He did not eliminate the presence of generational consequences throughout our bloodlines. Very often we can see patterns throughout our families that we never addressed. Do you see trends taking place in your family, such as divorce, unwed pregnancy, poverty, alcoholism, abuse, addiction, obesity, anxiety, rage, crime, and others? Did your grandfather, brother, and nephew all struggle with infidelity? Has anger and hot temperedness run throughout your bloodline? Have multiple people in your family committed suicide? Even science and doctors will confirm that traits, proclivities, illnesses, and behaviors are passed from one generation to the next. Why do you think doctors ask if there is a family history of a variety of physical and mental illnesses? Because science recognizes exactly what the Word tells us. If something is not handled in one generation, it will absolutely revisit the next! Doctors are wanting to identify your bloodline history. What have you passed down to your children? What did their father pass down to them? What did those before you pass down?  

That night the Lord said to him, “Take your father's bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the Asherah that is beside it. Judges 6:25 

You must become a bloodline breaker for yourself and your future generations, which includes identifying trends in your family history and breaking them. It’s time for you to start tearing down your father’s idols.  

What does that look like in the practical sense? Identify the patterns in your family and then verbally break them off your children with the following sample prayer. And then choose to live in a way that emulates the ways of Christ, no longer falling prey to any bloodline pattern in your family that does not honor the Lord.

Ignoring there is a problem with your children does not mean it is going away. There are times in our parenting, when we get too tired or too fearful about how to handle a situation, so we choose to ignore something. Matthew 18:15-17 says “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.”  While this is an example of how to resolve conflict among Believers within the church, this is a good template for us to use with our children. 

‘The prayers of the righteous availeth much.’  James 5:16 tells us. Many parents underestimate this critical and powerful component of their Christian journey (and their parenting). There is much that is taking place in the spirit realm that we cannot see. There is much territory being taken, when we open our mouths and cry out to the God who created us. He created our children. He knew them while they were yet in our wombs. He loves them and he loves us. Why do we talk to (and complain) to others for more than we do our Lord? We must pray morning and night (without ceasing). We must seek God’s instruction for our children’s lives. We must pray for them and about them. We must not only pray when they are in trouble or angry, but pray constantly for their future, their salvation, and their holiness. Pray for protection. Prayer shifts everything!